Food security experts have warned the Gaza strip is at “critical risk of famine” if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade on supplies like food, medicine, and fuel, and put a stop to its military campaign.
The latest findings from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a leading international authority on hunger crises, reveals nearly half a million Palestinians are living in “catastrophic” levels of hunger. A million others can barely get enough food.
It marks a major deterioration in food security in Gaza since its last assessment in October 2024.
“Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks. The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people — one in five — facing starvation,” the IPC said.
The blockade was imposed by Israel in early March, after the end of the first phase of a supposed three-phase ceasefire. This has meant, for the past 10 weeks, food, medicine, shelter, and other goods have been banned from entering the Palestinian territory amid ground operations and airstrikes.
Gaza’s population of some 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid, after the 19-month-long military campaign by Israel has destroyed most of the capacity to produce food itself.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the IPC findings, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald. It claimed previous forecasts had proven unfounded and that the amount of aid that entered Gaza during a ceasefire earlier this year was undercounted.
However, the UN humanitarian office has said the number of children seeking treatment for malnutrition has doubled since February while supplies to address this are also dwindling.
“To the Israeli authorities, and those who can still reason with them, we say again: Lift this brutal blockade,” said UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher in a statement last week.
“To the civilians left unprotected, no apology can suffice. But I am truly sorry that we are unable to move the international community to prevent this injustice.”
Speaking to The Guardian last week, Dr Ahmed al-Farah, the director of the children’s and maternity building at the Nasser medical complex in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, said between five and 10 new malnutrition cases were being recorded there each day.
“We’re seeing severe cases. Malnutrition appears in children in a horrifying and extremely visible way,” Farah told the publication.
“We have nothing to offer them. They need proteins, but there are none. We try to provide a little milk, perhaps powdered milk, but we can’t offer anything more.”
The IPC rates an area as ‘in famine’ when at least two of three warning signs are present. These are: 20 per cent of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving; at least 30 per cent of children six months to five years suffer from acute malnutrition; and at least two people or four children under five per every 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or disease.
Its latest assessment on Monday found the first threshold was met in Gaza, saying 22 per cent of the population are classified as in “catastrophic” hunger for the period from May 11 to the end of September.
Per the report, should the blockade continue, the vast majority will have no access to food or water, health services will “fully collapse”, and levels of malnutrition will cross the thresholds into famine.
Over 53,00 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed by Israelis since the October 7 attacks, according the Gaza Health Ministry.
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