Weeks of restricted access to food in the Gaza Strip have resulted in severe famine and increasing risks of starvation in the besieged enclave.
Since early October, Israeli attacks across Gaza have damaged local bakeries and food warehouses, as well as roads used to transport humanitarian aid. Israel’s total blockade of the enclave has also restricted the entry of food, water and fuel.
How widespread is the famine in Gaza and what is the state of the food supply since the war? Here’s what we know.
What does the IPC report say about Gaza?
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents face high levels of acute food insecurity, according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report released Monday.
The IPC, which measures hunger-related risks, also reported on Thursday that 2.08 million people in Gaza face “acute food insecurity” which can be classified as risk phase three or above. organization.
The IPC has five phases of acute food insecurity, ranging from no food security (phase one) to disaster or famine (phase five). Phases three and five are considered a crisis and an emergency. “Acute” food insecurity is a short-term phenomenon and generally results from unusual or man-made shocks, whereas “chronic” food insecurity is a long-term phenomenon and results from insufficient livelihoods.
Between December and February, the entire population of Gaza is expected to go through phase three or higher, according to the United Nations-backed report.
If current hostilities and limited aid continue, Gaza is also at risk of famine in early February. The IPC definition of famine is when at least 20 percent of an area’s population falls into stage five of acute food insecurity.
What is access to food like in Gaza?
Families in Gaza have had to cope with the deteriorating quality and decreasing quantities of food, as well as the inability to prepare their meals due to lack of fuel.
Going a day without eating has become habitual. In early December, the World Food Program (WFP) reported that nine out of ten people in the enclave were skipping meals for long periods.
Nutritionally vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women, are at increased risk, while infant formula and milk are in severe shortage for the toddlers who rely on it.
Even preparing meals requires finding alternatives to cooking gas and, in addition to using firewood or cardboard, at least 13 percent of displaced people have been forced to burn solid waste, according to the WFP.
Hunger has also rapidly intensified since a brief truce ended in early December. Just 12 days after the survey was completed, WFP found that at least half of the IDPs surveyed knew someone who had resorted to eating raw meat.
Access to water is also scarce, with less than two liters (0.5 gallons) available per person per day – a far cry from the 15 liters needed to survive, according to the WFP.
What level of food aid is arriving in Gaza?
Since October 7, the number of trucks carrying food entering Gaza in a month has fallen by more than half, compared to at least 10,000 trucks before the war.
In two months of war, only 1,249 trucks carrying food aid have arrived in Gaza, the WFP reported on December 6. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also reported that during the first 70 days of the war, only 10 percent of the food needed for Gaza’s entire population entered the enclave.
The WFP has recommended that at least 100 trucks carrying only food and water enter Gaza per day, but most days since the war even the total number of trucks entering has been lower than that figure. The agency also noted that damaged roads near Rafah, on the border with Egypt – from where humanitarian aid is now dispersed – cannot support this increase.
At the height of aid supplies during the truce that lasted from November 24 to December 1, some 200 trucks entered daily, while the WFP was only able to reach about 10 percent of Gaza’s population with food aid in kind and in cash.
Even once food aid was provided, access to a sufficient share was not possible. A report by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Mezan, a human rights organization based in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, revealed on December 14 that people People close to food distribution centers in Rafah often had to queue for 10 hours, and sometimes returned home empty-handed.
“I have to walk three kilometers to get a gallon (of water),” Marwan, a 30-year-old Palestinian who fled south with his pregnant wife and two children on November 9, told Human Rights Watch. “And there’s no food.” If we can find food, it’s canned food. We don’t all eat well.
Yet Gaza’s population relies primarily on humanitarian aid for food, followed by local markets and help from friends or relatives. With growing shortages in all of these areas, support from loved ones is also declining, according to the WFP.
As more of Gaza’s population is concentrated in shelters in southern governorates, which are also subject to intense bombardment, competition for food is expected to intensify, the IPC said.
Can Gazans access food locally?
The fighting in the Gaza Strip, and particularly in the northern governorates, has made access to food and aid particularly difficult.
Local farmland, flour mills, bakeries and warehouses were also directly damaged by Israeli bombing.
Only a month after the fighting began, all bakeries in northern Gaza closed due to lack of supplies such as flour and fuel, the UN reported on November 8. The risks of being hit by Israeli strikes also led to movement restrictions for those seeking to leave their territory. houses for food.