This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, Germany, on July 22, 2025. [Halil Sağırkaya – Anadolu Agency]
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “unacceptable,” according to media reports. Anadolu reports.
“One thing is clear to us: The situation there is unacceptable. It must end as quickly as possible. As long as it (this conflict) continues, at least a minimum of aid, medical assistance, and food aid must be guaranteed for the population. And Israel, of course, bears a considerable degree of responsibility for this,” Merz told journalists in the southwestern city of Saarbruecken.
Despite the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, Germany has been one of the EU states to reject sanctions against Israel.
This was one of the reasons why EU governments were unable to agree on a proposal from the European Commission. The Commission proposed temporarily suspending Israel’s participation in the Horizon Europe research funding program.
According to Merz, his government will soon decide on the next steps in the Gaza conflict. He expects a report from Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul once he returns from his visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Saturday.
“We will await this report and make all further decisions,” the chancellor said when asked whether the German government could imagine participating in sanctions against Israel.
The government had already discussed in the Security Cabinet last Monday “how we might proceed together with our European partners,” he added.
Germany’s center-right government is under mounting pressure to adopt a tougher stance on Israel over what international human rights organizations say is a genocide in Gaza.
The Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing over 60,200 Palestinians. The relentless bombardment has devastated the enclave and led to food shortages.
On Monday, Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, citing the systematic destruction of Palestinian society and the deliberate dismantling of the territory’s health care system.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
Palestinians queue to receive hot meals at a charity kitchen in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 22, 2025. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)
“States can and must save lives before there are none left to save.”
A coalition of more than 100 aid organizations issued a dire warning Wednesday about worsening humanitarian conditions on the ground in the Gaza Strip, where starvation continues to spread under the Israeli government’s suffocating blockade.
The groups, including Save the Children and Oxfam, called on the international community to pressure Israel to “open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, U.N.-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a cease-fire now.”
“Just outside Gaza, in warehouses—and even within Gaza itself—tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organizations blocked from accessing or delivering them,” the groups said in a joint statement. “The government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.”
The aid groups said their colleagues in Gaza are among those impacted. “With supplies now totally depleted,” they said, “humanitarian organizations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.”
The statement was released amid harrowing evidence that the manufactured hunger emergency in Gaza is rapidly intensifying, with at least 21 Palestinian children dying of starvation over just the past several days. Since May, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food aid, mostly near hubs run by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). A spokesperson for the Trump State Department declared Tuesday that GHF operations have “been a tremendous success” despite the repeated massacres at its sites and still-spreading famine across the enclave.
“Palestinians are trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and cease-fires, only to wake up to worsening conditions,” the aid coalition said Wednesday. “It is not just physical torment, but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage. The humanitarian system cannot run on false promises. Humanitarians cannot operate on shifting timelines or wait for political commitments that fail to deliver access.”
The groups decried inadequate deals—such as the European Union’s recent agreement with Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza—and “symbolic gestures” like food airdrops as “a smokescreen for inaction.”
In the absence of “real change on the ground,” the groups said, “children starve while waiting for promises that never arrive.”
“They cannot replace states’ legal and moral obligations to protect Palestinian civilians and ensure meaningful access at scale,” the coalition said. “States can and must save lives before there are none left to save.”
The aid groups’ warnings echoed those of U.N. officials such as World Food Program emergency director Ross Smith, who said Tuesday that the hunger crisis in Gaza “has reached new and astonishing levels of desperation.
“We have a third of the population who are not eating for multiple days in a row—this includes women and children,” said Smith. “We see severe, acute malnutrition surging. Almost 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe, acute malnutrition and need treatment as soon as possible.”
“People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance every day,” Smith added. “And we are seeing this escalate, day by day.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A large crowd gather during a food distribution by a charity organization, as many Palestinians struggle to access food due to Israel’s ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip, on July 18, 2025. [Abdalhkem Abu Riash – Anadolu Agency]
In Gaza, mornings no longer begin with the sound of explosions — but with the quiet, urgent cries of hunger.
