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After 78 days of the siege and starvation policy practiced by Israel against the residents of the Gaza Strip, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to introduce humanitarian aid after American pressure and European criticism.
The famine in Gaza has been continuing as a result of Israel closing the crossings in the face of humanitarian aid on the border, since last March.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights stated, in a statement, that more than 65,000 children are threatened with death due to malnutrition and lack of sufficient food.
The World Health Organization has announced that it has enough supplies to treat only 500 children of malnutrition.
According to the United Nations, if new aid does not arrive, about 71,000 children under the age of five are threatened with severe malnutrition during the next 11 months.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 57 children have died due to malnutrition, and since the start of the siege on March 2.
According to a study conducted by the “New Artization”, between 10 to 20% of pregnant and lactating women in Gaza (the number 4,500 women included in the study) suffer from malnutrition.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights explained that the strict Israeli restrictions and the prevention of the introduction of humanitarian aid and fuel led to the stopping of all bakeries and the closure of “takaia” that were providing hundreds of thousands with food, which resulted in the depletion of basic commodities, a significant increase in prices and the extreme difficulty in families obtaining food.
A spokeswoman for the Humanitarian Coordination Office reported that they distributed their remaining food stocks on hot meals a few weeks ago.
She warned that the amount of these daily meals provided by community kitchens has decreased from one million to 249 thousand meals.
“People are terrified, and they tell me every day that they do not know how they will survive,” she added.
The world’s highest unemployment
According to international statistics, about 90% of citizens depend on relief aid, a major source of income and living, in light of unemployment rates that are the highest in the world reaching 83%, and poverty rates that have 90% were amid for years of economic deterioration for years.
According to a report issued at the beginning of the war on Gaza by the United Nations Trade and Development Conference (UNCTAD) for the year 2023, 80% of the Gaza population depends on international aid before the outbreak of the war.
With the escalation of the war in 2024 and 2025, the situation increased significantly, as the United Nations Development Program and the Eskua Committee indicated that 91% of Gaza population faces a sharp lack of food security, which is equivalent to the third stage or the worst of five stages to classify food security.
The Netanyahu office had said that the Prime Minister decided to enter aid to the Gaza Strip based on the army’s recommendation to expand the scope of the military operation.
For its part, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that ministers attended the discussion of the introduction of humanitarian aid to Gaza, believed that the decision came as a result of American pressure.
The Israeli decision to introduce aid comes hours after Stephen Wittouf described the American Special President’s envoy to the Middle East conditions on the ground in Gaza as very dangerous.
European Council President Antonio Costa expressed his shock from the daily news received from Gaza, and the American Senator Chris van Holin considered that the United States is involved in the blatant violation of international law in the besieged sector, amid many European criticisms of the Israeli genocide war.
