Middle East conflict | Hunger catastrophe in Gaza – time for sanctions

After more than a year of warnings, the UN-backed Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) panel declared for the first time on Friday that parts of the Gaza Strip are in a state of famine. According to the IPC , the lives of 132,000 children under the age of five are at risk due to malnutrition, with more than half of all children in the Gaza Strip expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of September.

In response, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization, and the International Children's Fund (UNICEF) issued a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell stated: "As we have repeatedly warned, the signs have been unmistakable: children with emaciated bodies, too weak to cry or eat, babies dying of hunger and preventable diseases, parents arriving at hospitals with nothing left to feed their children."

While UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk described the famine as a "direct consequence of the actions of the Israeli government," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the IPC report as a "lie" and claimed—contrary to the assessment of the entire international humanitarian community—that Israel was pursuing a "policy of famine prevention."

The Israeli war regime's attempts to conceal the consequences of its deliberate policy of starvation in Gaza can be seen in online advertisements that have been flooding channels like YouTube with disinformation for weeks. These either vilify the UN as a saboteur and the cause of the food shortage or—in complete contradiction—suggest that there is no food shortage in Gaza at all.

For example, propaganda videos are being broadcast of supposedly busy fast-food restaurants in Gaza: "There is food in Gaza. Any claim to the contrary is a lie." The ads are commissioned by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Civilians pay the price

While the Israeli army and the war cabinet continue to spread the myth of humanitarian warfare and dismiss the civilian casualty figures as Hamas propaganda, research by the Israeli and Palestinian online media +972 Magazine and Local News, as well as the Guardian, shows that by May 2025, approximately 83 percent of the deaths in Gaza were civilians . The figures are based on an internal database of the Israeli intelligence service.

Estimates of the total number of victims range from a conservative 60,000 according to the United Nations to over 80,000 as of January 2025, according to an independent study that also includes hunger, disease, and the deliberate destruction of the health care system. According to research by "nd" author Yossi Bartal, even these estimates are significantly understated .

Against this backdrop, the consequences of the now announced expanded Israeli invasion are easy to imagine: According to the IPC, Gaza City is particularly affected by famine, and according to the Times of Israel, the Israeli Defense Ministry expects the displacement of one million people. The invasion has already begun : bombings and advances by troops are leaving massive destruction in their wake, as Doctors Without Borders stated on Friday. The actual major offensive is scheduled to begin once the mobilization of 60,000 reservists announced last week is complete.

Netanyahu rejected the recent ceasefire proposal from Egypt, Qatar, and the United States. According to Haaretz, he is counting on Hamas rejecting his counter-proposal in order to further escalate the war – contrary to the demands of thousands of protesters in Israel.

The Israeli authorities are also creating facts in the occupied West Bank: Finance Minister Smotrich announced the implementation of the "E1" settlement plan, which has been controversial for years. While observers see this as the end of a contiguous Palestinian state, Germany is living up to its role as Israel's most important trading partner in Europe and second-largest arms supplier – as a political and economic shield.

German co-responsibility

Meanwhile, the German government continues to pretend it is diligently working toward the goal of a two-state solution. Its calls for humanitarian warfare, access for humanitarian aid, and an end to illegal occupation policies are ignored by the reality created by Israel's rulers on the ground.

Germany, as Israel's largest trading partner in Europe, its second-largest supplier of arms, and its diplomatic shield against international, economic, and criminal consequences, bears a significant share of the responsibility for this reality in Gaza and the West Bank. Neither the German airlift to Gaza nor the restriction on arms deliveries announced after rumors of betrayal within the Union have changed this.

How unimpressed Netanyahu was by these steps was demonstrated by the immediate announcement of the major offensive on Gaza and the implementation of further settlement projects . On closer inspection, this is hardly surprising: Little reported in the media, but crucial to the issue, the German government did not stop already approved deliveries, but merely further export licenses for military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip.

Against the two-state solution

The Israeli leadership and the German government know that Israel's army doesn't need German weapons to reduce Gaza to rubble. Israel's real dependence—besides access to German markets—lies in the delivery of custom-built submarines worth millions that serve Israel's nuclear fleet—and supply German shipyards with orders.

Merz famously ruled out economic sanctions, the only effective means of exerting pressure on the Israeli leadership, despite calls from European allies and an EU Commission report that found the terms of the EU Association Agreement with Israel – respect for human rights – had been violated. Together with autocratic partners like Viktor Orbán, Germany is once again firmly siding with Netanyahu, in the name of German economic interests and preserving its identity in the name of state interests. "The price for German absolution is paid by others," as Daniel Marwecki describes Germany's Israel policy.

Regarding sanctions, the highest level of political decision-makers in Germany remains to call for sanctions against institutions and individuals of the "settler movement." This obscures what right-wing extremist ministers and Netanyahu explicitly state: the settlement and annexation of Palestinian territories are state policy and self-perception, serving the goal of making a Palestinian state, whatever form it takes, impossible.

Contrary to the public evocation of the two-state solution, it has long been known behind the scenes of German foreign policy that this rhetorical formula has little to do with the conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories, which have been deliberately fragmented for decades. In June 2023, Christoph Heusgen, a former foreign policy advisor to the Merkel government, made this clear to Der Spiegel magazine: "We are not intellectually prepared to admit that there will be no two-state solution."

Given the clear statements and actions of the Israeli leadership, there is no reason to assume that the current German government could reach a different conclusion. If the German government wants to sanction the "settlers" but fails to recognize that this would ultimately mean sanctioning a policy that considers the settlement of the occupied territories to be at the core of the Greater Israeli land grab and the associated expulsion, then it is feigning to the German public a humanitarian commitment and sense of responsibility where none exists.

Overdue change of course

Political forces in Germany – in the media, politics, and civil society – are now even more strongly called upon to honestly acknowledge the goals and actions of the Israeli leadership in Gaza and the West Bank and to vehemently demand serious action from the German government. After the summer break, negotiations at the EU level will be held on a recommendation submitted by the EU Commission at the end of July to partially exclude Israel from the EU research program "Horizon Europe."

This would be a small step in the right direction, in which Germany, as the EU's most populous country, has considerable influence. It would not offset the shared responsibility that the current and previous German government bears for the genocidal war crimes in Gaza. Given the horror that continues to unfold in Gaza before our eyes, it would be the least we could do and the beginning of a long-overdue change of course. Further steps, such as the suspension of the EU Association Agreement, must follow.