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Amit Segal @AmitSegal on x 39.9K followers
Created: 2025-07-24 12:10:38 UTC
Gaza may well be approaching a real hunger crisis. Shocked to be reading this from me? I don’t blame you.
Let’s break down why, unlike past lies about the situation in Gaza, new research is real cause for concern, and what it means for Israel.
Yesterday, @YannayASpitzer, an assistant professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, shared his findings on food prices in Gaza before and during the war. Well aware of the propaganda that Hamas and its international allies have been pumping out of the strip since October 7, Spitzer noted that “the situation [in Gaza] is radically different from everything up to now.”
He goes one step further, suggesting that “without immediate change, a state of mass starvation seems inevitable.”
What makes him think that? He tracked the price of flour, which, as he notes, is “the most essential consumer good.”
In September 2023, flour, which is sold in 25kg sacks, cost around XXXX shekels ($14 USD) in Deir al-Balah, which until recently was untouched by the IDF and therefore less affected by the war.
Since October 7, according to Spitzer, flour’s price, per 25kg sack, changed as follows:
- Jan 2024: Over XXX shekels.
- Jan 2025, before the last ceasefire: XXX shekels.
- During the ceasefire: It dropped back down to XX shekels—almost its pre-war price.
Why the volatile prices? That’s war—and while a ten-fold increase in the cost of flour likely indicates a significant drop in supply, it doesn’t necessarily prove widespread hunger, let alone famine.
But here’s why Spitzer is worried. After the last ceasefire ended in March, the cost of flour shot back up to XXX shekels by the end of April. It then hit XXX shekels by the 2nd week of May, and XXXXX by the month’s end.
But here’s the worst part. “According to reports from the past few days,” Spitzer wrote, “if the price of a kilogram of flour has indeed reached XXX shekels—meaning XXXXX shekels per sack—we are looking at an 80-fold price increase.”
Essentially, he’s arguing that whatever flour shortage there was in Gaza until now doesn’t even compare to what the strip is currently experiencing. In summary, he writes, “very few households can sustain themselves under such shortages for more than a few days.”
The key question: Is he right? While I can’t force you to believe his report, it should certainly be taken with more seriousness than UN and Al Jazeera’s propaganda.
And herein lies a major problem. Discussing these findings, @TheFP’s @havivrettiggur highlighted Spitzer’s key challenge in convincing Israelis that Gaza is indeed facing a hunger crisis: “It’s hard to convince Israelis of that because literally everything said to them for XX months on this topic has been a fiction.”
Of course, Jerusalem is tuned into this—and concern over hunger in the strip is one of the key reasons Netanyahu wants a ceasefire. As he has repeated throughout this war, preventing a famine in Gaza—which would see Israel lose even its most strident supporters—is the one essential condition to continuing the war and defeating Hamas.
Speaking of Hamas, what do they make of this? For one, they took their war against humanitarian aid to new heights last night, firing a rocket at the aid distribution center near the Morag Corridor. It landed some XXX meters away.
The sentiment, however, is nothing new. The closer Gazans are to real hunger, the better it is for Hamas, and the less likely it is to cave in ceasefire negotiations. After all, its logic is simple: If Gazans are actually starving, Israel will be forced to end the war anyways, without us having to agree to a deal we don’t particularly like.
Hence Hamas’ gleeful hoarding of food in its warehouses, keeping it far from Gazan civilians and driving up the prices of basic goods—without which the strip would not be facing the current food shortage.
For both Israelis and the ordinary Gazans caught in the crossfire, the result is brutal: When starvation becomes a strategy, peace moves further out of reach.
XXXXXXX engagements
