'Worst-Case Scenario of Famine' Unfolding in Gaza: IPC Report

The latest alert on Gaza from the world's leading authority on starvation and malnutrition is not a warning of what could come in the besieged enclave, where Israel is still blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, but of the "worst-case scenario" that has already taken hold.

"Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip," said the Integrated Phase Food Security Classification (IPC), which ranks food security levels on a scale of 1 to 5, in its Tuesday analysis.

Since the IPC's analysis in May, in which it projected that half a million Palestinians in Gaza would reach Phase 5—Catastrophe, defined as an "extreme lack of food"—by September, Israel's bombardments and ground operations have intensified, and people's access to food across the enclave has continued to be "alarmingly erratic and extremely perilous," said the IPC, with more than 1,000 people killed while trying to access food and humanitarian aid.

Between May and July, the proportion of households facing extreme hunger has doubled in Gaza, said the IPC, and the food consumption threshold for famine "has already been passed for most areas of the Gaza Strip." One in three people in Gaza are now going days at a time without consuming any food.

At least 147 people have died from starvation, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

In May, the IPC projected that malnutrition would soon reach critical levels in the governorates of North Gaza, Gaza, and Rafah, with more than 70,000 children under age 5 and 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women facing acute malnutrition—and said all of Gaza was facing "a risk of famine."

Tuesday's report, said the International Rescue Committee, was "a devastating but entirely predictable confirmation of what the IRC and the wider humanitarian community have long warned: Israel's restrictions on aid have created the conditions for famine, and the window to prevent mass death is rapidly closing."

More than 20,000 children have been admitted to health centers for treatment for acute malnutrition, with more than 3,000 facing severe malnourishment—the effects of which, said the IRC, can be "lifelong and irreversible" in children who survive.

At least 16 children under 5 have died from starvation since July 17, said the IPC—representing a "rapid increase" in hunger-related deaths that is unlikely to slow down without an end to Israel's blockade and a major ramp-up in the distribution of humanitarian aid—which is currently sitting in thousands of trucks just outside the enclave, as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said Tuesday.

"The worst-case scenario of famine is now happening in Gaza according to the leading world experts," said Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA commissioner-general, whose agency has provided aid and services to Palestinians in Gaza for decades. "An entirely man-made famine. The threshold of famine has been reached with widespread starvation and malnutrition across the war-torn enclave including among children. More than 100 people have died due to hunger in the past few weeks alone. The only way to reverse this catastrophe is to flood Gaza with a massive scale up of aid."

An estimated 62,000 metric tons of staple food—not including fresh foods like vegetables and meat—is required to enter Gaza each month to cover the basic needs of the population. In May and June, only 19,900-37,800 metric tons of food entered the enclave. That includes food provided by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, where Israeli soldiers have reported that they were directed to shoot at Palestinian civilians trying to access aid.

"People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods," said U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu. "We urgently need safe and sustained humanitarian access and immediate support to restore local food production and livelihoods—this is the only way to prevent further loss of life. The right to food is a basic human right."
 

As international outrage has grown over the images of starving Palestinians in recent days—with even the U.S. corporate media and Democratic establishment finally speaking out against Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid—Israel has paused some fighting and allowed airdrops of food, which aid groups have condemned as a "grotesque distraction" that will provide nowhere near the aid that's needed.

"Israel's genocide has thrown Gaza into the final chaotic stages of a full-blown human catastrophe," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead for Oxfam in the occupied Palestinian territories. "Airdrops, and brief pauses for relative crumbs of aid, is nowhere near enough to prevent human death at an unimaginable scale. We need urgent forceful diplomacy and whatever restrictive measures are necessary in order to achieve an immediate and unconditional cease-fire, break Israel's siege, and allow humanitarian aid to flow freely and safely throughout Gaza."

As Common Dreams reported Monday, Republican leaders in the U.S. including President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have shown no signs that they will act on the new data in the IPC report; both continued to dismiss the international condemnation of Israel's blockade in Gaza, repeating debunked claims that Hamas is to blame for the starvation of Palestinians.

The U.S. has continued to provide the Israel Defense Forces with support despite its own laws stating that the U.S. cannot send military aid to countries that block humanitarian aid.

Khalidi said the IPC's new warning of "an unfolding famine—one created entirely by Israel's murderous siege—must finally rouse the international community to act with a clarity and resolve that has so far been beyond it."

"World leaders have been variously divided, complicit, uncaring, and collectively ineffectual in stopping Israel's campaign of erasure," said Khalidi. "In failing to protect the Palestinian people, they have no more excuses left. Ending Israel's genocide of Gaza is a test not only of our world order but of our collective humanity."