"Generational Consequences: The Lasting Impact of Starvation in Gaza"

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Israel has declared it will allow humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza. However, experts in aid and healthcare express concerns that this effort may not suffice to mitigate the widespread hunger and its enduring impacts within the region. Although Israel refutes allegations of starvation in Gaza, organizations such as the World Health Organization and numerous aid groups have issued warnings about the severe repercussions of widespread hunger in the besieged area.

Why Gaza’s children are more likely to die of starvation

Experts say the ramifications could be felt for generations to come.

In March, Israel halted all supplies to Gaza, resuming limited shipments in May but at a significantly reduced capacity compared to pre-blockade levels. The Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network criticized this as “a drop in the ocean” relative to the needs of the Gaza population.

Young children have higher needs for nutrition than adults and fewer fat and muscle reserves to rely on when they go hungry.

“They’re more likely to die, especially from common infections like diarrhoea and pneumonia because starvation already weakens their really fragile immune system,” Siversten said.

The long-term consequences of malnutrition are also far more profound for young children than adults.

For the first thousand days of a baby’s life, its brain is developing rapidly and prolonged malnutrition can have catastrophic consequences on this process, including permanent brain damage.

“Malnutrition during this crucial window under two years old children really increases the risk of life-long disability,” Siversten said.

Metabolic and immune responses to starvation in childhood also lead to higher risks of developing chronic diseases later in life, including mental health issues such as schizophrenia.

While intensive medical care can help children recover from severe malnutrition, Silversten noted that the widespread destruction of hospital infrastructure in Gaza means its medical system cannot support children’s recoveries from these acute states.

Siversten is also concerned about how the damaging effects of this starvation will manifest in future generations of Gazans as it can affect how “genes are switched on and off”.

Dr. Nina Siversten, an associate professor specializing in nursing and family health at Flinders University, informed SBS News that children in Gaza face the greatest risk from starvation’s effects. “This is referred to as epigenetic inheritance — where, even if the children themselves receive adequate nutrition, they might still inherit health risks due to their parents’ experiences,” she explained.

The effects of malnutrition can be passed down through families, as was seen in children whose parents experienced the Dutch famine during World War Two known as the Hunger Winter.

“We could follow them on and that generation, we could see that they had higher rates of disease as adults — and their children too showed signs of health problems that linked to that original period of starvation,” Silversten said.

“We’re not just talking about a lost childhood, we’re talking about damage that can echo across two or maybe even three generations.”

A boy carrying white sack across his shoulder

The Israeli military announced a temporary halt in some operations within the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid convoys safe passage. Source: AAP / Mohammed Saber/EPA

Aid organisations resume deliveries

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied the reports of widespread starvation in Gaza, calling it a “bald-faced lie” and saying there is no policy of starvation or starvation in the enclave.

But under global pressure from world leaders, the Israeli military said humanitarian corridors will be in place from 6am to 11pm local time to allow the United Nations (UN) and aid organisations to deliver food and medicine to the population in Gaza.

Tom Fletcher from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) welcomed the announcement by the Israeli military.

“In contact with our teams on the ground who will do all we can to reach as many starving people as we can in this window,” he wrote on X.

UNICEF posted to X that the aid flow is an “opportunity to begin to reverse this catastrophe and save lives”.

“The entire population of over two million people in Gaza is severely food insecure. One out of every three people has not eaten for days, and 80 per cent of all reported deaths by starvation are children,” it wrote.

Last week, more than 100 humanitarian aid organisations, including Medicins Sans Frontières (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, signed a joint statement sounding the alarm about mass starvation in Gaza.

Recently, Gaza health officials revealed that malnutrition has been claiming Palestinian lives at an unprecedented rate during the ongoing 21-month conflict, with reports of 15 individuals, including a six-week-old infant, dying from starvation within a single day.

‘We’re caring while we start to starve’

Journalists and doctors have also been documenting their own hunger in Gaza.

Dr Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, MSF’s deputy medical coordinator in Gaza, said in one video posted to the organisation’s Instagram he has been surviving on one meal per day for several months.

Mughaisib described the body’s response when it is deprived of food, including burning its own fat and muscle tissue to survive.

“We are caring for patients dying of hunger while we ourselves are starting to starve,” he said.

“We are expected to save lives while our own are slowly being consumed.”

A group of people carrying bags of flour over their shoulders

To support the flow of humanitarian aid, the Israeli army instituted a ‘tactical pause’ in military activities across certain parts of the Gaza Strip on July 27. Source: EPA / MOHAMMED SABER/EPA

While aid deliveries will go some way to alleviating hunger among the estimated 2.1 million Gazans currently experiencing food insecurity, head of humanitarian at Oxfam Australia, Lucia Goldsmith, told SBS News it is “nowhere near enough” to fully address the problem.

Goldsmith said around 420,000 pallets of aid have accumulated outside Gaza’s borders in the months since Israel imposed its aid blockade.

“To give you an idea, that would cover 101 football fields — so that’s the amount of aid that’s waiting to cross into Gaza. So, a couple hundred trucks is obviously better than nothing but clearly not enough,” she said.

Goldsmith also expressed concern about Israel’s airdrops of aid that started on the weekend, which she said are “inefficient” as well as dangerous.

“What also happens is that those who need the most — that’s children, pregnant women, elderly people, people with disabilities, struggle to access these supplies,” she said.

A ‘man-made’ crisis

Following the joint statement signed by aid organisations, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Gaza is suffering “man-made” mass starvation caused by an Israeli aid blockade.

Netanyahu has also accused Hamas of stealing aid — however a United States government report completed in June found no evidence of systemic theft of US-funded humanitarian supplies and according to one New York Times report, senior Israeli military officials said they have not discovered proof of this claim.

With reporting from the Australian Associated Press and Reuters.