Food security experts warn Gaza is at critical risk of famine if Israel doesn't end its blockade

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Gaza Strip will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn't lift its blockade and stop its military campaign, food security experts said in a stark warning on Monday.

Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation, living in ''catastrophic'' levels of hunger, and 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.

The group said ''there is a high risk'' of outright famine if circumstances don't change.

Israel has banned all food, shelter, medicine and any other goods from entering the Palestinian territory for the past 10 weeks, even as it carries out waves of airstrikes and ground operations. Gaza's population of around 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive, because Israel's 19-month-old military campaign has wiped away most capacity to produce food inside the territory.

Desperate scenes as food is running out

Food supplies are emptying out dramatically. Communal kitchens handing out cooked meals are virtually the only remaining source of food for most people in Gaza now, but they too are rapidly shutting down for lack of stocks.

Thousands of Palestinians crowd daily outside the public kitchens, pushing and jostling with their pots to receive lentils or pasta.

''We end up waiting in line for four, five hours, in the sun. It is exhausting,'' said Riham Sheikh el-Eid, waiting at a kitchen in the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday. ''At the end, we walk away with nothing. It is not enough for everybody.''

The lack of a famine declaration doesn't mean people aren't already starving, and a declaration shouldn't be a precondition for ending the suffering, said Chris Newton, an analyst for the International Crisis Group focusing on starvation as a weapon of war.

''The Israeli government is starving Gaza as part of its attempt to destroy Hamas and transform the strip,'' he said.

Israel demands a new aid system

The office of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not respond to a request for comment. The army has said that enough assistance entered Gaza during a two-month ceasefire that Israel shattered in mid-March when it relaunched its military campaign.

Israel says the blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds. It says it won't let aid back in until a new system giving it control over distribution is in place, accusing Hamas of siphoning off supplies. The United States says it is working up a new mechanism that will start deliveries soon, but it has given no timeframe.

The United Nations has so far refused to participate. It denies substantial diversion of aid is taking place and says the new system is unnecessary, will not meet the massive needs of Palestinians and will allow aid to be used as a weapon for political and military goals.

Monday's report said that any slight gains made during the ceasefire have been reversed. Nearly the entire population of Gaza now faces high levels of hunger, it said, driven by conflict, the collapse of infrastructure, destruction of agriculture, and blockades of aid.

Mahmoud Alsaqqa, food security and livelihoods coordinator for Oxfam, called on governments to press Israel to allow ''unimpeded humanitarian access.''

''Silence in the face of this manmade starvation is complicity,'' he said.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after the group's Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage, most of whom have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Israel's offensive has killed over 52,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, whose count does not distinguish between civilians or combatants.

Three criteria for declaring famine

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, first set up in 2004 during the famine in Somalia, groups more than a dozen U.N. agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies.

It has only declared famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, and South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and last year in parts of Sudan's western Darfur region. Tens of thousands are believed to have died in Somalia and South Sudan.

It rates an area as in famine when at least two of three things occur: 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving; at least 30% of children six months to five years suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they're too thin for their height; and at least two people or four children under five per every 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

The assessment on Monday found that the first threshold was met in Gaza, saying 477,000 people — or 22% of the population — are classified as in ''catastrophic'' hunger, the highest level, for the period from May 11 to the end of September.

It said more than 1 million people are at ''emergency'' levels of hunger, the second highest level, meaning they have ''very high gaps" in food and high acute malnutrition.

The other thresholds were not met. The data was gathered in April and up to May 6. Food security experts say it takes time for people to start dying from starvation.

The report said if the blockade and military campaign continues, ''the vast majority'' in Gaza will not have access to food or water, civil unrest will worsen, health services will ''fully collapse,'' disease will spread, and levels of malnutrition and death will cross the thresholds into famine.

It had also warned of ''imminent'' famine in northern Gaza in March 2024, but the following month, Israel allowed an influx of aid under U.S. pressure after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers.

Aid groups now say the situation is the most dire of the entire war. The U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA, said Friday that the number of children seeking treatment at clinics for malnutrition has doubled since February, even as supplies to treat them are quickly running out.

Aid groups have shut down food distribution for lack of stocks. Many foods have disappeared from the markets and what's left has spiraled in price and is unaffordable to most. Farmland is mostly destroyed or inaccessible. Water distribution is grinding to a halt, largely because of lack of fuel.

Beth Bechdol, deputy director of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, said more than 75% of Gaza's farmland had been damaged or destroyed, and two-thirds of the wells used for irrigation were no longer operating.

The destruction, she said, is ''driving these large numbers of people closer towards the famine numbers that we think are possible.''

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AP correspondents Wafaa Shurafa in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.