A UN official called for urgent action regarding the deepening of famine in the Gaza Strip, noting that this is the first time famine has been confirmed in the Middle East, WAFA news agency reported.
Speaking at a press conference last Wednesday, Jean-Martin Bauer, Director of Food Security and Nutrition Analysis at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), emphasized the findings from the latest report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative.
Bauer underscored that famine represents “severe food deprivation, widespread acute malnutrition, and deaths from hunger.” He stressed the importance of protecting data systems that will guide humanitarian responses.
On Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system said 514,000 people, close to a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza, are experiencing famine, with the number due to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.
This comes after 22 months of genocidal war, during which the Zionist occupation forces have destroyed infrastructure and bakeries, blocked the entry of aid into the besieged Strip, and targeted and killed desperate Palestinians seeking food.
It was the first time the IPC has recorded famine outside of Africa, and the global group predicted that famine conditions would spread to the central and southern areas of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of next month.
It added that the situation in the further north could be even worse than in Gaza City, but limited data prevented any precise classification.
“It is a famine that we could have prevented had we been allowed,” said U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher. “Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Gaza famine was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”. Moreover, U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk warned that deaths from starvation could amount to a war crime.
“This famine is the direct consequence of Israel’s deliberate campaign of starvation in Gaza,” Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said in a statement.
She said the IPC’s famine declaration is “a scathing indictment of the failure of states to press Israel into ending its genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip”.
“The deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid, the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, and the direct killings of civilians are a clear manifestation of how Israel is inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as part of its ongoing genocide,” she said.
“History will never forgive us for standing by as emaciated children die, while food remains just miles away, yet blocked by Israel.”
