UN officially confirms hunger in Gaza City amid final offensive

BarcelonaThe killing in Gaza continues at a dramatic pace. Benjamin Netanyahu's army has killed at least 41 Palestinians in various attacks on the Strip since early Saturday morning, hospital sources confirmed to Al Jazeera reporters on the ground. In fact, the death toll since the start of the Israeli offensive in October 2023 now exceeds 62,600. At least 62,622 Palestinians were killed and 157,673 were wounded in Gaza, according to sources within the Hamas government.

Meanwhile, Munir al-Bursh, the Strip's health official, once again denounced the collapse of the health system on Al Jazeera and called for safe corridors for the entry of international medicines and medical equipment. He warned that, despite the declaration of famine, "we have not seen any real action." In fact, sources in the Strip have reported today the deaths of eight people from malnutrition in the last 24 hours, two of them children.

This Friday, the international organization in charge of monitoring world hunger declared, for the first time, a famine situation in Gaza CityThe Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) system, endorsed by the United Nations and globally recognized by 21 humanitarian organizations, confirms that extreme conditions in which a million people live meet the criteria for speaking of full-blown hunger.

The 59-page report indicates, among other data, that in the coming months up to 132,000 children under five will suffer from "acute malnutrition." Furthermore, 41,000 of these cases will experience "severe" malnutrition, double the number predicted in May, placing them at "elevated risk of death." This is the CPI's fifth assessment of the food situation in Gaza.

Since its creation in 2004, the CPI had only recognized four episodes of hunger, all in sub-Saharan Africa, the last of them in 2024 in SudanUntil now, the IPC had warned that the ""worst case scenario" was materializing in Gaza, but had not issued a formal declaration due to a lack of conclusive data. Now, with new evidence and after 22 months of war, the agency declares the situation in Gaza City a "catastrophe" and predicts the emergency will spread to the districts of Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis by the end of September.

Informe de l'IPC sobre la fam a Gaza

According to CPI projections, nearly a third of the Strip's population, some 641,000 people, face catastrophic conditions, while 1.14 million live in a "food emergency" situation, the second-highest level on its scale. The report is blunt: "The time for debate and hesitation is over; hunger is here and spreading rapidly. Any delay, even days, will lead to an unacceptable escalation of deaths."

For its part, the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health estimates that 271 people, 112 of them minors, have already died from starvation, more than half in the last three weeks. The overall death toll from the war stands at 62,192.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the famine in Gaza a "man-made disaster [and] a failure of humanity itself" and said it was a "deliberate breakdown of the systems necessary for human survival."

"War crime"

According to the UN official, Israel has "unequivocal obligations under international law," including the responsibility to ensure the supply of food and medicine to the population. He issued an urgent call for immediate action and stressed that the situation cannot be allowed to continue "with impunity." Furthermore, Guterres reiterated his demand for a ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and full and unrestricted humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip. "The time to act is not tomorrow, it is now," he concluded.

Meanwhile, the head of the UN Human Rights Agency, Jeremy Laurence, held the Netanyahu government directly responsible for the hunger in Gaza. Speaking from Geneva, he stated that "Israel has unlawfully restricted the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance and other goods necessary for the survival of the civilian population." And this attitude, he recalled, could constitute "a war crime, and the resulting deaths could also constitute the war crime of intentionally killing" civilians.

The officially declared famine in Gaza sets a historic precedent: it is the first time the IPC has recognized this situation in the Middle East. Until now, only Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Sudan.

For a population to be classified as hungry, at least 20% of households must suffer from extreme food shortages, 30% of children must suffer from acute malnutrition, and two people per 10,000 inhabitants must die each day from causes directly related to hunger. The CPI system is endorsed by the UN and establishes five stages, from "minimal food insecurity" to "hunger." Twenty-one organizations, including Save the Children, Oxfam, and UNICEF, collaborate with the Rome-based agency, and its statements are globally recognized.

Israel, however, has flatly rejected the CPI's findings. The military agency in charge of managing aid to the Palestinians claims the report is "false" and based on "partial and biased" data from Hamas and local NGOs. It also criticizes the assessment for "ignoring Israel's extensive humanitarian efforts" and for being based on an "unpublished telephone survey." "There is a consistent policy to provide humanitarian assistance to the civilian population of Gaza, in full compliance with international law," the Israeli statement insists.

But the CPI has in turn dismissed Israel's accusations and its lowering of its usual thresholds for declaring famine. The answer is technical, but essentially it involves different ways of assessing malnutrition in children under five, depending on the available evidence.

According to CPI data, a 30% threshold is used when assessing based on weight and height, but this measure is not currently available in Gaza for obvious reasons. In its absence, an alternative measure of children's arm circumference is used—which establishes the threshold for famine when 15% of children have an arm below a certain size.

The CPI asserts that this standard has been applied for more than a decade, and that it was recently used to assess hunger in Sudan. The use of upper arm circumference measurement, therefore, "does not represent a lowering of the threshold in the CPI methodology." From this perspective, the organization says, it demonstrates the continued application of its commonly established standards.

As the food crisis becomes unsustainable, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed late Thursday that his security cabinet has approved the final assault on Gaza City, in the north of the enclave, an offensive that has been underway for 48 hours. At the same time, he has assured that he has given instructions to resume negotiations with Hamas to secure the release of the hostages and end the war "under conditions acceptable to Israel." "Both priorities—defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages—go hand in hand," he argued.

This announcement comes just three days after Hamas accepted the temporary truce proposal pushed by Qatar and Egypt, which provides for a sixty-day ceasefire and the release of half of the hostages. However, Netanyahu has rejected the offer and warns that Israel will only accept a comprehensive agreement that includes the simultaneous handover of all hostages, both alive and dead, the demilitarization of Gaza, Israeli control of the borders, and the creation of a local administration independent of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas accuses Netanyahu of obstructing mediation efforts and denounces his disdain for the truce proposal. Israeli sources admit that contacts could resume soon, but insist that Israel will not accept a partial truce.

The civilian population faces an emergency that the UN describes as "unsustainable." Without regular food supplies, with hospitals overwhelmed and infrastructure devastated, the situation is worsening with the Israeli order to evacuate Gaza City before the ground offensive. Hospitals and health centers have received evacuation notices in recent hours, a measure that the Gaza Ministry of Health dismisses as "a deadly step in the health system." The United Nations warns that this order could cause a new wave of civilian casualties and further aggravate the current humanitarian collapse.

The analysis of the death toll reflects the magnitude of the tragedy. According to a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call, based on classified Israeli military intelligence data, only 17% of those killed in Gaza were Hamas or Islamic Jihad fighters. The remainder, up to 83%, were civilians, a figure that would place the conflict among those with the highest proportion of non-combatant victims in recent decades, comparable with the Srebrenica massacre, he Rwandan genocide or the Russian siege of Mariupol in 2022.