The Gaza diet (and the Congo diet and the Zimbabwe diet)

Several months ago, ministry officials approached the United Nations to
consult with them about their dietary plan for the Gaza Strip. The UN
officials – as one might guess – politely told them to go to hell,
refusing to have anything to do with such a policy. The Israelis then
turned to a Health Ministry dietician, whose advice might have led to
the present policy according to which, as Israeli officials have
stated, "the minimal requirements for the sustenance of Gaza Strip
residents are being observed without inflicting a humanitarian
disaster."

But
this diet is neither a new mechanism to subjugate the Palestinian
population nor is it retaliation for the capture of that Israeli
soldier–whose name shall go unmentioned in the same way that the
11,000 Palestinian detainees are unmentioned.  The Israelis simply took
an already horrifying situation and made it worse.  A report published
in 2003 documented Palestinian malnutrition rates in Gaza as equal to
those in the Congo and Zimbabwe. Back then, Palestinians were
subsisting on less than $2.00 a day, which was already below the UN
poverty line.

From the report:

Responsibility for the current humanitarian crisis rests principally
with Israel's military occupation of the Palestinian territories. But
the foundations for impoverishment were laid long ago. Starting with an
already poor agrarian economy, Palestinians have seen the promise of a
secure future stripped away – by the progressive loss of land from 1948
onwards and by successive military incursions marked by violence, land
occupation and the subordination of the Palestinian economy to the
Israeli economy. The Oslo Accords of September 1993, despite the great
hopes surrounding them, failed to deliver significant change, as has
the Palestinian Authority. Attention given by the Palestinian Authority
to poverty eradication – even allowing for the destruction of its
infrastructure – has been notable by its absence. Frustration, despair
and disillusionment – especially following the failure of the Camp
David talks – were partly the result of the slide into deeper poverty
after 1993.

So contrary to Israeli propaganda, this "diet" had been in place years before Hamas took power in Gaza and that
soldier was captured.  Here, a different report from 2003 further illustrates the fate of Palestinian children during the years before Hamas controlled Gaza:

Jean
Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the
right to food, has issued a report after touring the occupied
Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in July. Mr.
Ziegler said 9 per cent of Palestinian children under the age of five
suffer some form of brain damage because of chronic malnutrition caused
by the Israeli occupation.

 
It'd be nice to see any of the major news
outlets in the U.S. report on the conditions in Gaza prior to the
siege, instead of mindlessly parroting Israeli talking points.