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Half of the population in Gaza is on the brink of famine, an international early warning system set up by governments and NGOs said on Monday.
Under the most likely scenario, in which Israeli forces launch a ground offensive against Rafah, 1.1 million people will face “catastrophic” conditions by mid-July, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in its latest analysis.
That represents a 92 percent rise since the last IPC forecast in December.
“The situation in Gaza is catastrophic,” the report states. “Famine is projected and imminent in the northern governates and there is a risk of famine across the rest of the Gaza Strip.”
The IPC, an internationally recognized assessment method, uses a five-point scale to classify food insecurity. The highest is Phase 5: Catastrophe or Famine.
It warned that an upward trend in non-trauma mortality is expected to accelerate. That means all lower famine thresholds will be passed “imminently.”
“We’re in trouble with regards to food,” Cindy McCain, head of the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP), told POLITICO in an interview in Brussels on the sidelines of a humanitarian forum, in response to the IPC’s warning.
The main challenge, said McCain, was that aid workers have not been allowed access to provide food and avert starvation, along with the need for a ceasefire.
“It’s been very frustrating for us because we have food outside on the border of Egypt and Jordan […] we would be able to feed 2.2 million people for three or four months like that,” McCain said. “We have the food ready to go in, we just can’t get in.”
The famine crisis is deepening as Israeli forces press a devastating ground offensive in retribution against the October 7 attacks, in which Hamas militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostage.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied in a March 10 interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company, that people were starving in Gaza. He blamed Hamas for the lack of humanitarian aid entering the occupied territory.
Responding to the dire IPC assessment, top European Union officials called the hunger crisis in Gaza “unprecedented.”
“No IPC analysis has ever recorded such levels of food insecurity anywhere in the world,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s top foreign affairs official, and EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič.
“Life-threatening levels of acute malnutrition have risen at an alarming rate since the last report, and we are already witnessing with horror the death of children due to starvation,” they added in a joint statement.
“Hunger cannot be used as a weapon of war. What we are seeing is not a natural hazard but a man-made disaster, and it is our moral duty to stop it.”
In February, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners planned 24 relief missions to northern Gaza, of which only six were facilitated by Israeli authorities.
The WFP last Tuesday delivered its first successful convoy to northern Gaza since February 20. On Sunday night, another convoy with 18 trucks reached Gaza City. Addressing basic food needs, however, requires at least 300 trucks to enter Gaza every day, the U.N. agency estimates.
