TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The Gaza Strip is at critical risk of famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign, food security experts said Monday.
Outright famine is the mostly likely scenario unless conditions change, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
Nearly a half million Palestinians are in “catastrophic” levels of hunger, meaning they face possible starvation, the report said, while another million are at “emergency” levels of hunger.
Israel has banned any food, shelter, medicine or other goods from entering the Palestinian territory for the past 10 weeks, even as it carries out waves of airstrikes and ground operations.
Gaza’s population of around 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive, because Israel’s 19-month-old military campaign has wiped away most capacity to produce food inside the territory.
The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not respond to a request for comment on the IPC report. The army has said that enough assistance entered Gaza during a two-month ceasefire that Israel shattered in mid-March when it relaunched its military campaign. Israel says the blockade aims to pressure Hamas to release the hostages it still holds.