Gaza faces ‘critical’ famine risk, experts say, as Israel blocks aid

One in five Gazans are facing starvation, while the entire territory is at critical risk of famine that is projected to worsen in the coming months, the globe’s leading body on food emergencies said Monday.

The report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, or IPC, came in the midst of a more than two-month-long aid blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip that Israeli officials say is designed to pressure Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. Aid organizations and the United Nations have called for an end to the siege and described it as a policy of “cruel collective punishment.” Legal experts and rights groups say it violates international law.

According to the data published by the IPC, a panel developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, at least 244,000 people – or 12% of the population – were classified as living in IPC Phase 5, the most severe level of food insecurity before famine, otherwise known as “catastrophe,” based on its latest snapshot assessment from April 1 to Saturday. By September, it projects that 470,000 people will be in that category: the entire population facing acute food insecurity if conditions persist.

“This really has become an unprecedented crisis when it comes to hunger and acute levels of food insecurity,” Beth Bechdol, deputy director of the FAO, told the Washington Post in an interview Monday. “It’s very clear that famine is looming.”

A ceasefire that Israel broke in March had alleviated the acute food insecurity and malnutrition conditions across parts of Gaza, the IPC report found, as humanitarian organizations surged the amount of aid into the territory. Those gains have been reversed, the report said, and the situation is a “significant deterioration” compared with the last assessment in October 2024.

David Mencer, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, said in a statement Monday that despite several IPC warnings, “famine has never happened” in Gaza and that if there is hunger in Gaza, it is caused by Hamas. Israel has repeatedly denied that there are food shortages in the territory and has asserted, without providing evidence, that Hamas has systematically siphoned off aid meant for civilians. Leading international humanitarian organizations reject both claims.

While the IPC stopped short of declaring a famine in Gaza, Bechdol said that the enclave has the world’s largest percentage of a population in the most severe category of its five-tier classification system. To declare a famine, Bechdol explains, three specific criteria must be met: First, 20 percent of all households must face an extreme food shortage, one-third of children must be acutely malnourished, and at least 2 in every 10,000 people must die every day because of outright starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease. Gaza meets the threshold on the first criterion, but the IPC analysis has yet to fully demonstrate that Gaza meets the other two criteria, Bechdol said.

“We are as close as we have been to the brink of famine since the beginning of hostilities in October of 2023,” Bechdol said, when Hamas launched an offensive on southern Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and sparked the war.

The price of wheat flour, the IPC report found, has risen to the equivalent of $47 for five pounds in Gaza City and Khan Younis, a 3,000 percent increase from February.

A third of households reported collecting garbage to sell for food, the report found, as families resort to increasingly desperate coping strategies.

More than 116,000 metric tons of food aid have been sitting in position along the aid corridors into Gaza, the U.N children’s agency, UNICEF, and the World Food Program said, adding that it represents enough food to feed 1 million people for four months.

“Families in Gaza are starving while the food they need is sitting at the border,” said U.N. World Food Program executive director Cindy McCain. “If we wait until a famine is confirmed, it will already be too late for many people.”

At the Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza City, director Bakr Qaoud told The Post that he has seen a rise in malnutrition cases over the past two weeks. One young girl died. The hospital sees 40 to 50 malnourished patients a week, he said.

“The main reason for the malnutrition in these cases is the lack of available animal proteins and healthy foods,” he said.

Among the children who sought care is 12-year-old Rahaf Ayad, said her mother, Shorouq Ayad, 34. Eight months ago, the girl first started to suffer from inflammation in her leg. A doctor said it might be caused by liver and kidney dysfunction linked to malnutrition and dirty water. The family couldn’t provide her with fresh vegetables and milk. Now, her daughter can barely walk.

Amid rising desperation, a spate of looting incidents by armed men and hunger-stricken Gazans have shocked and scared many in the Strip in recent weeks. Last month, about 50 armed men, followed by a massive crowd of hungry civilians, raided a hotel belonging to West Bank-based businessman Bashar al-Masri, who ran a network of soup kitchens out of the building. People stole food, furniture and more, Masri said.

Other looting incidents have targeted storehouses, community kitchens and bystanders on the street.

“Due to repeated incidents of looting and assaults on aid, field teams have been instructed to switch to a daily delivery system to shelters based on needs and priority,” an internal briefing paper from an organization working in Gaza wrote in early May.