Israel waging a relentless war of starvation on Gaza, IPC report confirms
Displaced Gazans wait in line for food distribution in Nuseirat, April 2025. Doctors in the Gaza Strip say everyone they meet is suffering from severe nutritional deficiencies
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports on 12 May 2025:
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report confirms that Israel is deliberately using starvation as a weapon—a central and systematic tactic in its broader crime of genocide, which has already claimed 10s of thousands of civilian lives. The report warns that the entire population of the Gaza Strip faces the imminent threat of famine due to Israel’s ongoing, suffocating siege.
Israel’s war of starvation is slowly killing thousands, particularly children and the elderly. This daily tragedy largely escapes mainstream media coverage, and therefore lacks adequate documentation of its true scale.
The report, issued by a coalition of United Nations and international agencies, projects that from May to September 2025, approximately 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip will face catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5)—the most extreme level on the scale—marking an increase of more than 250% from previous estimates. It further warns that the Strip’s entire population is experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.
The report highlights that around 71,000 children and over 17,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women will require urgent treatment for acute malnutrition over the next 11 months, with more than 14,000 of these cases expected to reach critical levels. Earlier in 2025, humanitarian agencies had already estimated that 60,000 children would need life-saving nutritional interventions.
Israel has enforced a total blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2 March 2025, completely preventing the entry of food and medical aid. In addition, Israeli forces have blocked Palestinian farmers from accessing most of their remaining agricultural lands, and have targeted fishermen with live fire, obstructing efforts to secure food through fishing.
The report stresses that Israel’s ongoing military offensive, combined with the siege and severe shortages of essential supplies, will likely push conditions beyond the famine threshold within the next five months, with sharp increases in hunger, malnutrition, and mortality expected.
The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s children are now suffering from extreme food deprivation. Alarming spikes in acute malnutrition across the North Gaza, Gaza City, and Rafah governorates are predicted, particularly amid near-total inaccessibility to healthcare services as well as severe shortages of clean water and sanitation.
The current situation marks a dramatic deterioration compared to the IPC analysis released in October 2024, confirming that the ongoing genocide and blockade are fuelling one of the world’s worst food and nutrition crises, amid unprecedented human suffering.
The term “famine” is a technical designation used when three key criteria are met within a specific geographic area:
- At least 20% of the population faces extreme levels of hunger.
- 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition, considered to be “wasting” when the child’s weight is considered in relation to their height.
- The mortality rate doubles, with one death per 10,000 adults per day, and two deaths per 10,000 children per day.
Fourteen elderly Palestinians were documented to have died in the Gaza Strip between 4–10 May 2025 due to complications from malnutrition and the lack of essential medical care—direct consequences of Israel’s ongoing siege.
The ongoing international failure to protect the lives of the over two million Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip represents a blatant violation of their fundamental rights to life, health, food, and protection from genocide. It constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law and its core principles, which obligate the protection of civilian populations during armed conflict.
This continued inaction exposes the biased foundation of the entire Western-led international legal order. It reinforces a systematic culture of impunity and sends a dangerous message to the world: the use of starvation as a weapon of war can go unpunished.
All states must take immediate action to halt the ongoing crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and respond urgently to calls by the United Nations and international humanitarian organisations to restore humanitarian access and lift the illegal Israeli blockade. This is the only way to enable aid delivery and prevent further humanitarian collapse, the total breakdown of the agricultural sector, the potential outbreak of deadly epidemics, and the imminent threat of mass starvation.
The international community must ensure Israel’s compliance with international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice. It must guarantee the establishment of UN-supervised safe humanitarian corridors to allow the entry of food, medicine, and fuel into all parts of the Gaza Strip, alongside the deployment of independent international monitors to verify compliance.
A formal declaration of famine in the Gaza Strip is urgently required, given the rapidly accelerating spread of hunger as well as the sharp rise in severe malnutrition and its growing prevalence across all regions and population groups in the enclave, especially among children.
The international community must impose economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel in response to its systematic and egregious violations of international law. This includes an arms embargo on both imports to and exports from Israel; the suspension of all forms of political, financial, and military support; the freezing of assets belonging to officials implicated in crimes against Palestinians or incitement to such crimes, and the imposition of travel bans on those individuals; and the suspension of trade privileges and bilateral agreements that grant Israel economic benefits and thus enable its continued commission of atrocities.
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