Thursday briefing: While the ceasefire holds, Gaza continues to starve | Gaza

Good morning. In the end, the ruling was both simple and obvious: Israel is the occupying power in Gaza, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and is therefore obligated to ensure the basic needs of the population are met.

That was the verdict in the latest international court of justice case between Israel and Palestine, which also examined Israel’s decision to bar the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) from operating in the occupied territories. The world’s top court found that Israel had failed to provide evidence for its claims that UNRWA lacked neutrality, or that a significant number of its employees were members of Hamas or other armed groups.

It therefore called on Israel to cooperate with UN humanitarian agencies to ensure the delivery of aid in the occupied territories, particularly in Gaza, and warned against the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

The ruling comes amid a tentative ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, which has allowed for the release of hostages and prisoners, as well as the exchange of dead bodies from both sides.

At the heart of the ceasefire is the ramping up of much needed aid into the devastated strip. But this week, the UN World Food Programme reported that while aid deliveries to Gaza have increased since the ceasefire, they remain well below the daily target of 2,000 tonnes, with only two border crossings currently open.

I spoke to Eyad Amawi, a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee, who is living in the Gaza Strip, about what life is like in the territory, and what people there say they most desperately need. That’s after the headlines.

Five big stories

1. Energy | Ministers are considering dropping one of their central green pledges in an effort to keep energy bills down, sources have told the Guardian.

2. UK news | Keir Starmer’s grooming gangs inquiry has descended into fresh turmoil after the only remaining candidate to be its chair blamed “political opportunism” and “a lack of trust” for his withdrawal as an applicant.

3. Schools | One in 12 secondary pupils report being put into school isolation rooms at least once a week where they often spend in excess of eight hours, missing more than a full day of lessons, according to research.

4. Immigration and asylum | A man sent back to France under the “one in, one out” scheme has returned to the UK on a small boat, the Guardian has learned. The man is being held in a UK immigration detention centre and claims to be a victim of modern slavery.

5. Ukraine war | The US has sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies, as the Trump administration increased pressure on the Kremlin to negotiate an end to its war against Ukraine.

In depth: ‘My son doesn’t recognise the names of ordinary fruits and vegetables’

On 22 August, UN-backed experts declared an “entirely man-made” famine was taking place in Gaza’s largest city and its surrounding area. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned of an exponential increase in deaths across the devastated territory if aid didn’t ramp up.

Eyad Amawi told me that while there is a general stability in the availability of staple foods such as flour and canned goods since the ceasefire came in, the flow of more nutritional items remains severely lacking, particularly when it comes to vegetables, fruits, and all kinds of meat, whether frozen or fresh.

Just then, his four-year-old son comes into the room and wants to say hello. “He spent the past two years living with this genocide,” says Amawi. “When I asked him about the names of fruits and vegetables, he didn’t recognise a lot of them. He just knows bananas, because we provide them with a banana from time to time, and some apples.”

He explained that one apple currently costs us up to $4 (about £3). But before the war began, it was around two to three dollars per kilogram. Across the Strip, children and adults are in desperate need of simple nourishing food. Among them are thousands of children whose bodies bear the quiet evidence of hunger: yellowing skin and protruding bones.

“Stopping the genocide is not just about ending the bombardment,” Amawi said. “We are still facing difficulties in just trying to keep ourselves alive.”

A power vacuum

Israel launched its war in Gaza with the stated aim of destroying Hamas, after the Palestinian militant group carried out an unprecedented incursion that killed about 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and led to the kidnapping of 250 hostages, including women and children.

But critics have long said that Israel’s failure to plan for “the day after” has deepened the humanitarian devastation in the strip. Israeli leaders have ruled out allowing the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank, to administer Gaza. At the same time, Israel has been accused of blurring the distinction between Hamas fighters and those working in Gaza’s civil administration. The Palestinian death toll is now above 68,000, the majority of them women and children, while a UN commission has found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

There is now a power vacuum in Gaza, Amawi explains, one that has allowed chaos to persist. “There is no central authority in Gaza that regulates prices – neither the ministry of economy nor any other governmental body – because Israel prevents any formal governmental activities in Gaza under the claim that they are all working for Hamas.”

He told me that price manipulation and market speculation have come to dominate Gaza’s economy. The resale of humanitarian aid by ordinary people, traders and others has further fuelled instability and soaring prices. The constant air of doubt that lingers over the delicate ceasefire is reflected in the prices and availability of food across Gaza’s market stalls.

“There was a sharp rise in prices yesterday,” he said. “For instance, the price of one kilogram of frozen chicken in the market exceeded 80 chickens. And this rise has affected all other nutritious goods.”

He estimated that currently around 200 to 250 trucks are entering Gaza, which Amawi described as a drop in the ocean and far below the 600 daily trucks promised in the ceasefire. “Only 986 trucks have entered the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire took effect,” Amawi said. “That number should be 6,600 trucks.”

