Starvation as Strategy: The West’s Complicity in Gaza’s Man-Made Famine

By Elijah J. Magnier –

In Gaza, famine is not the product of war—it is the war. It is not a failure of logistics, but a success of strategy. And in this unfolding catastrophe, the West is not a bystander; it is a central actor. While the Israeli government, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tightens its siege on Gaza, millions of civilians face engineered starvation. This is not accidental. It is the outcome of deliberate decisions: to cut off food, water, electricity, fuel, and humanitarian aid, and to obstruct relief convoys. What is occurring is not a natural disaster but a man-made famine, imposed with clinical precision.

Despite overwhelming evidence and international outcry, the United States and the European Union have refused to hold Israel accountable. Worse, they continue to arm, fund, and shield the entity responsible for one of the most brutal blockades of the 21st century. Netanyahu’s government is using famine to achieve a politically cynical objective: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population from Gaza.

This strategy aligns disturbingly with comments made by U.S. President Donald Trump in his first week in office, when he reportedly suggested turning Gaza into a “Riviera” and a lucrative real estate project, an ambition echoing his commercial triumphs in Manhattan. In a chilling symbol of complicity, Trump’s advisor, special envoy and real estate magnate Steve Witkoff visited Gaza and remained for five hours at a food distribution point in Rafah—infamously dubbed the “death trap zone”—where Palestinians seeking aid are routinely targeted. The message was clear: the United States is not only observing but participating in the execution of this policy of the enforcement of famine as a weapon and in the broader campaign of forced demographic change.

Compounding the tragedy is the near-total complicity of Israeli society, where public discourse is consumed by the fate of 20 Israeli prisoners, while 2.5 million starving and besieged Palestinians remain largely unacknowledged. Trump also spoke about how “small is Israel’s geography” and its “need to be enlarged”—a discourse that aligns perfectly with the “Greater Israel” vision embraced by the far-right coalition currently ruling Israel. This war, therefore, is not merely a military campaign but part of a broader expansionist agenda. While Gaza is being flattened through bombs and famine, the same ideological apparatus continues to pursue annexation in the West Bank, with U.S. support and European acquiescence.