Starvation in Gaza: When Food Becomes a Weapon of Extermination

In a precedent unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the United Nations officially declared a state of famine in the Gaza Strip, marking this moment as one of the darkest and bloodiest pages in modern history. This is not merely an emergency humanitarian disaster, but a direct result of a Zionist political project that transforms hunger and thirst into tools of genocide. This famine is not the result of an overwhelming natural circumstance or a disaster caused by nature; rather, it is the outcome of systematic engineering and strategic planning led by the Israeli entity as part of its old-new project, the "Greater Israel" project, which does not hesitate to crush millions under the stones of its ambitions. The famine today in Gaza is not just a food crisis; it is an organic part of the occupation machine that kills with swords, bullets, and bombs, and kills silently through starvation, deprivation, and disease. This crime adds to a long series of crimes against humanity committed by this entity since its implantation in the body of the region. Systematic starvation is merely the other face of a siege that has lasted for many years on Gaza, where the occupation even determined the caloric intake allowed into the sector, in an inhumane process that turned people's lives into cold equations on the tables of the occupation army leaders. Today, with the UN's announcement of a state of famine, the mask is fully lifted from the occupation project, which has not only been satisfied with killing children under the rubble, forcibly displacing families, or destroying infrastructure entirely, but has gone further to turn a loaf of bread into a luxury, a drop of water into a tool of extortion, and medicine into a distant dream. This UN announcement exposes to the whole world that what is happening in Gaza is not just a war, but explicit genocide, genocide practiced through various methods that begin with bombardment and end with starvation, leaving the Palestinian chased even in his biological right to exist. Nevertheless, international condemnation remains, as usual, a faint voice that does not rise to the magnitude of the crime, while Western powers continue to provide political cover and military and financial support to the occupying entity, in a scene that reflects blatant hypocrisy and double standards that undermine all remaining credibility of human rights and international justice slogans. 

What is happening today in Gaza is inseparable from the displacement project that the occupation seeks to impose by force. Famine is a tool used to push people to leave their land, to abandon their destroyed homes, to flee into the unknown. It is a link in the series of uprooting Palestinians from their roots and completely reoccupying Gaza within an expansionist colonial vision that sees the Palestinian only as an obstacle to be removed. However, history has proven that this people, who were not broken by the Nakba of 1948, nor by the defeat of 1967, nor by invasions or repeated wars, will not be broken by a policy of starvation either. The Palestinian who turns rubble into temporary homes will also turn a piece of dry bread into fuel for steadfastness. Yet, a crime remains a crime, and silence about it is complicity, while turning a blind eye is a betrayal of all human values. 

Algeria, which has always carried the banner of defending the Palestinian cause in international forums, was clear in its recent statement when it strongly condemned these criminal policies and considered them part of a comprehensive genocide war, affirming that what is happening in Gaza is nothing but a literal implementation of the "Greater Israel" project that threatens the entire region. Maintaining the components of the two-state solution has become an existential necessity to save what remains of hope for a just and lasting settlement. However, the truth is that this solution itself is eroding under the weight of daily crimes, unless the international community acts seriously to put an end to the occupation machine and stop the bleeding of blood and hunger in Gaza before the sector turns into an open mass grave. Algeria has clearly stated that it will continue its efforts in the Security Council to support the Palestinian people and push towards ending this unprecedented catastrophe. This position is not new for Algeria, but today it takes on a more urgent dimension, as Gaza stands on the brink of collective annihilation, and because the occupation uses the weapon of hunger with boundless audacity before the eyes of the world. 

The declaration of famine in Gaza is a moment of resounding moral collapse for the international system and for the United Nations itself, which is content with statements and lacks the courage to enforce its decisions, while the occupation continues to commit the most heinous crimes in broad daylight, amidst an official international silence that amounts to complicity. How can the world understand that children in Gaza are dying of thirst and hunger in the twenty-first century while Israeli planes, supported by the US and Europe, continue to bomb hospitals, schools, and food warehouses? How can this be called anything other than described genocide? Famine is not a side effect of war; it is a weapon in itself, a weapon invented by