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“A Purely Manmade Famine”: How Israel Is Starving Gaza

2 7
08.08.2025

As the Israeli government weighs, once again, expanding its genocidal military campaign in Gaza, the enclave is sliding into a full-scale famine.

“We’re seeing a purely manmade famine,” says Bob Kitchen, vice president of emergencies at the International Rescue Committee. “The Gaza Strip is surrounded by very fertile farming territory. All of the countries around Gaza have more than enough food.”

This week on the Intercept Briefing, Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez speaks with Kitchen about what U.N.-backed hunger experts have called a “worst-case scenario.” Kitchen lays out how Israel’s ongoing war, combined with severe restrictions on humanitarian aid and commercial access, has created near-impossible conditions for food and medical supplies to enter Gaza — accelerating a crisis that could soon be irreversible.

“The only thing that’s changed is the war, the restrictions on humanitarian aid, the restrictions on the market economy where commercial traffic can’t get in,” says Kitchen. “That’s the only thing that is driving the hunger right now.”

Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Transcript

Jonah Valdez: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Jonah Valdez.

Since Israel began choking off aid to Gaza nearly six months ago, U.N.-backed hunger experts issued their gravest warning yet: that a worst-case famine scenario was unfolding.

There are three criteria that must be met for a famine to be officially declared: widespread extreme food shortages, high levels of acute malnutrition, and the extent of malnutrition related-mortality. The first two are evident — the third is hard to confirm.

But Palestinians in Gaza did not need this confirmation. At least 18,000 children have been hospitalized for acute malnutrition since the beginning of this year. Though officials say the vast majority of malnourished children can’t reach medical care.

At least 175 people — 92 children and 82 adults — have died of hunger in Gaza in recent weeks, according to Gaza health officials. And over 1500 people have been killed in the last few months while trying to access food — many near distribution sites that were supposed to provide safety.

This is a crisis created by Israel’s policy — one that aid organizations say could be solved. To help us understand what’s happening on the ground and what it would take to address this crisis, we’re joined by Bob Kitchen from the International Rescue Committee. He is the vice president of global emergency and humanitarian actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Bob, thanks for joining us.

Bob Kitchen: Thanks for having me.

Jonah Valdez: So we’re speaking on Wednesday, August 6th, and you’ve worked in humanitarian crises around the world for over two decades. How does what you’re seeing in Gaza compare to other famines you’ve witnessed and what makes this situation unique?

Bob Kitchen: Well, I was just gonna say unprecedented, “unique” is a good term. When we see famines normally, it’s normally as a result of the intersection of conflict and then some form of natural disaster, natural hazard where the man-made conflict turbocharges the effects of climate — where whether it’s a drought, where food has failed, the crop has failed, where farmers can’t get to market because of insecurity.

What we’re seeing now is not that. We’re seeing a purely manmade famine where Gaza, the Gaza Strip, is surrounded by very fertile farming territory. All of the countries around Gaza have more than enough food.

So the only thing that’s changed is the war, the restrictions on humanitarian aid, the restrictions on the market economy where commercial traffic can’t get in. That’s the only thing that is driving the hunger right now.

JV: And I want to ask you more about those conditions specifically. But first, could you tell us more about the work IRC is doing on the ground to help alleviate hunger and malnutrition?

BK: People very rarely die of just hunger. As people get more and more hungry, their system becomes more and more prone to communicable diseases. People normally die of dehydration as a result of dirty water. So our primary focus is on distributing clean water, helping with the sanitation system — so installing and maintaining latrines, cleaning up solid waste and sewers.

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And then as a secondary priority that is urgent in and of itself, we’re looking at nutritional screenings. So we’re doing massive screening campaigns to identify particularly children who are themselves slipping into acute malnutrition, and then either helping them or referring them into inpatient care so they can try and stabilize and recover.

JV: And as you alluded to, aid organizations, as you know, have been clear that this isn’t a supply problem and there’s enough food and medical supplies available elsewhere, but the crisis stems from the conditions that the Israeli government has created that prevent aid from reaching people who need it.

Can you walk us through the specific logistical barriers your team is facing?

BK: It starts with the fact that there’s tens of thousands of tons of food waiting to go into Gaza — prepositioned in Jordan, in Egypt, all around, ready to go in. But before any aid is allowed into Gaza, we all have to ask for permission with the government of Israel.

It’s a long, bureaucratic process. And at the moment, a lot of aid is turned down. It’s rejected. It’s not allowed in. So for us, for example, we have multiple trucks of what’s called RUTF, reinforced therapeutic feeding supplies, that we use to help particularly children, as I said, stabilize and begin the process of recovery from acute malnutrition.

We have trucks full of it. We have pharmaceutical supplies ready to go, and we’ve been asking for permission for almost six months to bring these trucks across the border from Jordan and in through Israel, into the Gaza Strip. It would help thousands of people, particularly children, and we have not been given that permission, so they’re just sitting waiting.

And that is our situation, but it’s mirrored across the tens, hundreds of U.N. agencies and international and local organizations that are trying to provide assistance to the 2 million civilians on the ground who have run out of food.

JV: And I want to zoom in a little bit on what you said about these trucks just sitting there and you’ve been asking for permission for six months, you said.

It’s worth mentioning the Israeli government, its defenders, and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have all propagated this line that aid restrictions are necessary to prevent Hamas from stealing aid and they have to do this for security purposes and that the United Nations is refusing to actually distribute the aid, there’s no blockage — despite ever providing evidence to back any of these........

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