Starvation as a Biological Weapon: The Occupation's Strategy Against Gaza

The comprehensive cutting off of food and essential supplies in the Gaza Strip is not separate from its contextual and historical dimension, and its initial signs did not emerge as a reaction to the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation on October 7, 2023, but rather represents a trend adopted by the leaders of the occupation since 2006 after Hamas won the legislative elections.

Documents revealed in 2008 calculated the number of calories for Gazans and specified the number of trucks allowed to enter since that time. At that time, statements were published by Israeli officials referring to what was called "the dietary regimen for Palestinians, without starving them to death, but keeping them in a state of continuous deprivation," as attributed to Dov Weissglass, an advisor in the Prime Minister's office at the time.

Many historical examples abound regarding the use of starvation as a political and military weapon aimed at breaking the will of peoples and paralyzing their ability to endure and resist, just as occurred in the "Holodomor" in Ukraine (1932-1933), where nearly 4 million Ukrainians perished, and as happened during the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1945), where approximately one million people died out of a total of 3 million.

From the womb of these historical examples, one can trace the same motives in the reality of Gaza today, where evidence shows that Israel seeks to place Palestinians within a deadly hunger coercion, hoping to influence their will and political choices, even forcing them to leave their land. Is the occupation attempting to break the will of Palestinians through a biological approach after failing to exert military pressure on them?

Biopolitics forms the framework for understanding how political power exercises control over the biological life of populations, as theorized by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his lectures at the Collège de France (1975-1976), later published under the title "Society Must Be Defended."

Foucault argues that modern power exerts its dominance by managing life itself, through precise control over basic biological processes such as birth, illness, nutrition, and health. Giorgio Agamben took this concept further in his book "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life," where he examined the sovereign endeavor to reduce humans to their mere biological existence, stripped of their human and political rights.

In this way, power decides which individuals are recognized as belonging to the community of political beings and which are classified solely in terms of their biological reality.

Agamben addresses the basis of this distinction using the two terms employed by the Greeks to differentiate between forms of life: zoē, meaning "natural reproductive life" confined to the private sphere, and bios, meaning "a specific form of life," or political life.

In the context of Gaza, this manifests in a more horrific form, where hunger is used not only to strip Palestinians of their political will but also as a tool to control their bodies and disrupt their vital functions, paving the way for controlling their behavior and decisions.

Thus, the basic biological need has transformed into a political weapon targeting collective will.

Studies indicate the brain's need for glucose as a primary energy source, and that a sharp decline in its levels during prolonged food deprivation leads to a comprehensive disruption in executive and cognitive functions, alongside a loss of balance and weakened motivation and drive due to a lack of essential nutrients such as amino acids and vitamins, as confirmed by brain chemistry research.

Research also shows that extreme hunger is associated with a noticeable decline in concentration, memory, and attention, generating cognitive biases that push individuals to make short-term decisions leaning towards immediate gratification based on essential survival needs, driving them into a state akin to immediate obsession, stripped of the ability to plan long-term or focus on moral issues.

The Minnesota starvation experiment (1944-1945), the results of which were published in the book "The Biology of Human Hunger," subjected 36 healthy young volunteers from Europe to partial starvation for six months. The result was a decline in their mental performance, and they became consumed with food obsessions all the time, leaving little room in their minds for other issues.

Many participants in the experiment, conducted during World War II, fell prey to acute apathy, with a clear decline in their ability to think and plan, and their extreme hunger reached a point where their decision-making process became nearly paralyzed.

Moreover, recent studies in neuroscience indicate the effect of hunger on the activity of brain regions responsible for memory and planning. Neuroimaging studies have shown that hunger is associated with changes in blood flow and neural activity in the hippocampus, responsible for memory formation, and the prefrontal cortex, responsible for future planning.

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