The spectre of mass starvation is looming ever closer in Gaza as the brutal Israeli assault on the Strip enters its fifth month.
Amidst a landscape of total destruction, epidemic diseases are spreading due to a lack of clean water, bodies are rotting beneath the ubiquitous rubble, and polluted ground water, contaminated food, and overcrowding are daily facts of life.
The dire conditions are aggravated by a collapsed healthcare sector and the lack of proper sanitation facilities, medicines, and healthcare services. Nearly two million displaced people out of a pre-war population of 2.4 million are struggling to survive on less than a bare minimum of food and water in shelters, public buildings, and the homes of friends.
In a recent report, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative, which is used by UN and other organisations, warned of the high risk of famine in Gaza, saying that the risk increases with every day the war continues.
At least one in four households in Gaza, or more than half a million people, fall into what the report calls Phase 5: Catastrophe. The most severe alert, this signifies that the households are “experiencing an extreme lack of food, starvation, and the exhaustion of coping capacities.”
Another 1.17 million people, or about 50 per cent of the population, are in Phase 4: Emergency, signifying that the spectre of starvation is very real.
The report observes that between 8 December 2023 and 7 February 2024, the entire population of the Gaza Strip (about 2.2 million people) is classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse). “This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country,” it says.
Other organisations have also warned of the severe and widespread malnutrition and hunger in Gaza. Particularly at risk are thousands of nursing mothers, who as a consequence of malnutrition and insufficient food are unable to breastfeed their children at a time when infant formula is unavailable.
In January, the UN children’s agency UNICEF reported that “Gaza’s 335,000 children under five years of age [are] especially vulnerable” and projected that “in the next few weeks, child wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition in children, could increase from pre-crisis conditions by nearly 30 per cent, affecting up to 10,000 children.”
With food supply and healthcare systems in Gaza on the verge of complete collapse, more than 80 per cent of the children there are now suffering from severe food poverty. More than two-thirds of the Strip’s remaining hospitals are no longer able to function due to shortages of fuel, water, and vital medical supplies.
More than 155,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers and more than 135,000 children under the age of two are at the risk of malnutrition, the perils of which are aggravated by stress and trauma.
The Israeli starvation campaign against the people of Gaza was launched by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant on 9 October, when he proclaimed that “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting against human animals.”
Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza-based Government Media Office, affirmed that the Israeli plan was in full swing. The inhabitants of northern Gaza who have so far survived Israel’s indiscriminate carpet bombing are now staring at death by starvation.
“More than 400,000 Palestinians are facing real famine in northern Gaza,” Al-Thawabta told Al-Ahram Weekly, stressing the urgency of increasing the delivery of food and other humanitarian relief through the Rafah Crossing.
Anas Musallam, Food Security Operations coordinator for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Gaza, told the Weekly that “a fully-fledged famine is unfolding in the northern Gaza Strip because of the measures undertaken by the occupation power to prevent food supplies from reaching nearly half a million people who are trapped there.”
“The price of a kg of flour has soared to about $15, which most of them couldn’t afford even under normal circumstances.”
“The signs of famine began to appear when canned goods ran out,” Musallam continued. “Gazans have been relying on canned food since the start of the Israeli aggression. Then flour ran out, which forced people to start grinding maize and barley which are normally used to make animal feed.”
According to Musallam, at most 47 food trucks a day are currently allowed to pass through the Rafah Crossing, whereas a minimum of 100 trucks a day are needed to provide adequate nutrition to the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons in southern and central Gaza.
Only six bakeries are still in operation in Rafah and two in Deir Al-Balah, he said. “These can’t possibly provide enough bread for all the displaced people.”
“Thousands of Palestinians are at grave risk of famine,” UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA Media Adviser Adnan Abu Hasna said in a statement to the Weekly.
“Everyone must do everything in their power to save them. Donor nations in particular must act immediately to deliver the necessary amounts of food and ensure it reaches the people of Gaza, especially in the north.”
“We have recorded a huge increase in the numbers of households in desperate need of flour and other vital food supplies in northern Gaza. Famine looms over the Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, the Jabaliya Refugee Camp, Jabaliya town, and Gaza City neighbourhoods where, sadly, animal feed has become the only alternative to flour.”
Abu Hasna fears that if trucks do not reach the most imperilled neighbourhoods of northern Gaza with lifesaving food and relief, many people will literally starve to death.
Palestinian political analyst Nidal Khadra drew attention to a sensible, if not the only, immediate solution. “Why not support the call for a global campaign to airdrop humanitarian aid on the besieged Gaza Strip,” he asked.
He noted that an online petition towards this end has already collected over 15,000 signatures. The petition urges the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE to form a humanitarian coalition to break the blockade of Gaza by air.
This humanitarian airbridge could bypass the restrictions and bottlenecks the Israeli occupation authorities impose at the Rafah and Karam Abu Salem Crossings. He appealed to all supporters of the Palestinian people to support the initiative by signing the online petition. (at https://chng.it/dcnRQ8tgX2).
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry stressed that the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza is obstructing any international mechanism that seeks to convey relief to the civilian population. It also warned that Israel will attempt to replace international mechanisms with mechanisms of its own that will neither not meet the urgency of the current situation.
Spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza Hisham Muhanna also warned of the perilous conditions under a siege that is depriving millions of people of the minimum requirements for life and of food, medicine, and clean water as well as fuel and heating.
Over 80 per cent of the pre-war population of the Gaza Strip faces food insecurity, he said.
He stressed that international law states that civilians in wartime and under siege must be assured the basic means of survival, which means that humanitarian support must be allowed to continue in a sustainable and safe manner.
For this to happen, it is vital to increase the pressure on Israel and all other concerned parties to facilitate the entry of the largest possible amount of life-saving humanitarian support into Gaza, including food, medicine, and fuel, and to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers in their efforts to reach the neediest people wherever they may be, Muhanna said.
In yet another poignant sign of the calamitous situation in Gaza, the corpses of dead animals have begun to litter the roads of Gaza City and the Jabalia Refugee Camp. Feeble and emaciated cats and dogs are scavenging through rubbish for crumbs, with often their only food coming from the corpses of dead birds or those of other animals rotting in streets after starving to death.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 February, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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