Netanyahu denies Palestinians are starving

Paul Ronzheimer is the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO.

TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied people are starving in Gaza, and blamed Hamas for the lack of humanitarian aid entering the occupied territory.

Hunger and malnutrition are widespread in the Gaza strip. The United Nations warns that famine is imminent, with the organization’s expert on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, accusing Israel of starving Gazans deliberately. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s has said people in Gaza are closer to dying than to living.

Responding to these claims, Netanyahu said: “We don’t have that kind of information. That’s not the information we have. And we monitor it closely.”

“More importantly, it’s not our policy. “Our policies are to put in as much humanitarian aid as we could,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company.

The U.N. has determined that one in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza are suffering acute malnutrition and emaciation. The World Health Organization has also said children are starving to death in northern Gaza.

Multiple human rights groups have criticized Israel for not allowing enough food into Gaza since the Oct. 7 massacre and kidnappings perpetrated by the Hamas militant group. Following the attack, Israel began a military operation with the aim of destroying Hamas.

Netanyahu says that eradicating Hamas remains Israel’s priority. The group has deep roots in Gaza, meaning some food and medical aid given to civilians inevitably ends up with the fighters Israel is trying to eradicate.

“When we started out putting in the humanitarian convoys, we said there will be one problem. And that is what if Hamas tries to steal the food and the drugs that we’re bringing for the civilian population, for its own terrorist forces?”

“I think the White House said on October 19 if that happens then the international community will have to stop the aid. It’s happened. In bundles. But nobody has asked to stop the aid, and we haven’t stopped it.”

The U.N. says practically all of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants rely on aid to survive, and that hunger has reached catastrophic levels. It also notes there was a 50 percent reduction in aid reaching Gaza in February.

The lack of aid entering Gaza by land, as well as a flashpoint incident where over 100 Palestinians died while trying to get aid from a food truck, has led the U.S. and EU to begin dropping food directly to Palestinians by air, and to accelerate efforts to deliver aid by sea.

Netanyahu said he had suggested a maritime route for aid from Cyprus in a conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden two weeks after the war began, countering assertions Israel has resisted sea-borne aid.

Asked why more aid isn’t reaching Gaza by land, Netanyahu said: “Hamas is coming at gunpoint and stealing the food.

“Humanitarian deaths and starvation is, for us, it’s a tragedy. For them, it’s a strategy. They think that this will help them place more pressure on Israel to stop the war, leave them in place so they can repeat the October 7 massacre.”