WASHINGTON
Nearly two dozen prominent economists from leading universities in the U.S. and Europe, including multiple Nobel laureates, urged Israel to immediately halt policies deepening starvation in the Gaza Strip and to abandon plans to forcibly relocate civilians.
In an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the 23 economists voiced “urgent concern about the spreading starvation in Gaza” and the Israeli government’s plans to concentrate civilians in a so-called “humanitarian city.”
“As human beings and as economists and scientists, we call for an immediate halt to any policy that intensifies widespread starvation,” they wrote.
The signatories included Nobel Prize winners Turkish-American economist Daron Acemoğlu, Angus Deaton, Peter Diamond, Esther Duflo, Claudia Goldin, Eric Maskin, Roger Myerson, Edmund Phelps, Christopher Pissarides and Joseph Stiglitz, alongside other leading scholars such as Olivier Blanchard and Maurice Obstfeld.
Citing warnings by the U.N. World Food Program, the letter said nearly one-third of Gaza’s 2.1 million people have endured multiple days without food, while basic food prices are now 10 times higher than three months ago.
The collapse of U.N. aid distribution and its replacement with a limited number of aid sites set up by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has led to “deadly chaos,” the economists said, with more than 1,000 people killed or wounded in stampedes for scarce rations.
They warned that the proposed “humanitarian city” would confine hundreds of thousands of Gazans to a restricted zone, stripping them of “freedom of movement and dignity.”
“It is unconscionable for Israel to treat civilians as liabilities to be contained rather than as human beings entitled to livable conditions,” they wrote.
Last month, Israel unveiled plans to relocate Gaza’s entire population to what it called a “humanitarian city” in Rafah. From there, they would be allowed to emigrate from Gaza to other countries.