How did Israel manufacture a malnutrition crisis in Gaza?

According to the Gaza Fishermen’s Syndicate, at least 238 fishermen have been killed by Israel since October 2023.

Israeli attacks damaged or destroyed over 94 percent of fishing boats, according to FAO.

Fishing still remains severely limited.

Deadly aid by GHF

The MSF report also examines the harm done by the US- and Israeli-backed so-called ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)’, set up last year to largely replace UN distribution of aid in Gaza.

GHF was described by the UN as a “death trap” and an “abomination”.

MSF pointed out that by late May 2025, food distribution points in Gaza had dropped from around 400 to four under GHF, which disbanded last November following the October ceasefire.

The food distribution points were “militarised and deadly”, said Jose Mas, head of the MSF emergency unit.

According to the UN Office for Human Rights, between May 27 and August 13 2025, at least 1,760 Palestinians were killed while trying to access aid: 994 near GHF sites and 766 along supply convoy routes.

During the period when GHF was functioning, MSF said that facilities it supported in Gaza had seen “a sharp increase in patients seeking care due to violence perpetrated at food distribution points and malnutrition linked to deprivation of food”.

MSF teams had also observed a high number of miscarriages during this period, it said.

Devastating impact on mothers and newborns

MSF said it had collected data from more than 200 mothers and newborns receiving treatment in neonatal intensive care units at hospitals in Khan Younis and Gaza City between last June and January.

Its analysis found that more than half of the women were affected by malnutrition at some point during their pregnancy.

A quarter of them were still malnourished during delivery.

The impact was clear: 90 percent of the babies born to malnourished mothers were born prematurely and 84 percent had low birth weight, the analysis found.

“Neonatal mortality was twice as high among infants born to mothers affected by malnutrition compared with those born to mothers without malnutrition,” MSF said.

The medical charity also examined data from 513 infants under six months of age admitted to outpatient therapeutic feeding programmes in Khan Younis between October 2024 and December 2025.

Of them, “91 percent were at risk of poor growth and development”, it said.

By last December, 200 of the infants were no longer in the programme, but fewer than half had been cured, it found. Seven percent of them had died, it added.

Between January 2024, when the first cases of child malnutrition were reported in Gaza, and February 2026, MSF said it had admitted 4,176 children under 15 years old , 97 percent of them younger than five, for acute malnutrition programmes.

During the same period, 3,336 pregnant and breastfeeding women were enrolled in outpatient programmes, it said.

Israeli attacks have killed 824 Palestinians and wounded 2,316 since the ceasefire deal was signed in October last year.

The agreement was reached after two years of Israel’s genocidal war launched in October 2023, which left more than 72,600 Palestinians dead, over 172,000 injured, and caused massive destruction to 90 percent of civilian infrastructure in Gaza.