Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir has said there is no hunger in the Gaza Strip as Israeli-imposed starvation continues to kill Palestinians in the besieged territory.
In a post on X on Friday, the leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said that if Palestinians were hungry, they would have released the Israeli captives held in the besieged territory.
He added that he supports “starving Hamas in Gaza”.
The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) reported that in May, around half a million people in Gaza were facing catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5).
The entire population is experiencing acute food insecurity, the monitor said.
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Since then, famine-like conditions in the Gaza Strip have worsened, driven by an Israeli ban on the delivery of aid and supplies to Gaza, including basic food items, baby formula and drinking water.
At least 45 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip have died from malnutrition over the past week, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
A total of 115 people have died from malnutrition since the war began in October 2023, including 81 children.
Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, a member of Ben Gvir’s party, on Thursday also denied that Palestinians in Gaza were not getting enough food.
‘We don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it’
– Amichai Eliyahu, Israeli heritage minister
He called the international condemnation of the widespread starvation in Gaza a campaign against Israel, while emphasising that they were at war and trying to kill “these monsters”.
“There’s no hunger in Gaza,” he said. “But we don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it.”
On Friday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said that the starvation of the people of Gaza is “manufactured and man-made”.
One in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City, the agency added, warning that cases increase every day.
“This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave,” Unrwa Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said on Thursday.
“Families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive. Their existence is threatened,” he added.
“Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza. We, at Unrwa, have the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food & medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt.”
In recent weeks, scenes of Palestinians collapsing from hunger and exhaustion have become increasingly common across Gaza’s streets.
“Just yesterday, while I was walking through Sheikh Radwan (in Gaza City), where I am currently displaced, a woman in her late 40s collapsed in the middle of the street from hunger,” Basem Munir al-Hinnawi, a Palestinian father, told Middle East Eye.
“People are simply exhausted. Enough.”
