The World Food Program warns that a famine in Gaza is “getting closer by the day.” A United Nations-backed report says it’s “imminent.” With food, fuel, and medicine all in short supply, who is responsible for providing aid to the millions of displaced Gazans?
FP’s Ravi Agrawal sat down with two experts on the humanitarian emergency in Gaza: Sari Bashi, the program director of Human Rights Watch, and Shira Efron, Israel Policy Forum’s research director.
Sari Bashi, the program director for Human Rights Watch, tells FP’s Ravi Agrawal about the dire situation for Palestinians sheltering in Rafah right now, including some of her own family members.
Shira Efron details how aid to Gaza has increased in recent weeks. But will that suffice to prevent famine? Does it indicate a substantial policy shift from the Israeli government? Efron and Bashi debate.
Human rights activist Sari Bashi argues that Israel already knows what kinds of policies it needs to enact—from bringing in food itself to facilitating aid organizations’ delivery—to meet the obligations laid out by the International Court of Justice. But, she says, it is “a problem of political will.”
Shira Efron says ensuring that more aid reaches Palestinians in Gaza is in Israel’s strategic interests: “Israel started the war as Ukraine, and seven months after, it’s Russia.”
Shira Efron and Sari Bashi look ahead to suggest different futures for Gaza, one that would allow for reconstruction and agency for Palestinians.
Sari Bashi
Program director, Human Rights Watch
Sari Bashi is the program director for Human Rights Watch. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Bashi co-founded and ran Gisha, the leading Israeli human rights group promoting the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians in Gaza. She is a human rights lawyer who has taught international humanitarian law at Yale Law School and Tel Aviv University and supervised research at Democracy for the Arab World Now.
Shira Efron
Director of research, Israel Policy Forum
Shira Efron is the director of research for Israel Policy Forum. She was previously a Gaza consultant for the U.N. country team in Jerusalem, and from 2011 to 2022, she was a fellow with the RAND Corporation, where she led research on Gaza’s humanitarian challenges.
Ravi Agrawal
Editor in chief, Foreign Policy
Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy, the host of FP Live, and a regular world affairs analyst on TV and radio. Before joining FP in 2018, Agrawal worked at CNN for more than a decade in full-time roles spanning three continents, including as the network’s New Delhi bureau chief and correspondent. He is the author of India Connected: How the Smartphone Is Transforming the World’s Largest Democracy.
Related
