Food experts say famine ‘imminent’ in northern Gaza
U.N.-aligned group has only sounded as severe an alarm twice in existence
The acute food shortage in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip has become so severe “famine is imminent” and the enclave is on the verge of a “major acceleration of deaths and malnutrition,” a report from a global authority on food security and nutrition said Monday.
The group, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative, which was set up in 2004 by U.N. agencies and international relief groups, has sounded the alarm about famine only twice before: in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017.
The warning came as Israeli forces again raided Shifa Hospital in the northern part of the enclave Monday, in an operation they said had been aimed at senior Hamas officials who had regrouped on the premises, setting off an hourslong battle that both sides said had resulted in casualties.
The raid at Shifa, in Gaza City, raised questions about the level of control Israeli forces have over northern Gaza. In December, the Israeli military said it was nearing “full operational control” there.
Taken together, the fighting and the severe food shortage underlined the chaos and desperation in Gaza after 23 weeks of war. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres renewed his call Monday for “an immediate humanitarian cease-fire” and said the report on imminent famine was “an appalling indictment of conditions on the ground for civilians.”
As Israeli negotiators arrived in Qatar for a new round of talks on a cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas and its allies, President Joe Biden had a phone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday, according to Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser.
Biden relayed he was “deeply concerned” about the prospect of Israel’s next phase in the war, an incursion into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, which is filled with families displaced from other parts of the territory, Sullivan said during a news briefing.
Netanyahu agreed to send a team of military and humanitarian officials to Washington to hear the administration’s concerns, according to Sullivan. Biden, who asked Netanyahu for the visit, also requested the Israeli delegation offer an alternative proposal to target senior Hamas leaders without a major invasion.
The call occurred as the global initiative’s report stressed as many as 1.1 million people in Gaza would most likely experience “catastrophic” shortages of food. The group said the continued fighting and aid organizations’ lack of access to northern Gaza, the first part of the territory Israeli forces invaded in October after the attack by Hamas, had made conditions particularly acute there.
Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesperson, pushed back on the report, calling it an “out-of-date picture” that “does not take into account the latest developments on the ground,” including major humanitarian initiatives last week. He also said Israel was taking “proactive measures” to expand aid delivery in northern Gaza.
In recent weeks, some foreign leaders have been increasingly blunt in blaming Israel for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. At the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, accused Israel of “provoking famine.”
Starvation is being used as “a weapon of war,” he said.
In December, the group said famine could occur within six months in Gaza unless the fighting stopped immediately and more humanitarian supplies made it into the territory. “Since then, the conditions necessary to prevent famine have not been met,” the report said.