Half a Million in Gaza Face Starvation, Report Says: Israel-Hamas War Live Updates

After Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli officials declared a siege of Gaza, and they have severely restricted the entry of humanitarian aid, saying they do not want it to help Hamas. From October to early May, the daily number of aid trucks entering the territory through the two main crossing points in southern Gaza dropped by around 75 percent, according to U.N. data, and reports of hunger and malnourishment have been widespread.

Israeli officials have said for months that there is no limit on the amount of food and other aid that can enter Gaza. In recent weeks, Israel has opened crossings for aid into northern Gaza and increased the number of commercial vehicles carrying food and other goods across the border.

The report said that almost all of Gaza’s population of around 2.2 million faced high levels of acute food insecurity, and it put Gaza at Phase 4, the “emergency” phase, on its five-level classification scale. But it also said that 495,000 people faced “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity,” which is Phase 5 on the scale.

“In this phase, households experience an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities,” the report said.

In March, the I.P.C. predicted that famine would likely occur in northern Gaza by the end of May. But on Tuesday, it said that the amount of food and other nutrition delivered there had increased in March and April.

Those increases “appear to have temporarily alleviated conditions” in the north, the report said, adding, “In this context, the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.”

In early May, Israel’s military sent ground troops into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, and more than a million people, many of whom had previously been displaced from their homes, fled to a coastal area that lacks basic infrastructure, making them acutely vulnerable.

The military operation closed the Rafah border crossing from Egypt and disrupted aid deliveries at the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel. The situation in the south has since deteriorated, the report said.

The I.P.C. said that to be able to buy food, more than half of households in Gaza “had to exchange their clothes for money, and one-third resorted to picking up trash to sell.” It added that more than half of households often did not have any food to eat and that more than 20 percent went full days and nights without eating.

The I.P.C. identifies a famine when at least 20 percent of households in an area face an extreme lack of food, at least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition and at least two adults or four children for every 10,000 people die each day from starvation or disease linked to malnutrition.

Since the I.P.C. was established in 2004, its approach has been used to identify only two famines: in Somalia in 2011, and in South Sudan in 2017. In Somalia, more than 100,000 people died before famine was officially declared.

Israeli officials acknowledge the hunger in Gaza but accuse Hamas of stealing or diverting aid. But Ismael Thawabteh, deputy head of the Hamas government media office in Gaza, said last month that those allegations were “absolutely false and incorrect.” He added that, while there had been some looting of relief supplies, it had been done by a small number of people who had been forced into desperation by Israel.

Some Gazans have also accused Hamas of benefiting from looted aid.