As Gaza slips deeper into catastrophe, Le Monde has unveiled a chilling dimension of the crisis: a calculated strategy where food and medicine are weaponised, not merely withheld, but deliberately used to break the Palestinian population’s will.

In its latest investigation, the French newspaper revealed that the U.S. administration’s recent pledge of $30 million for Gaza aid is little more than a political gesture. Rather than alleviating the suffering, this move masks a darker reality: aid is being manipulated, militarised, and withheld as a tool of submission and displacement.

Citing diplomatic sources, Le Monde describes the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”, an entity heavily criticised for its opaque operations and ties to the Israeli military, as central to this grim machinery. It operates with no UN oversight, and its chaotic, unregulated distributions have become deadly zones where the desperate are met with bullets, not bread.

Eyewitnesses recount scenes of families waiting hours under scorching heat, only to face tear gas or live fire. Aid convoys, rather than offering hope, have been turned into bait for forced displacement, pushing starving civilians southward in a thinly veiled attempt to depopulate northern Gaza.

Human rights groups, including Doctors Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, say this is no accident. It is, they warn, a war crime: the systematic use of hunger to achieve military goals. The Geneva Conventions ban such tactics, but international silence persists.

The siege has led to soaring prices and a black market that feeds off the aid meant for the poor. Gaza’s children, deprived of proper nutrition and psychological stability, are growing up traumatised, many too weak to speak, others showing signs of irreversible mental and emotional damage.

As Le Monde concludes, this is no longer merely a humanitarian failure, it is a strategic war on the human spirit, where hunger is not a side effect, but a central weapon of war. And while the world debates and donors pledge, Gaza’s people continue to die, starved, bombed, and forgotten.