Israeli study finds starvation in Gaza was result of deliberate policy
Scholar Shmuel Lederman says policies point to a systematic 'architecture of starvation’ amid public and political denial
A recent Israeli study has concluded that starvation in Gaza resulted from a premeditated policy, despite sustained public denial by the Israeli government and much of the media.
Titled Data for Denial: The Smokescreen Behind the Starvation of Gaza, the study was published last month by the Forum for Regional Thinking at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.
Its author, Shmuel Lederman, an Israeli scholar specialising in genocide studies, told Middle East Eye that he was motivated by what he described as widespread denial within Israel over starvation in Gaza during the two-year genocide that began in October 2023.
He said such denial among the public was to be expected, drawing comparisons with historical cases of mass violence.
"There is a thirst for denial," Lederman said, with many in Israel seeking to portray the army’s conduct in Gaza and elsewhere as entirely justified or unproblematic.
A report by the Israeli news site Walla in August 2025 similarly suggested that denial or minimisation of the starvation crisis in Gaza was widespread across mainstream television channels.
According to the study, international warnings were frequently dismissed or reframed to align with official Israeli narratives. Some commentators acknowledged starvation only in mid-2025, attributing it to isolated miscalculations rather than to broader policy decisions.
Lederman’s research argues that such interpretations overlook a central principle in famine studies: that starvation is determined not simply by food availability, but by people’s access to it.
The study documents how restrictions on aid, fuel and cooking gas, alongside the destruction of key infrastructure such as bakeries and disruption to humanitarian operations, severely limited Palestinians’ access to food.
It concludes that the starvation in Gaza resulted from “deliberate planning, experimentation, and manoeuvring around the humanitarian ‘red line’”, aimed in part at managing international pressure on Israel during the war.
The number of trucks
According to Lederman’s report, throughout the war in Gaza the number of trucks carrying food, medicine and other humanitarian aid into the enclave became a central point of public debate on starvation.
Cogat, the Israeli military unit responsible for civil administration in the occupied Palestinian territories, claimed in August 2025 that the entry of 80 aid trucks per day would be sufficient to meet Gaza’s population needs. Israeli researchers and journalists frequently echoed this assessment.
Human rights organisations, UN agencies, and even the US administration of President Joe Biden disagreed with Cogat’s figures. The Biden administration estimated that around 250 aid trucks per day would be required, while international organisations placed the figure at roughly 500 to 600.
Both recently and in the past, Cogat itself has cited significantly higher estimates. In 2008, for example, it stated that Gaza’s then-population of around 1.5 million required approximately 178 aid trucks per day to meet basic needs.
Last month, Israel Hayom reported that Cogat had urged the government to reduce the number of aid trucks entering Gaza after the October 2025 ceasefire, down to 250, arguing that this level was sufficient for basic humanitarian requirements.
“In practice, this is an admission of starvation,” Lederman told MEE in response to Cogat’s recent statements, which were issued after his report was published.
Lederman’s report argues that the starvation of Gaza began at the outset of the war in October 2023. Until March 2024, Israel permitted only a fraction of the recommended number of aid trucks into the Strip, contributing to a deepening food crisis.
UN agencies, human rights groups and Palestinian testimonies all pointed to severe shortages of food, with women and children disproportionately affected.
In May 2024, following US pressure after the Israeli assault on Rafah, Israel allowed a greater number of commercial trucks into Gaza, while simultaneously restricting humanitarian convoys.
Last month, Walla reported that 11 Israeli supermarket chains generated hundreds of millions of shekels in revenue after winning an exclusive tender to supply food and aid to Gaza.
Lederman told MEE that the privatisation of aid delivery contributed to “the creation of a monopoly that makes it possible to generate large profits”.
He added that this “worsened the humanitarian situation in Gaza”, enabling a small number of actors to profit “often in cooperation with Israel, while the vast majority of the population suffers”.
Starvation as a tactic of war
While a brief easing of the crisis followed US pressure, Israel reverted in October 2024 to restricting aid shipments to minimal levels. A few months later, in March 2025, it imposed a complete blockade on the entry of food and humanitarian assistance, pushing Gaza into extreme conditions of starvation.
By August, famine was officially declared in Gaza City by the Integrated Food Phase Classification (IPC), the UN-backed global hunger monitor.
'Severe food deprivation in Gaza... was not a "mistake". It was part of the plan'
– Shmuel Lederman, genocide scholar
According to the report, while publicly disputing international assessments of Gaza’s needs, Cogat internally warned the Israeli government during 2025 that the Strip was on the brink of a famine crisis.
However, Lederman’s study argues that the Israeli government pursued a clear strategic objective. It claims that starvation tactics were used to pressure Palestinians to move southwards, and ultimately towards third countries, in line with a “voluntary emigration” plan that has been echoed by both the Israeli government and US President Donald Trump.
The establishment of the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is cited in the report as evidence of this approach.
“Severe food deprivation in Gaza that would compel Gazans to travel to aid distribution centres was not a ‘mistake’,” the report states, “it was part of the plan.”
'The architecture of starvation'
The Gaza Strip, Lederman’s report argues, was used by Israel as a kind of laboratory, with implications that extend far beyond the territory itself.
“Over the past two and a half years, Gaza has served to a large extent as a testing laboratory not only for methods of warfare, but also for the architecture of starvation and the management of a population through deprivation,” the report states.
According to the study, Israelis, Palestinians and the international community will continue to grapple for years with the implications of Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza, particularly in relation to international law and the global order.
While the use of starvation as a weapon of war has appeared in other conflicts in recent years, the report argues that “few, if any, other cases have so profoundly undermined this norm as Israel’s systematic, meticulously managed, and openly visible starvation of Gaza”.
Throughout the report, Lederman emphasises the role of the United States under both the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as other western governments, in enabling Israel’s conduct, arguing that they share responsibility for sustaining the policy.
“All of this will not remain confined to Gaza,” Lederman told MEE, warning that Israel’s actions “will spread to other places around the world”, as other states or actors may adopt similar methods of warfare.
He added that those who do so may be “shielded from criticism because of accusations of hypocrisy”.
“What Israel did in Gaza will not stay there, it already has not remained there,” Lederman said.
“Therefore, this is not only a struggle against what Israel did to the Palestinians in Gaza, but a global struggle against these kinds of actions.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-study-finds-starvation-gaza-was-result-deliberate-policy?fbclid=IwY2xjawSNdDZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEea1W00Z0KcaLBwFVBaOEZQ5rCqZgyS_sdfY6je9oWNPdyHzx3sMTPH-I_E9E_aem_e6H1kqzFzVE2LURM7EXzjA
posted by Satish Sharma at
02:38
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