It's Official: Famine in Gaza

This is the first famine ever confirmed in the middle east

For the first time since the start of the conflict in Gaza, famine has been confirmed. A new report from the international system that monitors food security — the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) — finds sufficient evidence to conclude that all three thresholds that define a famine have been surpassed.

This means people — mostly children — are already dying in large numbers from starvation.

The term “famine” is often used loosely, but its true definition is precise. Famine is declared only when three conditions are met in a given area: at least 20% of the population faces an extreme lack of food; at least 30% of children are acutely malnourished (“wasting”); and the death rate exceeds 2 adults or 4 children per 10,000 people per day. Only when all three criteria are crossed is famine officially confirmed.

That is what the IPC now finds in the Gaza Governorate, where Gaza City is located. The data also indicates that these thresholds will soon be crossed in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis to the south.

The numbers are staggering. Half a million people in Gaza City are already facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity. If current conditions persist, more than 130,000 children are expected to die over the next 10 months.

This report comes just as the Israeli military prepares for a full-scale takeover of Gaza City — the epicenter of the famine. And we know this will only make things worse, because the driver of the famine is the conflict itself.

There are three key points to underscore.

First: This declaration of famine shows how shambolic the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been. This is the American-backed, Israeli-led mechanism that claims to serve the humanitarian needs of Gazans through a handful of food distribution sites, mostly in the south. Just yesterday, its executive director, John Acree, touted GHF’s successes: “Passing 130 million meals delivered is not just a number — it is proof of momentum. Every day, more families are being reached, and every day, our team continues to expand the scale of what is possible.”

In reality, the IPC report shows how profoundly this effort has failed. The fact that famine now exists in Gaza confirms what nearly every humanitarian organization has been saying all along: the solution is to surge aid through established UN mechanisms, which in the past have prevented famine. With those mechanisms shut down, famine has taken hold.

Second: The Israeli military is preparing for a major assault on Gaza City, the epicenter of the famine. When that happens, it will become even harder for civilians to access the food they need to survive. Such an assault will almost certainly deepen the famine, driving even larger numbers of people to death-by-starvation.

Third: The big picture remains unchanged. Preventing famine in Gaza is not a logistical challenge — it is not about finding clever ways to deliver aid. Yet from the outset of the conflict, Israel and the United States have treated Gaza’s food emergency as exactly that: a logistical problem. (Recall the U.S.-built floating pier that collapsed after just two months.)

But famine in Gaza is not the result of logistical shortcomings. It is the result of political decisions. There is ample food and fuel ready to enter. What prevents it is that, since the conflict began, Israeli authorities have not permitted sufficient aid to meet the basic humanitarian needs of the two million people trapped there. The outcome is precisely what humanitarian agencies and the UN long warned would be inevitable: when food is deliberately withheld, people will starve — and now they are, in massive numbers.

One thing I’ve learned from nearly 20 years of reporting on international humanitarian issues is that by the time famine is formally declared, it’s already too late. Crossing the quantitative thresholds means people are already dying in large numbers from starvation. That is clearly happening in Gaza today. But what makes the situation in Gaza so different from famines before it is that it is being actively imposed on a population by a powerful western-style military. It is the result of policy choices. Famine is always preventable. In Gaza, it is being fomented.

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