Israel is responsible for the food crisis in Gaza

You break it, you own it.1

So Colin Powell told George W. Bush in 2002, warning him against invading Iraq. Bush didn’t listen. The United States easily toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, then faced a bloody insurgency in Iraq for the rest of Bush’s presidency.

Israel’s situation is different. It had to invade Gaza and destroy Hamas after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. The left’s crocodile tears over Palestinian civilian deaths in the invasion were easily ignored after the way Hamas targeted Israeli families for slaughter.

But.

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(Reconsidering my priors. Even when I don’t want to.)

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But almost 21 months after Oct. 7, the facts on the ground have changed.

Have they ever.

In fall 2023, Israel faced the apparent risk of a catastrophic multi-front war.

To its north, Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia militia that controlled Lebanon, was said to have tens of thousands of missiles that could devastate Tel Aviv. To the east, Iran had an even larger arsenal. In Gaza itself, Israel faced the risk of losing thousands of soldiers in house-by-house combat.2 Then there was the prospect that the “Arab street” would rise over Israel’s Gaza invasion and that other Arab countries would feel compelled to cut ties with Israel, or even embargo it.

Except 2024 and 2025 turned into an unbroken series of Israeli military triumphs: assassinating Hamas’s top civilian leader and hunting down its top military leader, killing Hezollah’s commander and devastating its ranks. It also destroyed Iran’s air defenses and with American help severely damaged Iran’s nuclear program.

As for the Arab street?

Except for Iraq, Arab countries are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim. They have viewed the Gazan conflict as Israel against Iran — which is Persian and Shia, a different sect of Islam3 — and quietly taken Israel’s side. Even ordinary Arabs hardly seemed ready to stand for Hamas. Columbia University had louder protests than Cairo.

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(Useful idiots unite)

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With no significant threats elsewhere, Israel has had the freedom to use its military against Hamas. And it has. Israel has established control over Gaza while losing about 450 soldiers, fewer than one a day. It and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza in January 2025, and Hamas returned some Israeli hostages, but Israel ended it in March.

But now Israel has a new and very serious problem, one that doesn’t seem to have a military solution.

Here’s the problem.

Israel won.

Israel has functionally degraded Hamas so badly that Hamas cannot govern Gaza. It cannot provide even basic services. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the remnants of a command-and-control structure or that its fighters can’t hold a few Israeli hostages in tunnels or occasionally attack Israeli soldiers. But it doesn’t exist as a governing power anymore.

So this is no longer a war.

It’s an occupation.

But Bibi Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, won’t take responsibility for Gaza. Before the Oct. 7 attacks, he was content to have Hamas run Gaza, believing (wrongly) that he could manage Hamas. Now he is content to string out negotiations with what’s left of Hamas’s leadership — and pretend that Hamas still controls Gaza.

He has several reasons to deny reality. Admitting that Israel is an occupying power would make Israel fully legally responsible for Gaza. It would also force him to declare openly if Israel intends to occupy Gaza permanently (as some right-wing Israelis want) or whether it will allow the rebuilding of civil society, the transfer of power to Palestinians other than Hamas, and the preparation for the open elections in Gaza.

Until now, this strategy, cynical as it is, has largely worked.

Israel has pursued Hamas fighters in Gaza unimpeded. Most governments that matter have written off the complaints from the left about Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza as a mix of antisemitism and rhetorical incoherence (after all, it’s Hamas that called for the elimination of Israel in its original charter)4.

But in the last few weeks, and particularly in the last few days, Gaza has come unglued. The territory depends on outside food supplies and aid to avoid famine. The United Nations and independent charities had long distributed that aid, but Israel believed that Hamas took too big a cut of it and tried to install its own food distribution network, relying on a few centralized hubs.

The new system is failing. There have been repeated riots resulting in Israeli troops firing on Gaza civilians trying to get food. And hunger is spreading across Gaza.

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Whether or not what’s happening meets the definition of famine is besides the point. Children are starving to death.

And anyone who doesn’t think the problem is real needs to explain why Gazan civilians are willing to risk live fire from Israeli soldiers to get food.

Some hard-core defenders of Israel want to blame Hamas, or the United Nations, for the crisis. They’re wrong. Even if they’re right, even if Hamas is cynically worsening the problem by interfering with the new Israeli food distribution network, they’re wrong.

Israel has destroyed Hamas’s ability to govern Gaza. That’s a feature, not a bug. That’s what Israel intended to do.

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(Thinking hard, writing fast. With your help.)

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But Israel can no longer hide from its responsibilities as the occupying power. It has only two choices, agree to a true ceasefire with Hamas that leaves Hamas in control and gives up Israeli efforts to manage food aid, or declare Hamas has been defeated and it is occupying Gaza and is responsible for the territory’s civilians until free elections can be held (unless, insanely, it intends to occupy Gaza forever).

I understand why Israel would rather not do either.

But after 21 months of war, the alternative is the loss of civil society in Gaza. The alternative is famine.

And Israel cannot allow a famine in Gaza. Not legally, not morally, and not strategically. The noise coming from Western governments isn’t noise anymore; even a few more weeks of this crisis will do damage to Israel’s reputation that cannot be undone. Already The New York Times has run an opinion piece (free link) from a (Jewish) scholar accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

Throughout this war, I have strongly supported Israel’s right to destroy Hamas and defend itself.

But if it cannot do so without causing famine, then it needs a new strategy.