The world is watching a famine develop in Gaza that could kill many times more than the Last month, more than 90 percent of Gaza’s population was estimated to be facing high levels of acute food insecurity, categorised as Phase 3 or crisis levels. Of those, more than 40 percent were in a state of emergency (Phase 4), and more than 15 percent in a catastrophic situation, the fifth and final phase.
The famine is projected to develop rapidly in the coming weeks. By early February, if nothing changes, the entire population of Gaza is projected to be in the crisis phase, half in the emergency phase, and more than half a million people in the catastrophic phase, with households experiencing an extreme lack of food, starvation and exhaustion.
These are not the projections of the Palestinian health ministry, dismissed collectively by western media as “Hamas-run”, but of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), drawing on data from UN agencies and NGOs. Three weeks ago, the IPC warned that Gaza would have the highest share of people in the world facing acute food insecurity – and so it has turned out to be.
Unless Israel’s western backers consider the World Food Programme, Unicef and the World Health Organization to be “Hamas-run”, they will increasingly be obliged to listen to them when they say that the trucks being allowed into Gaza are only a fraction of what is needed to avert a mass famine.