Report: One in five people in Gaza could starve to death within months

Nearly 470,000 people in the Gaza Strip, or approximately one in five of its residents, could starve to death in the coming months under Israel’s total aid blockade, according to a new report published Monday.

The report, a product of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—a partnership between 19 organizations including various United Nations agencies, Save the Children, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Food Programme (WFP)—states that while the entire population of the Gaza Strip, approximately 2.1 million people, will at best be able to meet basic food needs, approximately 470,000 of the area’s residents will struggle to obtain almost any food at all through September. Women and children will face disproportionate impacts, with nearly 71,000 kids and almost 17,000 breastfeeding and pregnant women expected to experience “acute malnutrition” through next March.

Life for civilians in Gaza has been hell under continual bombardment by Israel following the terror attack launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 people as hostages, including a dozen Americans (the last living US citizen, Edan Alexander, was just released from captivity on Monday).

But ever since Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in early March, the situation has grown more desperate, as food supplies have run critically low. Currently, about 1.94 million people in Gaza—or 93 percent of the population—are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, including nearly 244,000 who are starving, according to the report. The more than two dozen bakeries supported by WFP have shuttered due to lack of supplies, and most of the 177 kitchens producing hot meals have also run out of supplies, according to the IPC report. At least 57 children have died since the aid blockade began, according to the WHO, citing the Gaza Health Ministry.

“Hunger and acute malnutrition are a daily reality for children across the Gaza Strip,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement. “We have repeatedly warned of this trajectory and call again on all parties to prevent a catastrophe.”

The blockade has also prevented water, medicine, fuel, and cooking gas from entering the Gaza Strip, and food prices have skyrocketed due to the shortage, with the price of wheat flour increasing by more than 3,000 percent since February, according to the IPC report. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that some Israeli military officers have privately admitted to a similar conclusion to the IPC report: Gaza could face widespread starvation if aid deliveries are not restored in the coming weeks. According to the WFP, there is enough food assistance ready to be brought into Gaza to feed up to one million people for four months.

The Trump administration has reportedly backed a plan proposed by Israel to force Gazans to move south to access aid, as part of a bid to prevent Hamas from accessing it. (President Donald Trump previously floated plans to take over Gaza and force Palestinians to leave, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres described as “ethnic cleansing.”) But top aid groups—including the WHO and UN agencies—oppose the aid plan, arguing it would be inadequate to solve the scale of the crisis and would allow the Israeli military to control the distribution of aid. NPR reports that the proposal would only initially provide food and aid to 60 percent of Gaza’s population, citing a copy of the plan the outlet reviewed.

Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blasted Congress in a speech on the Senate floor for its silence on the suffering of Palestinians under Israel’s aid blockade. “What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world’s collective conscience,” Sanders said. “History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this atrocity.”

The IPC report calls for “ending hostilities, ensuring unrestricted humanitarian access, restoring essential services and commercial flows, and providing sufficient lifesaving assistance to all in need.” Since the start of the war, approximately 90 precent of the population of the Gaza Strip has been displaced, and more than 52,400 people have been killed, including a large proportion of women and children, according to the IPC report; another 118,o00 have been injured.

In December, Amnesty International released a report concluding that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, as my colleague Noah Lanard reported at the time. Last year, the International Criminal Court also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and the use of starvation as a weapon of war; Israeli officials denied and condemned the charges.

The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest figures.