Gaza Faces “Critical Risk of Famine” Due to Full Israeli Blockade, Experts Warn
The Gaza Strip is at a “critical risk” of famine, with the entire population projected to face crisis levels of hunger as a result of Israel’s total humanitarian aid blockade, UN-backed food researchers have found in their latest assessment.
As of mid-May, the entire population of Gaza is facing a hunger crisis, researchers with the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) determined in a report released Monday.
“Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks,” the report says. “Immediate action is essential to prevent further deaths, starvation and acute malnutrition, and a descent into Famine.”
The report was released as Israel’s total aid blockade on Gaza has entered its third month, with Israel blocking all goods — food, medicine, water, and other essential supplies — from entering Gaza, creating a humanitarian catastrophe in which Palestinians face death at every turn. UN officials have said that Israel is weaponizing aid, using it as a way to subjugate and control the Palestinian population, seemingly in service of their extermination and ethnic cleansing campaign.
According to the IPC report, over a fifth of the population, or nearly 500,000 Palestinians, are facing catastrophic levels of hunger — meaning that they are facing “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels.”
A quarter of the population is in a food “emergency,” meaning that they are facing major food shortages and potential mortality due to food insecurity, while the remaining population is experiencing a food crisis and are unable to meet basic needs.
A projected 71,000 children in Gaza are in dire need of treatment for acute malnutrition, the report says, while the vast majority of children in Gaza are facing “extreme food deprivation.”
Though food insecurity issues eased slightly amid the short ceasefire earlier this year, those gains have been erased by Israel’s renewed blockade and attacks, IPC researchers found. UN agencies have run out of food stocks entirely, while prices for commercial goods have skyrocketed. The cost of flour, for instance, has risen by 3,000 percent since February, according to the UN.
The number of Palestinians in crisis level hunger indicates that “hunger-related death is rapidly increasing, with a risk of >100 dying per day,” wrote international law expert Tom Dannenbaum on social media. “And merely avoiding death does not mean escaping torturous suffering.”
As Dannenbaum and other experts have pointed out, official famine determinations by international experts rely on extremely high thresholds and “are retrospective determinations of massive failure,” Dannenbaum said. “By definition, they arrive too late.”
“The risk of famine does not arrive suddenly. It unfolds in places where access to food is blocked, where health systems are decimated, and where children are left without the bare minimum to survive,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell in a statement. “Hunger and acute malnutrition are a daily reality for children across the Gaza Strip.”
“19 months into the war. According to IPC, half a million people in Gaza face starvation. More than two weeks ago, [UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)] and [World Food Programme] ran out of food,” UNRWA said. “The only thing entering Gaza now is bombs.”