There's a poll that found that Israelis want food/aid traded for hostages:
Also regarding the hostages, Channel 12 asked whether Israelis support halting humanitarian aid to Gaza until Hamas returns all the hostages it is holding. An overwhelming 72% said yes, while 21% said the aid should continue.
Beyond that, one would have to read between the lines of what some government ministers said. But, of course, that is not official policy. And to be fair, Netanyahu did cave in a fair bit to the US (e.g. opening Kerem Shalom) relative to some of those hardline initial statements from October. I'm not sure it's worth getting in all those details...
But since we have a never-heard-of-that in another answer... ("I have not seen any evidence of Israel intentionally trying to starve civilian population.") here's some Freudian slip from the early days
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
As for the (upvoted) claim Gaza is not slowly starving as of now, that's also disinformation according even to the US
On average, only 62 trucks have entered Gaza each day over the past two weeks, according to figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs — well below the 200 trucks per day Israel has committed to facilitating. Just four trucks crossed on two separate days this week. Aid groups, which have warned of a looming famine, estimate that some 500 trucks are needed each day to meet people’s basic needs.
After a string of Israeli attacks on members of Gaza’s Hamas-run civilian police force, officers withdrew earlier this month from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel. Since they left, trucks have been attacked in the crossing’s holding area, according to U.N. humanitarian coordinator James McGoldrick. Drivers have been shot at, attacked with axes and box cutters, and had their windows smashed, he said.
“With the departure of police escorts it has been virtually impossible for the U.N. or anyone else ... to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs,” U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield, appointed by President Biden to coordinate humanitarian aid to Gaza, said Friday.
“Because of the attacks on the U.N. convoys and others, the value of things has risen, which only feeds a vicious cycle to empower more criminal activities,” he added.
Satterfield said Israeli forces had killed as many as nine Palestinian police officers involved in protecting aid convoys, including a commander. Police include “Hamas elements” he said, but also people who are politically unaffiliated and remnants of Palestinian Authority forces.
So, yeah, Israel has a plausible excuse for causing this state of affairs, but the state exists, even according to the US.
To say nothing of what UN-linked organizations say, in more quantitative terms, e.g.
One in every 6 children in the north is suffering from acute malnutrition, according to a World Health Organization nutritional analysis, with 3 percent of them exhibiting “severe wasting” — putting them at risk of death unless they receive urgent medical treatment. [...]
The World Food Program announced it was forced to stop food deliveries to the north this week, citing the “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order.” UNRWA has not been able to make any deliveries to northern Gaza since Jan. 23, said Tamara Alrifai, its director of external relations.
Northern Gaza is where Israel declared "mission accomplished" (albeit not in those exact words) a couple of months ago.
7 January
The Israeli army says it has "completed the dismantling" of Hamas's command structure in the northern Gaza Strip.
Did the IDF just leave after that? I think their troops are still there, so it's effectively their military occupation now. Which under the Geneva Conventions obliges them to provide for the civilian population still there.
See also the somewhat provocative Q on Skeptics on this.
USAID-funded FEWS NET also had made a similar prediction in their Dec 2023 report (their last one on Gaza thus far)
There is a risk of Famine (IPC Phase 5) occurring in future months should conditions persist or further deteriorate.
Current levels of humanitarian access and aid are far outpaced by the level of need. Urgent diplomatic and
humanitarian actions – including, at a minimum, reducing administrative barriers at border crossing points to permit
increased flows of humanitarian aid and fuel supply deliveries and ensuring safe and sustained humanitarian access –
are required to enable an immediate scale-up of multisectoral food, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), and
health interventions to mitigate elevated levels of acute food insecurity, acute malnutrition, and mortality.
And the polls are not entirely irrelevant either. Israeli protesters have blocked the crossing several times according to the UN (alas exact stats on this are hard to find.) But you can see several videos on youtube of that happening, e.g..
As for the recently commenced air drops, they're the proverbial drop in the sea:
Aid groups typically drop supplies by air only as a last resort, given the inefficiency and relative cost of the method compared with road deliveries, as well as the dangers of navigating air space over a conflict zone and the risk to people who could potentially be hit as supplies fall to the ground if a safe drop zone cannot be established.
Despite the limitations of airdrops, France said it was ramping up its work with Jordan because Gaza’s “humanitarian situation is absolutely urgent,” according to a French foreign ministry statement.
“With a growing number of civilians in Gaza dying of hunger and disease,” the statement said, there need to be more avenues for aid deliveries, including the port of Ashdod in Israel, north of Gaza.
The French Air Force plane that participated in Monday’s airdrop, alongside three planes from its Jordanian counterpart, dropped more than two tons of food and hygiene supplies, the French foreign ministry said.
That amount is much smaller than what can be carried in a single truckload of supplies, and overall represents just a fraction of what the United Nations says is needed by Gaza’s more than two million residents.
Add to the list of plausible reasons: 'UNRWA is Hamas' (ibid; sometimes conceded as 'Hamas with a facelift')
, so they can't be allowed to have food [to distribute] either.
Israel has agreed to a new arrangement that will allow for a massive American shipment of flour for Gazan civilians to move forward after far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blocked its transfer for over a month, a US official told The Times of Israel.
Under the new arrangement, the flour, capable of feeding 1.5 million Gazans for five months, will be ferried into Gaza by the World Food Program rather than the UNRWA relief agency for Palestinian refugees, the official said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu privately informed the Biden administration that Israel approved the shipment in early January. The White House announced the development on January 19, as it came under increasing pressure to do more to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
But more than one month later, the flour has yet to enter Gaza.
The shipment arrived at Israel’s Ashdod Port, but Smotrich blocked its transfer to UNRWA, which came under fire last month over allegations that 12 of its staffers participated in the October 7 terror onslaught.
The delay has angered the Biden administration, which has repeatedly noted in recent weeks that Israel is violating the commitments it made to the president.
And the anger goes the other way around too, by the way:
“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir said. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”
As for point-blank denials that Israel has anything to do with it, there's that too:
Asked why more aid isn’t reaching Gaza by land, Netanyahu said: “Hamas is coming at gunpoint and stealing the food.
“Humanitarian deaths and starvation is, for us, it’s a tragedy. For them, it’s a strategy. They think that this will help them place more pressure on Israel to stop the war, leave them in place so they can repeat the October 7 massacre.”
Anyhow, Netanyahu's claim is being repeated by the protesters who are trying to block the trucks on the Israeli side, i.e. that the food is not going to the children of Gaza, but to Hamas, that the sacks of rice are filled with bullets etc. But reports are that the Israeli police has been more forceful with the protesters recently. Israeli police also turned back a non-authorized convoy by (opposing) Israeli activists apparently attempting to deliver some food to Gaza, outside of the approved channels.
