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On the brink of famine
Nowhere in Gaza is safe for children, warned UNICEF, in a report on children caught in the two-year conflict between Israel and Palestine. AP reports that over 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including 18,592 children and 9,782 women. Ninety percent of residents have been displaced in the longest blockade since the conflict began. No food or commercial goods are allowed in, blocking Gazans’ access to basic services, food, clean water, and medical supplies.
International humanitarian agencies warn that Israel’s siege and blockades have pushed 2 million people in Gaza to the brink of famine. At a briefing hosted by American Community Media on August 8 to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, experts renewed calls for international intervention to avert catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation, emphasizing the moral imperative to feed Gaza and its children.
The panel included Alex de Waal, an expert on famine and mass atrocity who is Executive Director, World Peace Foundation, at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University; Budour Hassan, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and Palestine, and Afeef Nessouli, a journalist and aid worker who spent nine weeks volunteering in Gaza.
Sieges and blockades
The roots of Gaza’s crisis lie in back-to-back sieges and military blockades imposed by Israel following the October 7 attack on civilians by Hamas in 2023. Before that, said Dr de Waal, “The nutrition and health status of the population was generally good.” There were high rates of vaccination and health coverage, but Gaza’s two million people were entirely dependent upon supplies of food, medicine, water, and fuel, controlled by Israel.
The air and land military campaign that followed in October 2023 destroyed indispensable objects for survival, leading to mass displacement of Palestinians, overcrowding in shelters, and the breakdown of Gaza’s social fabric. In international law, the term indispensable objects for survival “includes food, water, sanitation, housing, medical care, etc.,” explained de Waal. “There was mass displacement. There were evacuation orders for the population, so people had to leave their homes and were crowded into areas that were desperately overcrowded.”
Data confirms famine levels
The World Food Program reports that more than 500,000 people – nearly a quarter of Gaza’s population – are enduring famine-like conditions,
The latest data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) also warns that two out of the three famine thresholds have now been breached in parts of the territory. Set up by the UN, the IPC early warning system measures the level of humanitarian need in crisis-affected areas, explained de Waal.
“It draws on three different types of data; food security data – that is what people are eating and what they are doing in order to eat that food, child malnutrition, and evidence for excess deaths. It has five levels, normal, stressed, crisis, emergency, and then the worst level, famine or catastrophe. And what we saw between November of 2023 and December of 2024 was the population going right up to the famine level, but not quite breaking it.”
De Waal added that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites to provide aid to Gazans were unsafe, leading to deaths of people trying to get food. The Israeli military has blamed Hamas and armed gangs for stealing food, leaving vulnerable Gazans without supplies. “You have these huge crowds of people rushing to get food from a place that is only open for a few minutes,” said de Waal. “More than 800 have been killed in trying to get it.”
Deathtraps & Potatoes
Journalist and aid worker Afeef Nessouli spent nine weeks volunteering in Gaza. He called the GHF sites dangerous, disorganized ‘deathtraps’ which had replaced about 400 community kitchens that delivered hot meals to people in red zones. “A big loss is that these community kitchens now have no supplies to work with. On June 1, I was at a community kitchen called Shabab, which had just recently shut down and had let another NGO sort of take over the kitchen, and all they had to work with were potatoes.”
The GHFs, added Nessouli, were just another strategy “of eradicating and really bringing a lot of pain to the people, rather than relief.”
Severe restrictions on food supplies
Gazans are not only now facing a breakdown in distribution but a complete collapse of food availability. “It’s the poorest 20% the poorest quarter, that are really at risk,” warned de Waal. “I fear that as that escalation kicks in, as the number of children in particular who are starving increases so rapidly every day, it will be that much harder to stabilize the situation, to return to normal.”
Severe restrictions on food and medical supplies have led to mass displacement and starvation, said Budour Hassan, a researcher at Amnesty International. She has investigated and documented the situation in Palestine since 2022, and reported that a humanitarian crisis had existed long before October 2023, following Israeli control and restriction of food entry and supply. “We’ve been seeing some manifestations over a period of time, for decades, really. And now we’re seeing the worst.”
The Flour Massacres
In December 2024, Amnesty published a report stating that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians based on continued military operations in Gaza. The analysis focused on killings of group members, infliction of mental and physical harm, and deliberate destruction of life conditions. Hassan said they observed a “deadly mix of hunger and disease at one point, especially in February and March 2024, that was most tangible and visible in the north of the hazard strip.” People were ordered out of the area, but hundreds of thousands remained. “We were seeing how there were even more severe restrictions on entry of food and entry of medical supplies, and more stringent blockade being imposed specifically on the area of northern Gaza.”
When Israeli forces allowed trucks carrying flour and supplies, they were besieged by thousands of desperate, starving people, in what are referred to as the flour massacres. “Some of them, at that point in northern Gaza, had to resort to eating animal feed.”
Breakdown of social fabric
Gazans were traditionally tight-knit communities who cared for each other, said Hassan. “There is this very strong social fabric, cohesion, togetherness, communal aid.” But blockades and ensuing starvation have ripped apart the fabric of society in what Hassan describes as an “incredibly challenging, emotionally searing period” for Gaza’s Palestinians. “Once the need to individually survive or to save the family starts taking over, …. then the fight over the very meager resources allowed in starts kicking in.”
