Amid a suffocating siege and total closure of border crossings, half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are standing on the edge of famine, according to recent UN data. Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation continues a systematic policy of denying the population even their most basic rights to food and medicine, an egregious violation of international humanitarian law.
The World Food Programme (WFP) confirmed that the volume of aid allowed into the Strip covers no more than 47% of daily needs. It warned that the continuation of the current situation will lead to the complete collapse of the humanitarian system.
The WFP stressed that the resumption of food distribution, the operation of bakeries, and the provision of hot meals all depend on an urgent and substantial increase in the flow of aid, something that requires an immediate ceasefire.
Despite these warnings, the occupation continues to commit horrific crimes against civilians. On Sunday alone, 29 Palestinians were killed, including 15 who were waiting for aid, bringing the total number of victims among those awaiting humanitarian assistance since 27 May to 1,938 dead and over 14,420 wounded.
These atrocities starkly represent the “death trap” policy, where the occupation has turned humanitarian aid into a tool for mass killing, far from any form of international oversight.
Since 2 March, Israeli occupation has imposed a full closure on all Gaza crossings, preventing aid entry despite the accumulation of thousands of lorries at the borders. Only limited quantities are permitted in, failing to meet even the bare minimum of the population’s needs, while hunger rates rise and famine spreads, claiming the lives of 258 people so far, including 110 children.
In addition to starvation, the occupation has been waging a comprehensive war on Gaza since 7 October 2023, resulting in 61,944 deaths and 155,886 injuries, most of them women and children, alongside over 9,000 missing persons and hundreds of thousands displaced.
These policies can only be described as acts of genocide: a combination of direct killing, systematic destruction, and the deprivation of civilians from food, medicine, and shelter, an outrageous affront to all legal and humanitarian principles. Gaza today stands as a living witness to the crime of the century.
