Desperate scenes
But aid groups now warn the situation is the most dire of the entire war, with humanitarian support to Gaza on the brink of collapse.
Many foods have disappeared from the markets, and what’s left has spiralled in price and is unaffordable to most. Farmland is mostly destroyed or inaccessible, and water distribution is grinding to a halt, largely because of a lack of fuel.
Palestinian children at a community kitchen in the Gaza Strip.Credit: AP
A child rests while struggling to obtain food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, Gaza, last Friday.Credit: AP
Communal kitchens handing out cooked meals are virtually the only remaining source of sustenance for most people, but they too are rapidly shutting down for lack of stocks.
Thousands of Palestinians crowd daily outside the public kitchens, pushing and jostling with their pots to receive lentils or pasta.
‘We eat once a day, at noon, and that’s it. I feel like I can’t breathe when I see my brothers and sisters are still hungry.’
Ahmed al-Nems
“We end up waiting in line for four or five hours, in the sun. It is exhausting,” said Riham Sheikh el-Eid, waiting at a kitchen in the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday.
“At the end, we walk away with nothing. It is not enough for everybody.”
Construction worker Ahmed Mohsen, 30, told The New York Times he had spent about two hours standing in line to fill a pot with plain rice. “Imagine you haven’t tasted meat, a boiled egg or even an apple in months,” Mohsen said.
Grocer Ahmed al-Nems, 32, told the Times he lives on the occasional can of food and a stockpile of flour, lentils and kidney beans that his family hopes can last for several weeks. His mother cooks on a fire made with torn-up shoes because there is no fuel.
“We eat once a day, at noon, and that’s it,” he said. “I feel like I can’t breathe when I see my brothers and sisters are still hungry,” he told the paper.
The UN humanitarian office last week said the number of children seeking treatment at clinics for malnutrition had doubled since February, even as supplies to treat them are quickly running out.
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“To the Israeli authorities, and those who can still reason with them, we say again: Lift this brutal blockade,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told The New York Times.
“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,” he said.
The lack of a famine declaration doesn’t mean people aren’t already starving, and a declaration shouldn’t be a precondition for ending the suffering, said Chris Newton, an analyst for the International Crisis Group focusing on starvation as a weapon of war.
“The Israeli government is starving Gaza as part of its attempt to destroy Hamas and transform the strip,” he said.
Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis on Sunday, May 11.Credit: AP
Food and water are running desperately short across Gaza.Credit: AP
Israel demands a new aid system
The Israeli military says enough aid entered Gaza during a two-month ceasefire that Israel shattered in mid-March when it relaunched its military campaign.
Israel says the blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds. It says it won’t let aid back in until a new system giving it control over distribution is in place, accusing Hamas of siphoning off supplies.
‘Silence in the face of this man-made starvation is complicity.’
Mahmoud Alsaqqa, Oxfam
The United States says it is working up a new mechanism that will start deliveries soon, but it has given no time frame.
The UN has so far refused to participate. It denies that substantial diversion of aid is taking place, saying the new system is unnecessary, will not meet the massive needs of Palestinians and will allow aid to be used as a weapon for political and military goals.
Monday’s IPC report said any slight gains made during the ceasefire have been reversed.
Mahmoud Alsaqqa, food security and livelihoods co-ordinator for Oxfam, called on governments to press Israel to allow “unimpeded humanitarian access.”
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“Silence in the face of this man-made starvation is complicity,” he said.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the group’s October 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel, in which militants killed some 1200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages, most of whom have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 52,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Three criteria for declaring famine
The IPC, first set up in 2004 during the famine in Somalia, groups more than a dozen UN agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies.
It has only declared famine a few times – in Somalia in 2011, and South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and last year in parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region.
Tens of thousands are believed to have died in Somalia and South Sudan.
It rates an area as in famine when at least two of three things occur: 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.
The assessment on Monday found that the first threshold was met in Gaza, saying 477,000 people – or 22 per cent of the population – are classified as in “catastrophic” hunger, the highest level, for the period from May 11 to the end of September.
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It said more than 1 million people were at “emergency” levels of hunger, the second-highest level, meaning they have “very high gaps” in food and high acute malnutrition.
The other thresholds were not met. The data was gathered in April and up to May 6. Food security experts say it takes time for people to start dying from starvation.
The report said if the blockade and military campaign continue, “the vast majority” in Gaza will not have access to food or water, civil unrest will worsen, health services will “fully collapse,” disease will spread, and levels of malnutrition and death will cross the thresholds into famine.
It had also warned of “imminent” famine in northern Gaza in March 2024, but the following month, Israel allowed an influx of aid under US pressure after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers.
