Israel's hunger math: How famine was created in Gaza

Israel controls the flow of food into Gaza. It calculates how many calories Palestinians need to survive. But even its own data shows that only a fraction of what is needed reaches the territory.

The math behind the Gaza famine is simple: Palestinians can't leave the area, the war has destroyed agriculture, and Israel has banned fishing. So, nearly every calorie people in Gaza consume must come from abroad.

Israel knows how much food the region needs. For years, it has been restricting aid to ensure that "they don't die, but they feel pressured," by making hunger measurable. In 2006, an advisor to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert summarized this policy with the words, "We will put the Palestinians on a diet, but we will not starve them to death." Documents of these statements were made public by court order in 2008.

At the time, COGAT, the Israeli military agency that still controls aid flows, calculated that every person living in Gaza needed at least 2,279 calories a day. Providing this amount required 1,836 kilograms of food per person per day.

Today, humanitarian organizations are requesting a total of 62,000 tonnes of dry and canned food for 2.1 million people per month, or approximately 1 kilogram per person per day.

Here are the total number of deaths recorded as a direct result of malnutrition in Gaza:

As the Gaza famine deepened over the summer, Israel denied the famine, claimed without evidence that Hamas was stealing aid, or blamed the United Nations (UN) for its inadequate distribution process. Images of food parcels distributed through the Israeli-backed, US-based Gaza Humanitarian Relief Foundation (GHF) were presented as evidence that Palestinians were "receiving aid." Palestinians were also killed trying to receive the food.

But Israel's own official data shows that famine is systematically engineered. Only 56,000 tons of food entered Gaza between March and June 2025. This was less than a quarter of the territory's minimum needs at the time. Even if aid were distributed equitably, the sheer scale of the shortage would persist, leaving hunger unabated.

The United Nations' Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report released this week stated that the worst-case scenario is playing out in Gaza. The report found that food shipments are falling far short of needs.

The UN-backed Independent Famine Assessment Committee said aid shipments were “grossly inadequate.” It specifically assessed the GHF’s distribution plan:

“Analysis of the food parcels distributed by GHF shows that this plan would lead to mass starvation, even if this distribution plan were operational without the high levels of violence reported.”

In March and April, Israel completely cut off food supplies to Gaza. In mid-May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under international pressure, announced the resumption of aid due to the "hunger crisis." However, the amount of food sent to the region in the two months following this promise has only slowed the famine, not stopped it.

A few weeks of aid provided during a temporary ceasefire in January and February briefly brought Gaza back from the brink of famine. However, aid began trickling in again in May. The events of late July sparked a new wave of international outrage, including demands from US President Donald Trump to provide "every ounce of food" to starving children.

Netanyahu, however, has pledged a “minimum” level of additional aid. While the number of aid trucks has increased, the amount still doesn’t meet even minimal nutritional needs, let alone reverse hunger in Gaza.

Here is the amount of food aid entering Gaza monthly in 2025 (tonnes):

Airstrikes, which had been ongoing intermittently throughout the war, have resumed. France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates are among the countries supporting these operations. However, this method is expensive, inefficient, and leads to Palestinian deaths.

At least 12 Palestinians drowned while trying to retrieve aid that had fallen into the sea, and at least five Palestinians were killed when aid pallets fell on them. According to Israeli data, in the first 21 months of the war, 104 flights delivered the equivalent of just four days' worth of food to Gaza, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. Much more food could have been delivered if the same budget had been used for trucks.

But the cost of these flights is not just financial; this method allows Israel and its allies to present the famine as a logistical disaster, when in fact it is a crisis created by state policy.

Yet the sole reason aid cannot be delivered by road to Gaza is the restrictions imposed by Israel, an ally of countries like the UK and the US that provide arms, making famine a direct state policy.

This week, two Israeli human rights organizations said Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, citing evidence including the use of starvation as a weapon. B'tselem, the Israeli-based human rights organization, said mass starvation was "an official and openly declared policy."

Source: The Guardian