Hunger, Displacement, and Occupation in Gaza

Once again, Israel’s Prime Minister has declared that the war in Gaza will be escalated. This time, against an even darker backdrop. What many have long feared is now being expressed as official policy: the occupation will become permanent.

Outside Gaza, aid convoys are lined up. Food. Water. Medicine. The trucks are not allowed into Gaza because Israel is using humanitarian aid as a political tool to force Hamas into submission. But the Palestinian civilian population are the ones suffering.

As with most famines, it is not a lack of food that causes hunger. Politics causes hunger.

The road leading to this point was built with 19 months of warfare, during which no one put a stop to Israel’s policy.

From ceasefire to Riviera

On 19 January 2025, the day before Donald J. Trump was due to take office as President of the United States, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect. As a result, large amounts of humanitarian aid were finally allowed into Gaza. Although it was the Biden administration, together with Egypt and Qatar, that had negotiated the terms of the agreement, the Trump team was clearly involved in the final stages of the talks. Trump thus received much of the credit for bringing the ceasefire deal across the finish line.

Many observers, myself included, were surprised that Trump had managed to get Israel to agree to a ceasefire that appeared to go against much of what Israel had previously demanded. Could the Trump administration actually be better for the Palestinians than Biden’s had been? Sadly, the bar was not set high.

Fast forward to 4 February 2025. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House, and at the press conference, President Trump unveiled his infamous "Riviera Plan". The plan was grotesque. The Palestinians were to be displaced, and Gaza was to be developed – by the Americans – into luxury properties along the Mediterranean coast.

The plan was also utterly unrealistic. Trump had pledged to reduce America’s international footprint. The era of American “forever wars” was meant to be over. Such a plan would be impossible to implement without tying down significant American forces in a long-term and extremely unpopular engagement in Palestine. The problem, though, was that the declaration gave a green light to Israel’s far-right. It revived an old Israeli dream of turning Gaza into Israel’s Hawaii.

When the President of the United States had spoken so clearly in favour of mass displacement of Palestinians, what could possibly restrain an Israeli government made up of Likud and even more ideologically hardline Greater Israel parties?

Hunger as weapon

Against this backdrop, and under pressure from his religious-nationalist right-wing coalition partners, Prime Minister Netanyahu changed the entire premise of the ceasefire. Negotiations on phases two and three (ending the conflict and reconstruction), which had been part of the agreement Trump helped finalize, were taken off the table. Only phase one was to be extended. Hamas would not agree to this. On 2 March 2025, Israel therefore closed the borders into Gaza. The population of Gaza was to be starved as a tool of forcing Hamas to accept a ceasefire on Israel’s terms.

Since then, nothing has been allowed in.

In the background, Israel has been waging a “shadow war” against UNRWA – the UN agency that has overseen much of the international humanitarian activity in Gaza. Israel’s active attempts to undermine UNRWA over the past few years have weakened the international community’s ability to respond efficiently to the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. But even without this, it was just a matter of time before the emergency aid stockpiles built up during the ceasefire would run out. And the needs in Gaza were enormous.

On 25 April 2025, that nightmare scenario became reality. The World Food Programme declared that its food stores were empty. It is difficult to convey what this means. Images of malnourished children are heart-breaking. It is easier to view this through desensitized statistics, but behind every number lies a personal tragedy. By mid May 470,000 people – more than one fifth of Gaza’s population – were facing level 5: “catastrophic” food insecurity.

When food insecurity reaches this level, food production is destroyed, and access to aid is non-existent,  these numbers only go in one direction: up. People in category 3 slip into category 4. People in category 4 slip into category 5. And people in category 5 are at risk of starving to death.

Occupation and forced displacement

In this context – with Gaza’s population exhausted and starving – Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that Israel would launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza and displace the population to the south. This time, he emphasized, the IDF would not withdraw after winning the military battles. In Gaza, ethnic cleansing has become a routine part of Israel’s playbook. This time, everything indicates that the Palestinian population will not be allowed to return afterwards.

This is exactly the kind of situation that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle was created to prevent. That concept is now dead, and even if it was not, it would be politically impossible to reach agreement on an R2P operation against Israel in the current global climate. Instead, the international community stands by helplessly. Food convoys waiting at Gaza’s borders are not allowed through to the starving population. There seems to be no credible ceasefire negotiations. Hoping the UN Security Council will unite around a ceasefire resolution is naive.

Donald J. Trump is now on a Middle East tour. The Middle Eastern leaders should have worked hard to convince him to pressure Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and to end the war – ideally based on the very ceasefire agreement that Trump himself helped secure in January. Unfortunately it seems that Gaza was hardly on the agenda.

It is now of vital importance that  the international community must come together and demand that Israel ends its blockade of Gaza.

• Jørgen Jensehaugen is a Research Professor at PRIO
• This text is an updated version of an op ed published in Norwegian by Panorama Nyheter 9 May 2025