After more than 100 international aid and human rights organizations released a joint statement last week warning of the imminent starvation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Israel has begun to allow a trickle of aid to reach those suffering in Gaza. The decision of the Israeli government to allow the delivery of aid via airdrops is readily accepted by healthcare professionals working desperately to provide lifesaving treatments to thousands of malnourished Palestinians. However, doctors in Gaza and aid organizations monitoring the circumstances warn that the amount of aid needed to meet basic humanitarian needs and prevent mass deaths can only be achieved by a pause in fighting followed by the unobstructed flow of aid into Gaza.

Although warnings of death from malnutrition have become increasingly adamant in recent days as thousands are facing the final stages of starvation, aid organizations have been speaking against Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war since the early months of the conflict.

On December 18, 2023, about six weeks after the Hamas-led attack which left approximately 1,200 people dead and 251 others kidnapped, Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli government of deliberately preventing the delivery of food, fuel, and water while destroying civilian infrastructure. In December 2023, nine out of ten households in Northern Gaza and two out of three households in Southern Gaza reported going at least 24 hours without food (Human Rights Watch).

In November 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner stated, “Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation, and serious injury, using starvation as a method of war and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population.”

On May 12, 2025, Annie Kelly wrote for the Guardian, “Aid agencies operating in the Gaza Strip say they have run out of food and, without immediate access to humanitarian supplies it will be hunger, not bulbs, that will kill people in increasing numbers.” Paola Gaeta, director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, claims that Israel has fundamentally “changed the grammar of the Geneva Convention” by refusing the entrance of aid into Gaza, an obligation that is placed upon occupying forces in humanitarian law.

For the past 21 months, international humanitarian rights organizations have pointed to the gradual starvation of the Palestinian population and urged states to take cohesive action in order to pressure the Israeli government to allow the passage of aid into Gaza. The alarm raised in recent days over the impending deaths of thousands of Palestinians comes after nearly five months of a complete siege beginning on March 2, 2025. As governments struggle to provide excuses for the prolonged display of indiscriminate violence and abandonment of humanitarian law in Gaza, experts have desperately repeated their warnings of the extermination of the Palestinian people for months.

World governments, especially Israel’s allies, must take action to prevent further death. Symbolic actions are not enough: real, substantial international pressure needs to be placed on Israel to end the humanitarian catastrophe that the state has maintained. Gaza needs life-saving aid today, not tomorrow.