Strategically Starving Gaza
JVL Introduction
This article by Leila Sansour was written just before the 4* sites for food aid distribution were opened by the so called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and over 60 people were shot trying to get to the food. Here Leila Sansour asks and examines why Israel persisted with creating these famine conditions, given that it has made even its strongest allies recoil and further damaged its tarnished reputation; she also addresses why it matters for all of us.
Sansour argues that “This was no blunder. The determination with which the policy was pursued reveals not miscalculation, but intent. It suggests a leadership willing to gamble global outrage for what it sees as a strategic endgame. Israel may have weighed its options and decided that reputations can be rehabilitated, but territorial facts on the ground last forever.”
One consequence is the breaking down of the famed communality of the Palestinian people as people are made so desperate for food for themselves and their own families. In the desperation, solutions that suit Israel’s political agenda can seem attractive. Palestinian civil, social and political structures are also being destroyed. But this must not happen: “for the oppressed, victory is generational; it lies in the quiet miracle of endurance as a society—with bonds, identity, dignity, and purpose.”
* there were previously 400 sites.
This article was originally published by Security Context on Sat 31 May 2025. Read the original here.
Starvation and the Final Test of Impunity: Why Israel Is Willing to Pay the Price in Gaza
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Hello and thank you Leila. The policy of politici-de coukd also be called one of destroying part of rhe fabric of human relationships. We are a species who need one another and when that need is not met then we die. I don’t understand why Palestine is being made to pay this price and for whom. Is it for the occupier? Is Israel so guilty about its actions that it wants to obliterate its victims? Reading about the Nazis and their genocide which was before the words for Genocide have been refined to their present legal standard the diest rationale for killing the Jews was to make room for a pure race and to eliminate a stain and an infection in the body politic (according to the twisted mind of the antisemite). Then when the war was being lost for world domination the killings continued but now out of pure hatred with no logical purpose. The Jew represented a symbol for blame and pure vengeance. Gaza is now in ruins but even that fact is not so obvious to Israeli citizens. Engaging with a Palestinian friend in Haifa he told me that things were now comparatively normal. He still spoke about the 2 state solution as a viable prospect. So I wondered whether the mind games of Israel to hide the extent of its devastation is also a doubling down as if you are not going to repent and there is no political reason anyone has given to them to do so then you are going to continue to the bitter end. The bitter end though in Gaza is not going to be a starved and dead population. They don’t need to do that. They have in a sense already achieved the end when the nations of rhe world do not withdraw their support. So the end in sight is as you say a subjugated and pliant population, unable to resist oin Gaza and afraid or willing to compromise with the state (I am talking about Palestinians in Israel) in return for their freedoms.
A Gazan boy tells me that a kilo of meat costs 150 dollars and lemons cost 200 dollars for a kilo and are hard to get.
Martin