Pre-War
Malnutrition in Gaza and the West Bank
In 2016 I published State Food Crimes (Cambridge University Press). This book analyses the causes of starvation and malnutrition in several historical cases and four contemporary cases, my research ending in 2015. In North Korea, starvation was already occurring. In Venezuela and Zimbabwe, state policies were causing severe malnutrition and the beginnings of starvation. In the Occupied Territories (OT), Gaza and the West Bank, rates of malnutrition were very high.
This blog is a short summary of my findings about the
OT, in chapter 7 of my book, pp. 114-31. (I have published other blogs about the
West Bank in the past: see “Water Rights of West Bank Palestinians (2013) https://rhodahassmann.blogspot.com/2013/08/water-rights-of-west-bank-palestinians.html,
and Property Rights of West Bank Palestinians,” (2013) https://rhodahassmann.blogspot.com/2013/05/property-rights-of-west-bank.html/)
In 2012, the rate of malnutrition in the Arab world as
a whole was about 10 per cent. Yet in the same year, 31 per cent of people in
the OT were undernourished, while 42.2 per cent suffered from food inadequacy.
By the 2010s, 80 per cent of Gazans relied on food aid.
In the West
Bank, Palestinians found it increasingly difficult to herd animals or cultivate
crops while illegal Israeli settlers took over their land. The government also
confiscated land for nature reserves, transportation corridors restricted to
Israeli citizens, and military firing ranges. The illegal wall that Israel
constructed on West Bank territory cut off some farmers from their land, which
was on the other side of the wall from their dwellings.
West Bank Palestinians also suffered from lack of
water, at the same time as Israeli settlers had swimming pools. Palestinians
required permits to build new wells, which the Israeli government rarely
granted. Then as now, some settlers deliberate uprooted Palestinians’ olive
trees and polluted their wells.
After it withdrew its settlements in 2005, Israel blockaded
access to Gaza by sea and air. It also declared about 29 per cent of Gaza along
its eastern and northern border to be a “no-go” buffer zone closed to Gazan
farmers and herders, yet almost a third of Gaza’s arable land lay in that zone.
In 2009 Israel imposed a three nautical mile limit on Gazan fisheries, even though
Gazan fishing waters were supposed to extend for twenty nautical miles. After
the 2012 war, the limit was changed to just over 5 nautical miles.
In early 2009, only 20 per cent of Gaza’s water was drinkable,
as a result of Israeli restrictions on fuel and chlorine needed for water
treatment plants. By 2014 only one-tenth of Gaza’s water was fit for drinking. Many
children suffered from diseased caused by polluted water, in part because Gaza
lacked electricity to treat sewage plants. In 2015 Israel announced that it
would double its supply of water to Gaza, but this was still far from enough.
Blockaded on all sides by Israel and Egypt, and with
their own capacity to produce food severely restricted, Gazans needed to import
about 400 truckloads of food a day from Israel to survive. Yet the several wars between Israel and Gaza in
the 2000s and 2010s resulted in severe reductions of the amount of food
entering the territory. In 2008, Israel’s Ministry of Defense cynically calculated
that the minimum number of truckloads per day needed was 106, including 77
truckloads of food and 29 of other humanitarian goods. This calculation did not
take into consideration inequitable distribution of food within Gaza, or the despoiling
of food as trucks waited to get through checkpoints into Gaza.
It is not surprising, then, that as a result of Israel’s
actions during the terrible war since October 7, 2023, Gazans are now starving.
This is “genocide by attrition,” a term coined by the late (Jewish) scholar
Helen Fein, which she originally applied to countries like Cambodia under Pol
Pot (1975-1979), as well as to the way that the Nazis murdered Jews and others
in concentration camps by starvation, disease, and lack of clean water.
Hamas bears responsibility for starting this terrible
war. It also bears responsibility for neglect of its own people and conducting
warfare from civilian locations. Egypt also bears responsibility for its own
blockade of Gaza.
But it is Israel’s decision not to permit the several
hundred truckloads of food aid per day that Gazans need to enter the territory.
It is also Israel’s decision not to permit reputable international agencies
into Gaza to distribute what little food gets in, instead relying on paid mercenaries
to guard supplies (by killing Gazans desperately seeking food) and distribute
it in a random fashion. Foreign governments such as my own (Canadian) government
have also bought food for Gaza and are prevented from sending it into the
territory.
