Famine in Gaza: What’s happening and how you can help

Over 100 international aid organisations and human rights groups have released a joint statement warning that Gaza is facing mass starvation. At least 15 Palestinians died due to malnutrition on Tuesday, July 22, alone, bringing the total since the war began up to 101. The majority of those deaths have been children, including Yousef al-Safadi, a six-week-old baby who died this week. According to Khalil al-Deqran, the spokesperson for Al-Aqsa hospital, 600,000 people in Gaza are now suffering from malnutrition, including at least 60,000 pregnant women, in what UN experts have described as a direct result of Israel's "intentional and targeted starvation campaign."

Due to the extent and severity of Israel’s blockade, it might seem futile to donate money to Gaza at this time – how will it help if aid isn't even being allowed to enter? The head of UNRWA has said that it has enough food stockpiled across the border in Egypt to feed everyone in Gaza for three months, which shows that the problem isn’t a lack of resources or funding, exactly; it’s that Israel is deliberately withholding the basic necessities of life. But according to Ghassan Ghaben, co-founder of grassroots initiative Reviving Gaza, donating money is now more vital than ever.

“Despite the blockade, mutual aid initiatives on the ground in Gaza are still able to get some of the extremely limited food and water to people,” Ghaben tells Dazed. “The famine is taking place, the situation is becoming more catastrophic by the hour, people are collapsing in the streets of hunger, and we can’t continue our work without support.” Because Reviving Gaza works directly with people on the ground and purchases food in bulk, it is often able to secure better prices than individuals buying for one family. “This means your donations go further and feed more people, but only if we have funds available on the spot. When food appears, we need to act immediately to buy and distribute it, or it disappears,” he says.  Reviving Gaza is still able to purchase drinkable water from local desalination points, which it distributes to families who would otherwise have no access. “Yesterday, we started a 10-day distribution of 100,000 litres of clean water daily, but this can only continue if we secure more funding – it’s literally life-saving," he says.

For the last few months, Israeli forces have killed over 1,000 Palestinians while they lined up to receive aid. Most of these deaths have occurred outside distribution centres set up by Gaza Humanitarian Fund, a US-backed organisation through which Israel has allowed a tiny amount of aid to trickle through – UN official Philippe Lazzarini has described these sites as “sadistic death traps”, where snipers are given license to open fire on civilians. Reviving Gaza has been sourcing small amounts of flour from individuals who risk their lives to reach these distribution points. “We purchase part of what these people manage to retrieve and then distribute it directly to families who are severely starving – especially those who would never be able to go there, including children, the elderly, people with disabilities, mothers and orphans,” says Ghaben.

What little food is left in the Strip has skyrocketed in price: flour has gone from $0.12 per kilo to almost $65 per kilo, and according to one source based in Gaza, it can cost as much as $500 for a family to buy two days’ worth of bread (half of this figure comes from the exorbitant cost of exchanging money). “No one in Gaza can afford these prices, especially after over 22 months of genocide, siege, and deliberate starvation,” says Ghaben. “We used to be able to provide 100 families with full food packages for $5,000 - packages that included rice, lentils, flour, oil, and more. Now, that same amount isn’t even enough to provide 1 kilo of flour per family to those same 100 families.”  Much of the time, food isn’t available at all. The Sameer Project, a donation-based initiative, announced on Instagram that it has been forced to suspend its community kitchens due to a lack of supplies.

At this stage, no one in Gaza is safe: according to the UN, doctors, nurses and humanitarian workers are fainting on the job due to hunger and exhaustion, and Reviving Gaza’s own efforts have come at a heavy price, with several of the group’s team members and volunteers having been killed by Israel. Many Palestinian journalists have said that the effects of malnutrition and the constant effort of finding food have impacted their ability to report on what’s happening, and the AFP news agency has warned that without urgent intervention, its journalists face death from starvation. This comes after Israel has already killed more journalists than died in World War One, World War Two, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined.

While the distribution of aid is uneven across the Gaza Strip and the brutal reality is that there isn’t enough food to go around, groups like Reviving Gaza, HEAL Palestine, the Sameer Project and the Dignity for Palestinians campaign are doing their best to feed people under extremely dangerous conditions. “This is not just charity – it’s survival. And it needs your support,” says Ghaben. While large international non-profits are also fundraising for their efforts in Gaza, Ghassan suggests that donating to grassroots, Palestinian-led initiatives is more effective (other people I spoke to with expert knowledge agreed with this.) “These local initiatives are more flexible: they can transfer donations quickly, navigate local markets effectively, and buy and distribute food on the spot,” he explains.

Donating money is the priority right now, precisely because our government isn’t doing enough to help. But you can also write to your MP and tell them how you feel: David Lammy has said he’s “appalled and sickened” by what’s happening, but the UK is still selling Israel parts for F-15 fighter jets, still refusing to recognise a Palestinian state, still failing meet its legal obligations to prevent genocide, and still refusing to implement comprehensive economic sanctions against the Israeli state.

There has also never been a more important time to support the Palestinian-led BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, which is calling on people to escalate peaceful disruption and other forms of pressure on states, corporations and institutions which are complicit in Israel’s crimes. Palestine Solidarity Campaign has organised a nationwide day of action this Friday (July 25): people will be laying a pot outside of Downing Street for every person killed in Gaza while lining up for aid, with similar actions to be announced in towns and cities across the country. Addressing the famine in Gaza requires urgent action today, but the more political pressure there is on Israel to end the genocide, the better.