Amawi also criticised Israel’s strict control over import permits for Gaza’s private traders, which were halted for much of the war. Trade has now partly resumed through a small number of approved merchants, but tight checks and limits remain. As a result, he said, fruits and vegetables have become scarce and far more expensive.

An open graveyard

The ceasefire came under serious threat last week after Israel launched waves of lethal airstrikes on Sunday and cut off all aid into Gaza “until further notice” after a reported attack by Hamas-linked militants killed Israeli soldiers. Nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed, and 230 wounded, since the truce came into effect on 10 October, according to Al Jazeera.

Amawi says that he believes 70 bombs were dropped in his area alone that night, when he gathered his family into a room. Describing it as collective punishment of the besieged population, he said: “They hit homes, schools, tents, streets. We halted our life activity at that moment and waited over radio or WhatsApp groups to hear news.”

He sighed with relief when word finally came that the ceasefire would hold, but the calm was short-lived. While much of the western media has focused on the struggle to recover the bodies of Israeli hostages, Amawi urged the international community to also turn its attention to the vast open graveyard that Gaza has become.

Gaza’s civil defence agency estimates that the bodies of about 10,000 people are trapped under the debris and collapsed buildings.“We need to recover them and bury them. It’s a matter of dignity and respect for the people; for their children, fathers, relatives. No one mentions them. No one has increased pressure to bring in equipment to dig and remove rubble, and to search for our people’s bodies and remains,” he said.

Amawi explained that local municipalities need heavy machinery, such as bulldozers, cranes, and other equipment, to clear debris, reopen roads, and begin restoring essential places such as schools. “I have four children and have registered three of them in the school. But until this moment, all of the displaced people are still in the school, or what remains of it, and can’t evacuate because there’s no other place appropriate for them to go.”

Palestinians in Gaza need 300,000 tents, he added, but even that has been a struggle to get into the strip.

The struggle to recovery

Near the end of our conversation, Amawi took his phone to show me the view from outside his window. It is one of devastation, with tents surrounding the few buildings remaining. He described an ordinary day in his neighbourhood: “People wait for the truck of water to supply them with the water for daily use, and after one hour they will wait in a crowded line for the community kitchen to distribute foods also.”

It is not a life, he told me, and can barely be described as an existence. “The famine is being re-engineered and re-managed. There is no tangible change since the ceasefire, especially in sweet water [what Palestinians call drinkable water].”

Amawi believes that UNRWA is best place to scale up operations in the strip, echoing the ICJ’s ruling yesterday. Israel, however, rejected the court’s opinion as “political” and said it would not cooperate with the agency.

Amawi, whose expertise is in health issues, said many of those in Gaza have constant pain in their stomachs because they are drinking polluted waters.

He therefore described the famine as ongoing. And even if there is a surge in drinkable water and nutritious food, recovery will be arduous for all. “My children are exhausted, they have been losing weight for a long time. Recovery won’t be easy,” Amawi said. “Right now, when I have an extra amount of bread, I feel pain in my stomach because we have gotten into the habit of eating one meal a day. So when we get an extra amount of our portion of food, we feel physical pain, but we also feel pain in our soul.”

He told me he tries not to show his fear about the future to his children, wife, family and the rest of his community. “We send out statements that the war has ended and we will rebuild Gaza; we will be feeding our children normally; we will rebuild our homes; we will set up new camps to save our people’s dignity,” he said before adding that the painful truth is, “everything is completely destroyed here in Gaza”.

What else we’ve been reading

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• A Senedd byelection in Caerphilly has more than usual riding on it: the seat has been a Labour stronghold for years, but now appears to be a race between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. Steven Morris has a sharp piece from the campaign trail that gives a sense of what’s at stake in Welsh politics. Archie

• The government’s move to scrap the legal presumption that parents have a right to involvement in their children’s lives is huge, and barrister Charlotte Proudman puts its significance into words better than anyone else. Aamna

• Ahead of the pope’s meeting with King Charles, Harriet Sherwood has an interesting piece about the beginning of Leo XIV’s tenure. Conservative catholics hoped he would be a break with the agenda of his predecessor Francis – but instead he has taken strong stances on the treatment of immigrants, inequality, and the climate crisis.

Sport

Champions League | Liverpool emphatically ended their four-game losing run as they came from a goal down to thrash Eintracht Frankfurt 5-1 in Germany. Guglielmo Vicario produced an all-action performance for Spurs as they held Monaco to a battling 0-0 draw. Enzo Maresca’s youthful Chelsea side took full advantage of a poor Ajax team who played the majority of the 5-1 Champions League rout with 10 men.

Cricket | Australia beat England by six wickets with 57 balls to spare as Ash Gardner and Annabel Sutherland piled on the runs in the Women’s World Cup group game. England 244-9; Australia 248-4. Australia win by six wickets

Football | Dazn is preparing to bid for global broadcasting rights for Champions League games from 2027 in another significant move into football by Saudi Arabia. Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ are also among the potential contenders for the new rights package, aimed at streaming giants.

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