Governments and the UN have so far stopped short of declaring that a famine is taking place in the Gaza Strip. But for Palestinians in the enclave – and some food security experts – whether the deprivation and hunger they are experiencing meets the technical definition is besides the point. “No word better describes what we’re experiencing than ‘famine’,” Diana Harara, a 30-year-old mother of three, told The New Humanitarian by phone from Gaza City.
“Firstly, we have nothing to eat but flour and canned food which we can only obtain as aid. This aid is inconsistent – either small in quantity or infrequent. And even when we do get it, we end up leaving the food behind when rushing from one shelter to the next,” she said.
Harara and her family lived in Tel al-Hawa, to the west of Gaza City, but have been forcibly displaced nine times since Israel began its military campaign and near-total siege of Gaza last year following Hamas’ 7 October attacks into Israel.
Harara’s situation is hardly unique. Around 90% of Gaza’s population of some 2.1 million people are forcibly displaced, many multiple times, according to the UN. Almost 10 months into the war, every single person in the enclave is struggling to obtain enough food to eat, there are periodic reports of children dying of malnutrition, and the entire population is dependent on a stymied aid response for their basic necessities.
“A famine declaration misses the point that, even in a crisis that is ‘only’ an emergency, people are still dying, and that is still calamitous.”
Human rights groups and international experts have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. The allegation is central to the case brought by South Africa to the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top court, accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. It is also one of the war crimes charges the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, listed when applying for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Galant earlier this year.
At the end of June, however, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Classification System (IPC) released an analysis showing that an earlier projection that famine “may occur” in Gaza by May had not come to pass. There was still a high risk of famine throughout Gaza, the report said, but it concluded that famine was not currently occurring.
Israeli media outlets cited the report to say that the hunger crisis in Gaza was not as bad as had been claimed. The report, however, said that virtually the entire population of Gaza was facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, including 343,000 people in the catastrophe/famine category.
“I think the focus, sometimes the obsession, with what some call the ‘F word’ detracts attention from the gravity and nature of crises that don't breach those thresholds,” food security expert Alex de Waal told The New Humanitarian in an interview earlier this year.
“It's very rare for famine to be declared,” he said. “And there's a key point here: A famine declaration misses the point that, even in a crisis that is ‘only’ an emergency, people are still dying, and that is still calamitous.”
Limited gains, easily lost
The fact that the IPC’s dire famine projection did not come to fruition was due to “minor gains” in humanitarian access, particularly in northern Gaza, in March and April, according to its June report.
Facing intense international pressure, Israel finally opened a border crossing to allow aid directly into northern Gaza a few days after seven workers from the NGO World Central Kitchen were killed in Israeli airstrikes on their convoy on 1 April. And in mid-April, Israel permitted a handful of bakeries in the north to reopen.
The bakeries had been closed and the north had been almost entirely cut off from aid and commercial goods for six months. People living there reported eating grass and grinding animal feed into flour to make bread to survive.
The IPC, however, noted that the Israeli military's ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, at the beginning of May had “reduced the minor gains” achieved in April by forcing the closure of the main border crossings used to bring aid into Gaza, displacing over one million people, and significantly disrupting the humanitarian response in the enclave.
“The recent trajectory is negative and highly unstable. Should this continue, the improvements seen in April could be rapidly reversed,” the report said.
On 9 July, a separate group of UN experts released a statement saying that there was “no doubt” famine had spread across the entire Gaza Strip, pointing to an increase in reports of children dying of malnutrition as evidence – although their statement was not an official famine declaration.
Since then, the Israeli military has issued additional evacuation orders affecting hundreds of thousands of already displaced people in parts of northern and southern Gaza – including areas it had previously said were ‘safe zones’ – as it has escalated its bombardment and sent troops back into parts of the enclave. The Israeli military says it is pursuing Hamas militants who have regrouped in areas it had cleared earlier in the war.
‘And the world still doubts we’re in a famine?’
For Palestinians in Gaza, the man-made hunger crisis in the enclave is a daily reality, punctuating lives that have become abject struggles for survival.
“We’ve all become weak and ill because we can only eat a meal or two a day, and my kids often refuse the only food I can serve them because they can’t get themselves to eat it anymore,” said Harara, the mother of three. “We can’t find clean drinking water nor feed our children the normal food all children crave. And the world still doubts we’re in a famine?”
Harara confirmed that there had been an improvement in the availability of food for several weeks in April. After what she described as a “period of severe starvation”, she said she managed to stockpile some canned food and vegetables. But the family had to leave most of that behind when Israel’s intense bombardment at the end of June of the Shejaiya neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City forced them to flee yet again.
Further south, in Khan Younis, Gaza’s second most populous city before the war, Naeema al-Ashour, 62, pointed to a handful of empty cans of beans and tomato sauce. Their contents were bubbling in a pot over a small campfire outside the remnants of her home, now mostly destroyed.
“Aren’t we humans who deserve to eat normal varieties of food? How will these kids grow?
Her 15-member family – including children and grandchildren – had been “living on canned food for almost a year”, she said. “How much longer can we go on eating tinned beans, chickpeas, and tomato sauce?”
“Aren’t we humans who deserve to eat normal varieties of food? How will these kids grow?” she added, pointing to three of her grandchildren, who ranged in age between two and 11.
Al-Ashour and her family fled Khan Younis last December when Israel invaded the city, seeking shelter in Rafah. When Israel invaded the city, they were displaced once again. With nowhere else to go, they returned to Khan Younis and have largely been subsisting on supplies they were able to carry with them from Rafah that are now running low. “Unless we get supplies soon, even the canned food won’t be available,” she said.
Some food items are available in the market. These come into Gaza in commercial trucks that humanitarian organisations have said Israel is giving priority to over aid trucks – a charge Israel denies, saying the commercial products are meant to supplement aid. But with almost everyone unemployed and access to cash severely limited, few people in Gaza can afford the commercial products.
“We’re craving all foods: animal proteins, vegetables, and fruits. These are sold in markets, yes, but at what prices? Multiple the pre-war prices, and with everyone in the family unemployed, we cannot afford buying them. I can assert that no family in this vicinity has tasted chicken or fruits in months,” al-Ashour said. “A bowl of salad is a dream.”
‘I can’t even get them proper food to eat’
Aid workers are unequivocal about how the Rafah invasion has affected how much support they are able to provide to people in Gaza.
Wafaa el-Derawi, the Gaza-based acting-chairperson of the NGO Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), said her organisation has only been able to get one truckload of supplies through the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel in the two and a half months since the Rafah invasion.
As a result, MECA has had to reduce the size of the food parcels they distribute as well as the frequency of distributions. Before the Rafah invasion, they were providing parcels every three to four weeks. "The very long waiting list of families awaiting aid means we can top up each family’s supply every three months, which is catastrophic,” she said.
Yasser Zanoun, 60, who was displaced from his home in Rafah to al-Mawasi at the beginning of May, confirmed the scarcity of aid. He said his 16-member family – including children and grandchildren – had not received any support since they were forcibly displaced.
A butcher by profession, Zanoun takes pride in the fact he supported his five children to obtain university degrees, with some even close to obtaining advanced degrees. “But now, I’ve lost my shops, my barns, and the house, and I can’t even get them proper food to eat,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the food we carried with us before leaving everything else behind, we would have starved.”
This article was published in collaboration with Egab. Edited by Dahlia Kholaif and Eric Reidy.
