U.N.-backed panel warns action needed in days to avert Gaza famine

TEL AVIV, Israel – A United Nations-backed panel has warned that famine is imminent in the northern Gaza Strip, days before a deadline imposed on Israel by the Biden administration to deliver more humanitarian supplies to the enclave or risk a cutoff of military aid.

The panel, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said Friday that 13 months of war had created “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine” because of the “rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.”

The panel, which includes major relief agencies, warned that action was needed “within days, not weeks” to alleviate the immense suffering in the enclave. Last month, the panel said that conditions in Gaza had improved from May to August because of a surge of humanitarian assistance, but that the gains had largely been reversed since.

The Friday warning came days before the mid-November deadline set by the Biden administration last month, when it demanded that Israel improve the flow of aid to Gaza’s 2.2 million residents. The administration warned that failure to provide more aid “may have implications for U.S. policy,” including on the provision of the military assistance upon which Israel depends.

“The amount of assistance entering Gaza in September was the lowest of any month during the past year,” said the letter, which was signed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. They asked that Israel take a series of concrete steps, including increasing the number of aid trucks permitted into Gaza each day “to reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory.”

Aid groups have warned for much of the past year that famine is imminent in Gaza, in part because officially determining and declaring that a famine exists is a complex process made more difficult by the conditions in the enclave.

Determining the existence of a famine requires analyzing data that is hard to collect in any war zone. Officially declaring a famine requires a formal declaration from the United Nations and the local government, and it is not clear which authority – Israel, Hamas or some other party – would be considered the local government in Gaza.

Israel’s bombardment, siege and ground combat in Gaza has choked off food imports and destroyed the territory’s farmland and fishing industries. That has left nearly the entire population of Gaza reliant on scant humanitarian aid to survive.

In early October, Israel suddenly stopped permitting all commercial goods into Gaza and the amount of aid drastically slowed. Brig. Gen. Elad Goren, a senior Israeli military official, told reporters later that month that a combination of Jewish holidays and the continuing military operation in Jabalia, in northern Gaza, had forced them to temporarily shutter crossings into northern Gaza.

“There is no limit of entering humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza,” said Goren, although he did not elaborate on why commercial goods had been barred.

Israel has not provided a detailed explanation for the persistently low level of humanitarian aid permitted into the Gaza Strip, particularly food. In a statement last month, the military said it “does not restrict the entry of civilian supplies into the Gaza Strip; however, it requires permits for certain items.”

“These items are designated as dual use, given Hamas’ deliberate diversion of such goods from civilian to military applications,” the military said. In its letter last month, the Biden administration criticized Israel for what it called “excessive dual-use restrictions.”

Israel’s military said Friday that it was preparing to open the Kissufim crossing, a border route that has been closed since 2005, in an effort to increase the flow of aid. The military said part of its preparations included building inspection facilities at the border post, as well as paving roads on both the Israeli and Gaza sides of the border. But it did not say when the crossing, which connects the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis to Israel, would be open.

Since the Biden administration issued its demands, which included allowing at least 350 aid trucks to enter Gaza each day, aid agencies have complained that Israel has done little to comply with them. The humanitarian toll of the war has grown particularly severe in the north, where Israel has been pursuing a weekslong offensive against resurgent Hamas forces.

On Saturday, the Israeli military agency that administers aid in Gaza said that earlier in the week, it had let 11 trucks of food, water and medical equipment into Jabalia and Beit Hanoun in the north. It also said 713 trucks had entered the north since the start of October.

The United Nations has warned that as many as 400,000 people could be trapped in the area, unable to flee because of Israeli military operations. In its report Friday, the U.N.-backed panel said it was “already abundantly clear that the worst-case scenario” was “now playing out in areas of the northern Gaza Strip.”

“It can therefore be assumed that starvation, malnutrition and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease are rapidly increasing in these areas,” the panel said. “Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future.”

“For an entire month, all attempts by humanitarian organizations to deliver food to people in the besieged areas of north Gaza governorate have been blocked by the Israeli authorities,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson in Gaza for the main U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

She said that roughly 1.7 million people across the entire territory did not receive their monthly U.N. food rations in October, amounting to 80% of the population.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.