Their infrastructure worsens said Hassan, as Israel continues to deny the entry of heavy machinery necessary for reconstruction, removal of rubble, and makeshift housing; no go military zones include some of the most fertile agricultural lands and fishing areas were off limits; a week after the total siege, Israel disconnected the electricity grid connected to the only operational desalination plant paid for by the Palestinian Authority, cutting off Gaza’s access to clean water.
Re-escalation
The re-escalation of military action on 18 March was one of “the most horrific nights that Palestinians in Gaza ever lived,” said Hassan, in which over 400 people were killed, 180 of whom were children, on just one night. Disproportionate and discriminatory attacks on civilian housing have led to overcrowded hospitals filled with injured people.
In early April, fears of imminent starvation emerged in interviews with doctors. As Israel resumed issuing mass displacement orders under the threat of bombardment, Gazans were forced to leave behind everything, sources of food production and medical supplies.
“We started receiving calls, appeals from parents whose children were infants (in particular), were struggling for food, struggling to get baby formula,” said Hassan. As profiteers started hoarding or selling food at exorbitant prices, Israel began razing areas across the eastern Gaza where people plant crops that provide vegetables in markets. “Many greenhouses were destroyed exactly at the time that starvation reached its worst,” said Hassan.
As people desperately fought over packages, boxes, even scraps of food, “so many people we’ve talked to said ‘we felt like animals’,” added Hasan. “It was clear to us that there was this process of dehumanization taking place.”
Hospitals near collapse
In early August, UN News reported that Gaza hospitals were near total collapse. A completely devastated health sector system is now contending with the spread of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), caused partly by overcrowding, and triggered by diarrhea, which is spreading, as are cases of meningitis.
A mother who was breastfeeding her four-month-old infant said she felt guilty about giving birth, said Hassan, because she had a three-year-old baby she could not feed. “What breaks her (said the mother), I am weak before my children. I can’t hear their cries. Once, I had to beat my child to sleep because he was crying so hard, and there was nothing I could do to help him.” Her husband, who went to seek aid, returned injured.
Nobody sees their humanity, said Hassan. “And this sentence, when you hear it from someone in Gaza, we don’t feel like the world sees us as human, I think it captures everything.”
Children caught in a conflict
As Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from entering the enclave, Gazans face starvation and malnutrition. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warns that more than 320,000 children – the entire population under the age of five in Gaza – are at risk of acute malnutrition. Malnourished children are more vulnerable to infections; according to UNICEF, “9 out of 10 children under 5 in Gaza are suffering from one or more infectious diseases.”
The escalating number of children with severe, acute malnutrition needs to be in hospital, said de Waal. “We need, you know, intensive care units across Gaza.”
A firsthand account
Journalist Afeef Nessouli served as a humanitarian aid worker in Gaza from March 27 to June 3, and saw starvation develop among the people he was with. “By March 27, people were rationing food. People were already hungry. I had a friend who had already lost 85 pounds.”
“I can substantiate that with doctors at Nasser and Al Aqsa that I was working with every day who saw their patients struggling with explosive injuries while also being skin and bones.” Nessouli himself lost 12 pounds because food was scarce. “I was hungry myself. I ate once a day for a month and a half.”
The reality on the ground, added Nessouli, is that “Palestine is being robbed of itself.” Gazans being pulled out of rubble are getting shot at or hit by drone quadcopters; 83% of the farmland is not cultivatable, fishing fleets have been destroyed, and the market price for tomatoes is skyrocketing. There is no flour, an onion costs $3 when a kilo once cost $3, and tuna cans cost over $10 each. In hospitals, doctors lack supplies like morphine to treat patients.
“There’s no other way to say it. They’re being tortured before your eyes,” said Nessouli.
Calls for intervention
UNICEF last week called for more humanitarian and commercial traffic to come into Gaza to combat the spiraling death rates that accompany aid blockades, war, and hunger. “We need to flood Gaza with large-scale food aid, immediately and without obstruction, and keep it flowing each and every day to prevent mass starvation,” said Cindy McCain, WFP Executive Director.
Professor de Waal, who is Jewish and whose family were victims of Russian and Nazi pogroms, acknowledged that Hamas’ actions on October 7 and its treatment of hostages are unforgivable, but added, “Why should the population of Gaza be punished for what Hamas did?”
De Waal urged Israel to allow journalists inside Gaza to observe the truth and what needs to be done. To avert impending tragedy, said de Waal, UNICEF needed to be able to do its job. “The United Nations has the resources, the capacity, the plans, the skills, everything which can act…. to not allow it to do that, it’s criminal.”
The people of Gaza have been pushed to the brink, he added, without any viable form of safety net assistance. “One of the things that really comes out very strongly is the sense of humiliation, dehumanization that comes with starvation.”
As a social anthropologist and aid worker for more than 40 years, de Waal emphasized the core principle of humanity. “The moment when you really see famine is when, instead of a family being able to share bread, break bread together, they fight for bread. When you get that breakdown, that is, as it were, the dividing line between what it is to be a human and what it is to be an animal.”
This article was written with support from the American Community Media Fellowship Program.