Afrasianet - Ziad Ghosn - In all the wars of starvation it has led against peoples and nations, U.S. administrations have been trying to convince world public opinion that with these sanctions they are targeting governments that are "evil and dangerous to international peace."

In 1991, the United States not only bombed the Iraqi forces withdrawing from Kuwait and subsequently committed a famous massacre of thousands of Iraqis, both military and civilian, but also worked to tighten the economic blockade imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Iraq following its occupation of Kuwait in August 1990.

The effects of that siege lasted for more than two decades, leaving human, economic and social losses that Baghdad is still unable to count, although some research estimates speak of the siege directly or indirectly causing the death of more than one million Iraqis, most of them civilians, and an economic loss exceeding 25 trillion US dollars.

The US policy of starvation, aimed at exhausting countries and peoples, returned to practice against Syria starting in 2011, and gradually penetrated in the following years to reach the imposition of a near-total blockade in 2020 with the entry into force of the Caesar Act in the middle of that year.

This siege is expected to deepen after the US administration recently approved the "Anti-normalization with Assad" bill, which is an updated version of the Caesar Act, which contributed mainly to the deterioration of the economic and living conditions of more than 16.5 million Syrian citizens, who are today, according to UN organizations, in dire need of support and assistance to secure the most basic survival needs.

The list of countries affected by US economic sanctions, the oldest of which dates back several decades, expands to include major countries such as China and Russia, and other countries in the region such as Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, in addition to other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, but these sanctions have not reached the stage of a comprehensive blockade, as is the case with Cuba, Iraq, Syria and others.

Therefore, it is naïve to consider the starvation taking place in the Gaza Strip as a mere result of an Israeli policy aimed at putting pressure on the resistance factions in ceasefire negotiations or at pushing the remaining residents of the northern Gaza Strip to leave for other areas in preparation for turning it into a security fence to protect the occupation settlements in the Gaza envelope.

The United States seems present in every detail of the war on the Gaza Strip. Thus, the policy of siege and starvation is one of the American and Israeli practices to pressure the Palestinians in the field, negotiations and life.

Objectives of starvation

The question is: Why do US administrations pursue a policy of starvation in the face of some countries and peoples? And what does Washington want from Gaza to get its population into the mill of hunger?

The answer to the first question can be distinguished according to two cases: the first case includes cases of direct US military wars in which the policy of starvation is an essential means to weaken and exhaust the opponent and reduce the duration of his resistance and try to turn the population against their governments and disrupt the social situation, as clearly happened in Iraq and is happening today in Syria, regardless of the human deaths that may result from such a policy that violates known international laws and conventions.

The second case is related to US attempts to pressure countries and peoples through political and economic wars in order to change their positions and policies, as economic sanctions are one of the most important forms of these wars, and this is evident in the US political and economic sanctions imposed on Cuba almost seven decades ago, and the sanctions imposed as well on Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Sudan, Syria before 2011 and other countries.

But in both cases, there is more than just trying to defeat and overthrow some governments, as previous experiences have shown that the United States was targeting in its sanctions the structure, cohesion and stability of societies to disrupt and weaken them, as the problem in the eyes of Americans is not only in the positions of governments opposing their policies and rejecting their hegemony, but also in the peoples themselves who advocate and support human and civilized values, and refuse to give up their rights and confiscate their national decision.

In answering the question regarding the American goal of starving the population of Gaza, it must be said at the outset that the responsibility for the starvation in the Gaza Strip is not the result of a political position on Washington or is just arbitrary talk, as a country that manages to parachute food aid at the height of the Israeli attack on the Strip and plans to establish a temporary port can bring in sufficient aid through all land crossings, especially if this country has the cards to It qualifies it to put strong pressure on Tel Aviv to allow humanitarian aid to enter and stop its aggression.

Accordingly, there are several American goals in its support of the policy of starving the population of the Gaza Strip, the most important of which is the attempt to dwarf the aspirations of the Palestinian people and turn them against the resistance factions that reject the project of liquidating the Palestinian cause, a project led by the United States for many years, and whose features crystallized clearly with the Oslo authority, which is deprived of powers and independence, and was further confirmed with the project put forward by the Trump administration, called the Deal of the Century, leading to normalization efforts that were close to success between the Zionist entity and some others. Arab countries.

The result is the same.

In all the wars of starvation it has led against peoples and nations, the US administrations have been trying to convince world public opinion that with these sanctions they are targeting governments that are "evil and dangerous to international peace."

For example, in the case of Iraq, it created the so-called oil for food, in Syria it announced the exemption of food and medicine from the Caesar sanctions, and in Gaza its planes dropped parachute aid over the besieged and destroyed Gaza Strip with American weapons.

Under the oil-for-food project, nearly 600,000 Iraqi civilians died, food and medicine were actually the most affected by US sanctions on Syria, their prices are the most inflated today in Syrian markets, and Gaza's air-dropped aid theoretically does not satisfy the hunger of more than 1% of the northern Gaza population in the best forecast, and for just one day.

However, the American starvation wars have failed throughout their march to achieve their goals despite the great human and economic losses they caused, as Iraqis today, for example, are no more supportive of American policies than before, as Washington wished, and the Syrians did not change their conviction of the negative American position and role in their crisis, and Cuba did not fall, and the support of the residents of northern Gaza for the resistance factions did not decline one iota despite the deaths of hunger and thirst.