For the first time, a UN-backed analysis has confirmed famine in Gaza City and its surrounding area, marking a grim turn in a war already defined by mass displacement and collapsing services. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) placed parts of Gaza at Phase 5, its highest alert. The report says more than half a million people across the strip are facing catastrophic hunger and warns deaths will surge without a rapid, large-scale response.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the situation a “failure of humanity” and a “man-made disaster.” Israeli officials reject the assessment as biased and false, insisting there is no starvation in the enclave. The dispute comes as Israel’s cabinet has approved plans for a new assault on Gaza City—just as experts warn that fighting, access limits, and the collapse of basic systems are driving a deadly spiral.
Across the territory, aid workers describe a population squeezed into a sliver of land, markets hollowed out, and families living on little more than bread, canned goods, or nothing at all. According to multiple on-the-ground reports, roughly 2.2 million people are crammed into about 14% of Gaza’s land. Large areas are in ruins, with homes, farms, shops, water networks, and clinics damaged or destroyed, and daily airstrikes and shelling still reported.
What the IPC found and why it matters
The IPC is the most widely used global yardstick for hunger. It does not “declare” famine, but it applies strict methods to determine if conditions meet the thresholds. Its analysis is used by governments, UN agencies, and NGOs to decide when to scale up operations and how to target relief. Phase 5 means households face extreme food gaps, life-threatening malnutrition, and rising deaths.
To classify a famine, analysts look for three core signals across a defined area:
- At least 20% of households face an extreme lack of food, even after using crisis strategies.
- At least 30% of children suffer acute malnutrition (wasting).
- Crude death rates exceed 2 people per 10,000 per day.
In Gaza Governorate—which includes Gaza City—the IPC says the thresholds have been met. It projects that similar conditions could spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September if nothing changes. The language in the report is blunt: “catastrophic” conditions, “starvation, destitution and death.”
The analysis lands after months of constrained access. Food, fuel, medicine, and clean water are in short supply. Many bakeries are shut or operate intermittently. Fishing has been largely halted for long stretches. Farmland is damaged or off-limits due to fighting and unexploded ordnance. Supply chains have broken down—from wholesale markets to corner shops—so even when small amounts of food make it in, people struggle to find or afford it.
Doctors and nutrition teams report a surge in wasting among children, a sign that bodies are burning through muscle to survive. Clean water is scarce, so diarrheal disease spreads, making malnutrition worse. Without steady electricity or fuel, cold chains for vaccines and therapeutic foods fail, and hospitals cannot run equipment or sterilize tools. Mothers under stress and without proper nutrition struggle to breastfeed. The risk multiplies, day after day.
Data in a war zone is always messy. Clinics are overwhelmed, families are displaced multiple times, and movement is unsafe. The IPC team factors that in and uses cross-checks—from household surveys to clinic admissions and mortality estimates—to avoid overcounting or undercounting. Its approach has been developed in other crises, from Somalia’s 2011 famine to later emergencies in South Sudan and Yemen. The message this time is the same: the longer access is limited, the higher the death toll.
Aid access, politics, and the road ahead
Israel disputes the IPC findings and says the report relies on partial or biased inputs, including from Hamas. Officials argue that aid has entered and accuse armed groups of diverting supplies. Humanitarian organizations counter that access has been sporadic, unpredictable, and far below what is needed. They cite the sheer scale of need, the insecurity on roads, damaged crossings, inspection bottlenecks, a lack of fuel, and communications blackouts that cripple convoy planning.
Multiple UN bodies, international NGOs, and medical groups say conditions are worse than any they have seen in the enclave. More than 100 humanitarian organizations have flagged severe hunger and warned that children, older people, and those with chronic illnesses are most at risk. The UN chief’s description—“man-made”—reflects what aid workers say they witness daily: hunger driven by fighting, restrictions, and the breakdown of civilian systems, not by drought or failed harvests.
The IPC urges an “immediate, at-scale response.” In plain terms, that means opening more crossings, moving far more trucks each day, ensuring safe passage on the roads, and bringing in enough fuel to pump water, run hospitals, and keep storage and cooking going. Airdrops and sea deliveries can help at the margins, but they cannot replace reliable overland corridors. Commercial supplies also need to return, because aid alone cannot feed an entire territory for months on end.
Humanitarian groups and food security experts say the emergency package has to include:
- Multiple land entry points operating daily with predictable hours and swift clearance.
- Security guarantees and deconfliction so convoys can move without being shot at or looted.
- Fuel for hospitals, water systems, bakeries, cold chains, and logistics fleets.
- Restored telecoms to coordinate operations and verify deliveries.
- Permission for commercial goods to flow alongside aid, stabilizing markets and prices.
Fighting shapes every part of this. Israel’s plan for a new assault on Gaza City increases the risk to civilians and to aid workers just as hunger peaks. Each new displacement severes people from their support networks—family kitchens, friendly shopkeepers, the clinic that knew their child’s case—making survival harder. In places where aid did trickle in, renewed combat often forces warehouses to close and convoys to wait.
International law forbids starving civilians as a method of warfare and requires parties to allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. Legal debates aside, the operational reality is stark: without a major easing of access, and without stable conditions on the ground, the IPC expects famine-related deaths to climb. The warning is not abstract; it is tied to specific, measurable indicators that field teams track every week.
Israel’s allies have urged more aid and fewer limits, while backing Israel’s security concerns and the goal of preventing weapons transfers to armed groups. That balance has proved hard to achieve. Screening takes time. Convoys need escorts. Bridges and roads need repairs. At the same time, people cannot wait. When malnutrition rises, even small delays mean lives lost, especially among infants and the very old.
Past famines offer a grim guide. In Somalia in 2011, delays and access barriers cost more than 200,000 lives, mostly children under five. In South Sudan’s 2017 famine, a surge of aid and a lull in fighting pulled areas back from the brink. The pattern is consistent: when corridors open and supplies flow at scale, mortality falls fast; when they don’t, death rates spike.
On the ground in Gaza, families say their days are a series of hard choices. Do they spend their last money on water or bread? Do they risk a shell-scarred road to find a clinic? Aid workers describe parents skipping meals so children can eat, and teenagers hustling to find firewood to cook a single pot of lentils. These are not isolated stories; they align with the IPC’s population-wide picture.
The coming weeks are critical. The IPC projects that without a dramatic shift—more access, more supplies, safer movement—catastrophic hunger will spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September. A ceasefire, even a temporary one, would allow a surge in deliveries and repairs to vital systems. Deals that free hostages and detainees have also, in past conflicts, opened the door to expanded humanitarian operations.
For now, the facts are plain. A confirmed famine is unfolding in Gaza City. Israel denies the finding; UN agencies and aid groups say the evidence meets the bar. The technical thresholds are dry, but the meaning is not: without immediate action, more people will die of hunger and related disease in a place where food once moved easily, markets buzzed, and families rarely thought twice about their next meal. That is why the world’s emergency system uses one red line above all others—famine—and why this warning carries so much weight.
One phrase captures it and should focus minds: Gaza famine.
Write a comment