Global hunger experts are alarmed by the severity of famine conditions already present in the Gaza Strip and by how rapidly starvation is spreading through the population of the war-torn Palestinian territory.
“Uniquely distressing about the Gaza situation is the speed of deterioration,” said Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University. He spoke during an April 10 online discussion hosted by Refugees International.
“Severe acute malnutrition six months ago was very low. It was a very food insecure population, but actual measures of malnutrition were remarkably low,” he explained. “The deterioration is progressing at an unprecedented speed.”
Famine conditions have accelerated since Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last October in retaliation for Hamas attacks that killed about 1,500 people, most of them civilians, and led to the seizure of 253 hostages. Israeli air and ground forces have since pulverized much of the territory — and killed more than 30,000 Palestinians — in an ongoing campaign to destroy the Palestinian terror group.
But many of those who have so far dodged Israeli bullets and bombs are dying from starvation and other medical consequences resulting from severe malnutrition, de Waal and other experts said during the panel discussion.
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Moderator and Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk explained the famine level in Gaza according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a five-phase measure of food insecurity. The first phase is zero or minimal food insecurity, the second is acute food insecurity, the third is acute food crisis, and the fourth phase declares a food-insecurity emergency. Phase 5 signals outright famine.
“This global system for monitoring and assessing famine risk has assessed that the entire population of the Gaza Strip is in a massive food crisis in IPC — phase 3 or above. That’s the entire population. It is unprecedented, historically, to have 100% of a population in IPC phase 3 and above. It’s an extraordinary thing.”
Still more astonishing is to have more than 1 million Gazans experiencing catastrophic famine conditions, he said. “Certainly, in my career I cannot remember a time when that share of a population has been an IPC phase 5. Even in something like the 2011 famine in Somalia, the share of the population by phase 5 was considerably below that.”
The challenges of addressing the burgeoning famine conditions are immense, said Nuha Bashir, a Palestinian who fled Gaza recently and is volunteering with Global Empowerment Mission to send aid to the territory.
She described the mass destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and mosques, with untold numbers of people still trapped beneath the rubble. “Since the beginning of this war, there has been a total cut-off of power, water and food entering into Gaza.”
More than 80% of Gazans already were dependent on humanitarian assistance before the war began on Oct. 7. Even then, tens of thousands were barely getting by, Bashir said.
“But now people are really dying. Everyone has lost more than a quarter of their body weight due to the lack of food, and that is true for children, too. Aid groups are struggling to get food to 300,000 cut off in north Gaza, where people are facing huge challenges finding food.”
The situation worsened after April 2 when seven World Aid Kitchen humanitarian workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza, she said. “The process of moving in Gaza is a tougher process. It’s very complicated. A lot of our partners are trying to support Gaza, to send in food and aid through Egypt, through Jordan or the maritime corridor.”
“No one will be able to scale up operations supporting Gaza unless there is a cease-fire that opens more entry points and a safe operating environment for humanitarian aid workers.”
Drastic actions are needed to address the challenge, she said. “No one will be able to scale up operations supporting Gaza unless there is a ceasefire that opens more entry points and a safe operating environment for humanitarian aid workers.”
In response to the rising death toll from military operations and news of famine, the Biden administration has been pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. American officials in Cairo recently proposed Israel release higher numbers of Hamas prisoners in exchange for the freedom of the remaining Israeli hostages, CNN reported.
But, it will remain extremely difficult to deliver aid, especially to hardest-hit north Gaza, even when a ceasefire is declared, said Nahreen Ahmed, medical director of MedGlobal, an international medical aid group.
“To get north you need to join a UN convoy” using specialized armored vehicles. “There’s really no other way to get up there at this moment. The roads are absolutely destroyed.”
Ahmed said she witnessed the effects of the conflict on aid workers during a recent visit to Gaza: “The first thing I noticed is their weight loss. That’s one of the first things they talked about when I asked them how they’re doing — they mentioned their lack of access to food and how much weight they have lost.”
Zeina Jamaluddine, a research fellow with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, noted starvation in Gaza is exacerbated by an ongoing water shortage that is limiting Gazans to less than 2 pints a day.
And worse still, sanitary conditions in Gaza already have become bad enough to spark a rise in infectious disease, she said. “My worry, and the worry of a lot of humanitarian actors, is the combination between a cholera outbreak and acute malnutrition. This is where we’re going to see an exponential increase in mortality. The current time to act is yesterday.”
But de Waal said it will take a global humanitarian effort to address the suffering in Gaza. “A humanitarian crisis is like a very fast-moving freight train. If the driver puts on the brakes — if we have everything that we’re calling for now — it is still going to take a long time for this disaster to come to a halt. It can’t be stopped overnight.”