The result, according to a global initiative that tracks food insecurity, is “imminent” famine for parts of Gaza. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said in a report this month that all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people face high levels of acute food insecurity.
“The
situation in Gaza is catastrophic,” said the report. “Famine is projected and imminent in the northern governates and there is a risk of Famine across the rest of the Gaza Strip.”
Israel has said reports of hunger in Gaza are exaggerations.
“As much as we know, by our analysis, there is no starvation in Gaza,” Col. Moshe Tetro, the head of the Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza, told reporters at a crossing point recently “There is sufficient amount of food entering Gaza every day.”
In northern Gaza, the IPC report noted, people have been scavenging from destroyed buildings and eating animal feed, but even those resources are running out. Much of the agricultural land is damaged, along with the infrastructure required to cultivate crops.
With only two entry points, both in the south, trucks have to traverse miles of rubble-filled landscape.
The problem is compounded because aid groups, especially the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,
known as UNRWA, have had their movements restricted by Israel and their facilities and staff hit in the fighting.
Since Oct. 7, 171 agency workers have been killed in Israeli bombardment, an average of one a day, the agency says, and more than 160 of its facilities have been struck, including warehouses and distribution centers, Touma said.
UNRWA head
Philippe Lazzarini said this week in a post on X that Israel told the agency its convoys would no longer be allowed to travel into the north of the Gaza Strip.