War on Resilience: Starvation in Gaza and the Draining of Dignity

A woman in her fifties spoke to me one day, her tongue still tinged with old pain, about a childhood memory that had haunted her. During the siege of Tel al-Zaatar camp in 1976, when hunger became a daily norm, her older brother stole a loaf of bread and hid it under his mattress, thinking it would secure his life for another day. But the loaf rotted before he could be eaten, and when the father discovered what had happened, he found no mercy in his heart and severely beat his son. The cruelty toward the son reflected the cruelty of the siege itself, where bread became a prize and the struggle for a living became a test of family ties.

Tel al-Zaatar was one chapter in a long history of starvation being used as a weapon against Palestinians. The siege that claimed thousands of lives there was no exception in the history of warfare; starvation is an old and recurring tool, from the Siege of Leningrad in World War II to Darfur, Yemen, Syria, and Ethiopia's Tigray region. Today, this story is being rewritten in a more brutal way in Gaza, where the food blockade has become a systematic tool that targets not only the body but the entire psychological and social fabric.

In 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli occupation leaders, accusing them of using starvation as a weapon of war, a crime legal experts describe as "community torture"—slow-burn violence that seeps deep into groups, sapping their resilience and then seeking to break it. Legal scholar Tom Dannenbaum argues that starvation "shreds a person's ability to prioritize morality, pitting the instinct for survival against the bonds of love and friendship, gradually emptying victims of their meaning and values."

"Sumud" has long been a moral slogan and a source of pride for Palestinians, but under the current blockade, it has become a heavy psychological burden. What recent literature describes as "resilience fatigue" encapsulates this tragedy: not individual exhaustion, but a long-term collective drain on resilience. Motivation declines, emotional dullness increases, and feelings of guilt and burnout become daily companions, even for children and adolescents. More than 85% of Gaza's population has been forcibly displaced to overcrowded camps lacking clean water and privacy, where survival itself has become an imposed duty, and steadfastness has transformed from a value into a new moral imperative.

Over time, the blockade seeps into the collective psyche in the form of a chronic siege mentality: a constant sense of danger, a lack of trust in the outside world, and a binary worldview divided into "us" and "them." Psychological literature describes this condition as "permanent psychological defense," where communities lose the ability to plan for the future or build trust. In Gaza, where the blockade has extended for decades and wars recur without accountability, generations are being born who see the world only through the lens of fear and disappointment, forming a collective identity besieged from within, unable to rebuild its relationship with the world.

Starvation not only threatens biological life, but also reshapes collective memory and human relationships. In Ethiopia's Tigray, 87% of families have resorted to skipping meals and starving adults in favor of their children, sometimes going days without food. These practices leave deep psychological scars and reshape family bonds. In Gaza today, parents are forced to divide up small meals and send their children to crowded takiyas for meals, while children are taught that survival requires compromising values and social cohesion.

History teaches us that the effects of starvation do not end with the end of wars. The Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961), which killed tens of millions, left psychological scars that extended for generations. Studies half a century later have shown that survivors suffer significantly higher rates of depression, and that its effects are transmitted through parenting patterns and biological stress responses, becoming a collective legacy passed down from generation to generation. Gaza today stands on the cusp of a similar legacy of psychological distress spanning decades.

To confront this complex violence, urgent food shipments are not enough. Comprehensive responses are needed that rebuild the health system, including mental health services, and create safe spaces for individuals to recover, free from the moral blackmail of resilience. Starvation is a weapon that reshapes memory, identity, and relationships, and human success in confronting it is measured by people's ability to preserve their dignity, meaning, and memory in the face of a declared war on their resilience.