'New Levels of Desperation' in Gaza as Israeli Blockade Starves 19 People to Death in One Day

"We are heading into the unknown," one Palestinian doctor warned Monday as officials reported that Israel's near-total blockade starved at least 19 people in Gaza in one day, with the human-caused hunger crisis in the enclave reaching new catastrophic levels.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Afash, the director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, told Al Jazeera that "malnutrition among children has reached its highest levels" since Israel first began blocking humanitarian aid in October 2023. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's U.S.-backed government began imposing the current blockade on March 2.

More than 50 children have died of starvation since then, according to the World Health Organization.

Gaza's civil defense agency said Sunday that infant deaths from starvation are on the rise, with three babies dying from malnutrition in the past week alone.

"These heartbreaking cases were not caused by direct bombing but by starvation, the lack of baby formula, and the absence of basic healthcare," Mahmud Bassal, a spokesperson for the agency, told Agence France-Presse. 

The mother of a four-month-old child in Deir el-Balah was seen "touching her body, saying, 'I am sorry I could not feed you'" after the baby died of malnutrition at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, reported Hind Khoudary at Al Jazeera. 

A four-year-old girl, Razan Abu Zaher, was also among the Palestinians who starved to death on Sunday, succumbing to complications from malnutrition in a hospital in central Gaza.

Her mother, Tahrir Abu Daher, had told CNN in June that she had no money to buy milk, the cost of which has skyrocketed in Gaza due to the blockade—when it is available at all.

"Her health was very good before the war, but after the war, her condition began to deteriorate due to malnutrition," Abu Daher told he outlet. "There is nothing to strengthen her."

Aid agencies that have operated in Gaza for years say that the small amount of relief that's entered Gaza since the blockade was partially lifted in May has been far from enough to meet the needs of starving Palestinians. Before Israel began bombarding the enclave in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, an average of 500 aid trucks entered Gaza to help feed the population of more than 2 million people. A tiny fraction of that amount of relief has been allowed in since May.

Commenting on images of crowds of starving children and adults, Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), emphasized that Gaza's starvation crisis is "entirely manmade."

"UNRWA has enough food for the entire population of Gaza for over three months stockpiled in warehouses," said UNRWA in a social media post, displaying photos of a facility in Al Arish, Egypt. "The supplies are available. The systems are in place."

The World Food Program (WFP) said the hunger crisis "has reached new levels of desperation."

"People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance," said the U.N. agency. "Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment. Nearly 1 person in 3 is not eating for days."

"Only a massive scale-up in food aid distributions can stabilize this spiraling situation, calm anxieties, and rebuild the trust within communities that more food is coming," added the WFP.

But as Common Dreams has reported in recent weeks, the Israel- and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a privatized group staffed by U.S. security contractors, has largely taken the place of longtime aid distribution groups—and hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to access food at the GHF's aid sites and at crossings.

At least 92 people were shot dead by Israeli forces while trying to access aid sites on Sunday, Al Jazeera reported. At the Zikim crossing, at least 79 people were killed as a large crowd gathered to retrieve flour from a U.N. aid convoy, while nine were killed at the Rafah crossing and four more were killed near a site in Khan Younis.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Al Jazeera that at the Zikim crossing it had fired "warning shots to remove an immediate threat posed to the troops"—echoing its claims about deadly attacks on aid seekers at GHF sites in recent weeks—but did not provide details or evidence of the alleged threat.

The WFP said in a statement that the Israeli troops shot at civilians who were not posing a threat but were "trying to access food to feed themselves and their families on the brink of starvation."

"Shortly after passing the final checkpoint," said the agency, "the convoy encountered large crowds of civilians anxiously waiting to access desperately needed food supplies. As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers, and other gunfire."

Ramy Abdul, chairman of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, also reported Monday that Israel bombed a food kitchen next to the Al-Janane Al-Haditha kindergarten, with a number of casualties reported at the early childhood education center.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) emphasized that men, women, and children seeking aid have been killed "with U.S.-supplied weapons and with the complicity of our government."

The mass killing of aid seekers "is also an indictment of a Western political order that has enabled this genocide through inaction and indifference," said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad.

"Western governments cannot claim ignorance. They are watching in real time as innocent civilians are intentionally starved, forcibly displaced, and slaughtered—and are choosing to do nothing," said Awad. "History will long remember the Western world's indifference to the forced starvation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Gaza."

Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg warned that the latest reports out of Gaza "indicate that the final point of no return has been crossed."

"A broad consensus of scholars predicted that mass hunger will began to exact its deathly toll just about now," said Goldberg. "It is. All was known. Nothing surprised anyone."

"Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people is unprecedented in its lack of secrecy, in its length, in the overt dismissal of Palestinian humanity on Israel's part," he added. "The egregiousness of all these is such that there can be no quarter for the leaders, the executors, and the enablers."