Mothers wake to infants with no milk. Children search for scraps to ease empty stomachs before the bombs return to flatten what little hope remains.
This isn’t exaggeration. It’s a grim, documented reality. Gaza is not only under bombardment — it’s under siege. And the weapon now cutting deepest is starvation. Because hunger is silent, the world looks away, as if a slow death does not count.
For months, Gazans have faced a dual siege: daily airstrikes and international indifference. Border crossings remain closed. Those searching for food are shot. Humanitarian supply lines are systematically broken. Bread has become a fantasy. Water is a daily fight. Medicine, a rare miracle.
“Humanitarian catastrophe” no longer captures it. What’s unfolding now is a deliberate campaign of starvation — one that meets every definition, legal and moral, of genocide.
Footage smuggled out of Gaza shows children collapsing while queuing for bread, families surviving on weeds, mothers dividing a single loaf between four hungry children. It’s not the bombs killing them — it’s the slow wasting of malnourished bodies.
The people of Gaza are not asking for the impossible. They are asking for a shred of global conscience.
But what hurts even more than the hunger is the silence.
In the early days of the assault, Western leaders issued cautious statements: calls for restraint, reminders of international law, expressions of concern. But those voices have since faded. Forgotten. Buried in old press releases. No action followed. No policies changed.
Instead, support for Israel intensified. Some governments even suspended funding to the UN’s main relief agency, UNRWA — in the middle of Gaza’s collapse.
Have you ever heard of a government withdrawing aid from a humanitarian agency while children are starving?
It happened. And it happened quietly.
As Nelson Mandela once said:
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”
Today, Gaza is being punished not only with bombs, but with hunger — a form of collective punishment enabled by an international consensus too timid to speak out. You won’t find this consensus in official statements, but you’ll see it in every sealed border, every empty bowl, and every child who cries from thirst.
According to UN agencies:
Food insecurity has reached catastrophic levels.
Over 90 per cent of children in Gaza are malnourished.
Infant deaths from starvation and dehydration are now a daily reality.
Yet the world remains still.
Worse still, some governments continue to justify Israel’s actions under the banner of “self-defence” — as if using starvation as a weapon were somehow legitimate.
But it isn’t just the West that bears responsibility.
Egypt too must answer for its role. The Rafah crossing — Gaza’s only exit not controlled by Israel — has been shut for months. Cairo waits for Tel Aviv’s permission to let aid in or patients out. When will we stop pretending this is neutrality? This is complicity.
And what of the Arab governments who have normalised ties with Israel? Some have remained silent. Others have gone further, publicly strengthening relations while Gaza starves. At least the West doesn’t claim kinship. But these regimes do — while doing nothing to stop the suffering of fellow Palestinians.
As former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once warned:
“When food becomes a weapon, humanity itself has collapsed.”
Gaza is facing that collapse — and the international system is allowing it to happen.
Yet despite everything, Gaza endures. Its people turn hunger into defiance. They resist, even when stripped of everything. In Gaza, dignity isn’t found in comfort — it’s found in survival.
But let’s be honest: Israel cannot sustain this alone. It relies on silence. On selective outrage. On diplomatic cover. And that is exactly what it gets from world powers who claim to care about human rights — but choose which victims matter.
So who is really standing with Gaza?
Not governments. Not institutions. But ordinary people. Protesters. Citizens. The ones who still have a conscience and refuse to look away.
Gaza doesn’t want pity. It wants justice. It demands an end to the genocide — and accountability for those who enable it.
The question is no longer: What is happening?
We know.
The question is: Who will act?
And when history is written — who will be remembered for their silence?
Because silence, in the face of starvation, is not neutrality.
