| Last week, the Israeli army announced its plan to “deal with the issue of hunger” in Gaza. The plan was so evil and dystopic, I have not been able to sleep thinking about its implications. I have been haunted by it every night. Basically, the Israeli army announced that it is reversing its position on not allowing any food and water into Gaza. Instead, they are proposing a new plan to avoid being accused of starving the population and facing possible international legal responsibility. Under this plan, the distribution of food will be radically altered to ensure it does not fall into the hands of Hamas. Instead, Israel will be the sole determiner of how food, once it is allowed into Gaza, gets distributed and who will get it. In the past, Israel tried to control the overall amount of food allowed into Gaza and to calculate the number of calories needed to keep 2 million people “on a tight diet.” Now the distribution network itself is targeted so that Israel can fully control all food. Each family will have a designated member, pre-approved by Israel, who alone will be allowed to come to a special distribution center in the South of Gaza where security firms will give that family member a box of food carefully measured to meet their family’s needs for a few days only. That way, the army will ensure that no food gets stored, accumulated, or makes its way to the mouths of anyone not approved by Israel. The Israeli army will guard the perimeter of the Distribution Center but will not carry out the actual distribution. The actual distribution will be done either by international organizations, or by American or Arab private security firms acting under Israel’s command—not the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA, or any other organization not previously approved and vetted by Israel. The food will not be distributed collectively or served to the masses, but only carefully distributed in boxes to screened individuals from each family who will be allowed into the distribution hub and who can then make the perilous journey back to the rest of the family to feed them and then return again for a new supply designed to only last a few more days. The justification is that in this way the food will not end up in the hands of Hamas. No mention was made of water or medicine in the plan. The article did mention that Arab sources, who were informed about the Plan, expressed skepticism about the possibility of implementing it. Since then, other details have been released. International organizations have publicly slammed the Plan, stating that it weaponizes hunger and would place any organisation who cooperates in the position of serving Israel’s political interests instead of addressing humanitarian needs. As Israel has already admitted it cannot eliminate Hamas, this plan will be in place for the indefinite future. The horror of this dystopian plan has not left my mind since I first heard of it. I am quite familiar with the cynical use of the permit regime Israel already operates in the West Bank to recruit collaborators, subjugate the population, and make average Palestinians totally dependent on Israel and its security agencies for the most basic of human needs, like travel, work, health care, education and the like. Never before, however, has the system been used to control and manage on such a micro level the amount of food used by the population, not only collectively, but individually. The only way such a plan can be even imagined is if you deprive Palestinians of their humanity, treating them as “human animals” whose behaviour can be controlled like Pavlovian dogs in a laboratory. Those who devised this plan and are selling it to the US administration have already decided they do not want peace or coexistence with the Palestinians, but want to dominate or annihilate them. As one Israeli minister put it: they will have the choice of either accepting our supremacy, leaving the country never to return, or die. These are the only choices they have. A recent article stated that the plan is being actively advanced, and satellite pictures show that Israel is already preparing an area in the South of Gaza to act as the food hub for this plan. Other reports indicate that the Trump administration has already been enlisted in implementing the plan, which will soon be announced by Trump as a major humanitarian solution to the hunger problem in Gaza. The only question remaining to be answered is this: “Will the US and the rest of the world allow this to happen?” Already, international development agencies have publicly slammed the plan saying they would not cooperate with it in any way, but Israel is planning to “privatize” the whole enterprise by bringing in US security agencies to implement it. For each of us, the question remains, a question we need to answer: “Will we allow this to happen?” |
