Famine is now officially declared in the Gaza Strip. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed international system that assesses the global food situation, published a new report this Friday confirming the level of famine in Gaza City and the other municipalities and refugee camps that make up the Gaza Governorate. This report has led the United Nations to officially declare famine in the Strip. This decision has only been made three times since the system's creation in 2004: in 2011 in Somalia, in 2017 in South Sudan, and in 2024 in Sudan. This is also the first time it has been declared outside of Africa.
The CIF alert also comes on the eve of an offensive by which the Israeli army intends to expel the million Gazans concentrated in Gaza City, in maneuvers that humanitarian organizations have warned will increase the number of deaths and suffering of the civilian population.
According to this report, 514,000 people, almost a quarter of the Palestinians in Gaza, are suffering from famine. This number is expected to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.
“The ICF report is a blatant lie,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu protested in a statement issued by his office. “Israel does not have a famine policy. Israel has a policy to prevent it.” He accused the ICF of falling prey to a “famine campaign orchestrated by Hamas,” and denounced this and other ICF reports for “ignoring Israel’s humanitarian efforts and Hamas’s systematic theft of supplies.” In July, leaks from senior Israeli military officials and an investigation by the US aid agency (USAID) refuted the existence of such systematic diversion.
"This is a famine just a few hundred meters from food, on fertile land," said Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, in a statement."This is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war," the British diplomat continued.
UN Human Rights spokesperson Jeremy Laurence has reiterated that deaths resulting from the use of hunger as a weapon may constitute a war crime of "intentional homicide." At least 273 people have died from hunger-related causes since October 2023 in the enclave, 112 of whom were children, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry reported Thursday.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, for his part, asserted that the declaration of famine"is no mystery." "It is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself," the Portuguese official told X."Children are dying, and the people who should be taking action are failing to do so. Israel, as the occupying power, is obligated under international law to guarantee food and medical resources to the population," he continued.
The ICF investigation calls for a ceasefire in the Strip to halt the spread of famine to other parts of the enclave, something it predicts will happen"in the coming weeks" in Deir el-Balah (center) and Khan Yunis (south) if things don't change on the ground.
The ICF considers famine levels in territories where 20% of households suffer from extreme food shortages, 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and the ratio of deaths caused by hunger exceeds two adults or four children per day per 10,000 inhabitants. It also indicates that at least two of these criteria are met. The ICF designation of"famine" is the worst-case scenario on a five-phase scale used by the ICF regarding a population's food security situation.
The IPC provides the analysis that enables governments, international organizations, and humanitarian agencies to issue the relevant declarations. In the case of Gaza, this decision was made by UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), all United Nations agencies. An official famine declaration serves to mobilize resources internationally.
Conditions to avoid invasion
Meanwhile, Israel continues to advance toward its ground assault and invasion of Gaza City. This Friday, Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to destroy the town, the largest Palestinian municipality, if Hamas rejects the main conditions it demands to end the war: the disarmament of the militia and the release of all captives.
Katz issued this warning in the same statement in which he announced that top Israeli officials approved plans Thursday night"to defeat Hamas in Gaza," referring to the operation that Israel has been preparing for two weeks to occupy the entirety of Gaza City, the largest municipality and capital of the Strip.
“The gates of hell will soon open upon the murderers and rapists of Hamas in Gaza,” the Israeli minister stated on social media. If Palestinian fighters do not accept Israel’s conditions to end the war, Gaza City “will become Rafah or Beit Hanoun,” he asserted, in a direct admission of the widespread destruction the Israeli army has wrought in those towns with massive bombings.
According to Katz, Israel's plans for the enclave are along the same lines, as they include"a lot of fire, evacuation of residents, and maneuvers."
On Thursday night, Netanyahu disconcerted both Israelis and Palestinians by announcing that he had given instructions to resume negotiations to release all captives. The statement marked the Israeli government's first reference to ceasefire talks since Hamas approved a truce proposal on Monday, which the Israeli government has not officially acknowledged four days later.
Despite this, the prime minister insisted that the offensive against Gaza City will continue until Hamas accepts peace"on Israel's terms," which entails the disarmament of the militia, the demilitarization of the enclave, the release of captives, Israeli security control over the Strip, and the creation of a civil administration independent of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
One million civilians are precariously concentrated in Gaza City. Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly warned that their forced displacement southward, as Israel intends, would have catastrophic consequences. Israel is ignoring these warnings. On Thursday, the Israeli army announced that it has instructed health officials and aid workers to prepare to leave Gaza City and move southward.
Hell on Earth
Israel threatens to bring hell to a land filled with want and suffering, which it has bombed relentlessly for nearly two years. During this time, the Israeli army has caused so much displacement that many Gazans have lost their belongings down to the clothes on their backs.
Arab media cite medical sources as saying that missiles have caused at least 30 deaths since Friday's attack. Of these, 25 have been recorded in Gaza City, where Israel has launched a significant portion of its attacks in recent days and where it says it is gradually concentrating troops and military infrastructure.
Local sources report an attack in a tent city in that municipality that killed five members of the same family: the father, the mother, and the three children. Images after the attack showed rescue teams collecting a tiny, charred, and unrecognizable body.
On Thursday, a study suggested that 83% of the casualties caused by Israeli shrapnel in Gaza were civilians. The report, promoted by The Guardian and local media, is based on classified Israeli military intelligence documents dated May 19. At the time, Israeli authorities had counted 8,900 Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighters as certain or probable deaths, while the Gaza health ministry counted a total of 52,982 fatalities.
According to these figures, civilians account for five out of every six deaths, a ratio of combatant to civilian casualties unparalleled in modern warfare, surpassing the crises in Syria or Sudan. These estimates ignore the 10,000 missing under the rubble that the Health Ministry excludes from the official death toll. In September, Netanyahu said that the ratio of civilian deaths per combatant killed during the Israeli offensive in Gaza was"the lowest in the history of modern urban warfare," asserting that it was at a ratio of one to one.