It is complicity.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Fourteen-month-old Nur El Sarsak, one of hundreds of children diagnosed with malnutrition, fights for her life in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where she lives with her family, on July 19, 2025. [Ashraf Amra – Anadolu Agency]
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) on Saturday called for the immediate lifting of restrictions preventing life-saving aid from reaching Gaza, saying it has food stockpiled to support the territory’s entire population for more than three months, Anadolu reports.
“UNRWA has enough food for the entire population of Gaza for over three months stockpiled in warehouses–including this one in Al Arish, Egypt–awaiting entry,” the agency said on X.
Despite having both supplies and logistical systems in place, the agency said access remains blocked.
It concluded with a direct appeal: “Open the gates, lift the siege, allow UNRWA to do its work and help people in need among them 1 million children.”
Israel has killed nearly 59,000 Palestinians so far, most of them women and children. It imposed a full humanitarian blockade of Gaza on March 2, cutting off food, medical supplies and other aid to the more than 2 million Palestinians in the territory.
After growing international pressure, it began allowing a trickle of aid in late May. The UN agencies have been bypassed and the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is operating distribution sites, leading to hundreds of deaths since then.
A newborn baby in an incubator struggles to survive following Israel’s blockade of food and medical aid in Gaza City, Gaza on March 11, 2025. (Photo: Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death due to “depleted” reserves of baby formula.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that 580 premature infants are at risk of death, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, due to a shortage of medical-grade formula entering the strip.
Despite a recent policy change by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow “minimal aid” into the strip following a total blockade of food, water, shelter, and medication, it has proven far too little to keep hospitals running and keep people fed. It has proven especially deadly for children.
The AP report quotes Dr. Ahmed al-Farah, head of the pediatrics and obstetrics department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few functional medical facilities left in Gaza.
Last week, al-Farah warned that the hospital’s stock of milk was “completely depleted,” and that unless aid was delivered immediately, the babies would face “an avoidable disaster.” The widely publicized call was answered with the shipment of 20 boxes of formula from the U.S. aid group Rahma Worldwide.
Al-Farah said this was enough to meet the needs of 10 babies for two weeks, but warned that in the long run it would be far too little, especially with no guarantee of aid in the future.
“This is not enough at all,” he told the AP. “It solved the problem temporarily, but what we need is a permeant solution: Lift the siege.”
Many other hospitals reported shortages of formula that had not been answered, such as Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City, which was completely out of stock.
Fortified milk has become increasingly necessary in Gaza due to the increasing number of premature births. In May, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that as a result of widespread hunger, 1 in 5 children is now born pre-term or underweight. That malnutrition has also left many new mothers unable to breastfeed.
Dr. Asaad Nawajha, a pediatric specialist at Nasser Hospital, told Middle East Eye that the blockade has proven catastrophic for the health of both children and their mothers.
“This all goes back to the [harsh] conditions mothers endure amid this vicious war on the Gaza Strip,” Nawajha said. “Due to the lack of nutritious items entering the Gaza Strip, both mothers and children have been exposed to illnesses resulting from malnutrition.”
The Israeli government’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has insisted that the amount of aid allowed into Gaza is sufficient to provide for the population.
On June 22, COGAT announced that 430 aid trucks had been allowed to enter the strip during the preceding week. However, this is but a fraction of the more than 600 trucks per day that the United Nations is necessary to meet their needs.
Many people who have come to aid sites administered by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), to obtain the meager supplies available, have been met with deadly violence from the Israeli military.
Since May 27, at least 549 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,000 injured by Israeli forces at these sites, according to the U.N. Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Gaza Ministry of Health. The Gaza Media Office reports at least 19 fatal incidents at these GHF sites over the span of just one month.
Many of the victims have been children. According to a study released Thursday by the humanitarian group Save the Children, children have been killed at 10 of those 19 incidents.
“No child should be killed searching for food,” said Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. “This is not a humanitarian operation—it’s a death trap.”
Vote Labour for Genocide.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
