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A panel of global hunger experts warned this week that the Gaza Strip was on the brink of famine, but to many Gazans, it feels as if it is already here.
“I swear our stomachs are decaying,” said Eman Abu Jaljum, 23, whose family in northern Gaza has been surviving off canned peas and beans.
In a report issued on Tuesday, the experts said that almost half a million people in the territory faced starvation. They stopped short of declaring a famine, a designation that depends on a variety of criteria being met.
But in a Gaza devastated by almost nine months of war between Israel and Hamas, that can seem like a distinction without a difference.
“We are living in a famine that is more extreme than ever before,” Ms. Abu Jaljum said.
Each day brings a new struggle to find food. Fresh vegetables are scarce and meat scarcer still. And at those food markets that are still functioning, the shortages have sent prices skyrocketing, including for staples like flour and rice.
The last time that Iyad al-Sapti, a 30-year-old father of six in Gaza City, was able to get a bag of flour was nearly two months ago — and that required waiting in line for three hours, he said. A single bell pepper, he said, now costs more than $2.
“Who could possibly afford that?” he asked.
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One of his daughters, Mr. al-Sapti said, asked for eggs, but there were none to be found. “I would just tell her, ‘I swear, I wish I can provide you with eggs,’” he said.
While warning of a high risk of famine, the report on Tuesday from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is known as the I.P.C., noted that the amount of food reaching northern Gaza had increased in recent months. The change coincides with the Israeli reopening of border crossings — under intense international pressure — to allow more aid to enter.
An I.P.C. designation of famine depends on a combination of factors, among them the percentages of households facing extreme lack of food, children suffering from acute malnutrition and deaths from starvation or malnutrition.
But many people may die before all the criteria are met.
Since the I.P.C. standards were developed in 2004, they have 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.
As of Sunday, the health authorities in Gaza reported, 34 people had died from malnutrition, the majority children.
“Before some simple things were available,” Ms. Abu Jaljum said, “but now there’s barely anything.”
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Although the fighting in Gaza is now largely concentrated in the south, food shortages have been reported across the enclave.
In Khan Younis, the southern Gaza city where Nizar Hammad, 30, has been sheltering with his family in a tent, finding food can be less a challenge than cooking it.
“The biggest suffering is preparing the food itself, because you do not have cooking gas,” he said.
Firewood is hard to find, and expensive. But Mr. Hammad said that bread, flour, pasta, rice and lentils were available and relatively affordable in his area, and that he could buy two bags of flour for about $2.60. Chicken, beef, fruit and vegetables were another matter.
“The problem now is the lack of cash, work and income,” Mr. Hammad said.
In the north, bread has become more available as some bakeries in Gaza City reopen their doors, said Mr. al-Sapti. His family has mostly been eating bread with the herb mix za’atar. “The bakeries reopening have helped us a lot,” he said.
But Mr. al-Sapti worries that the bakeries may soon run out of fuel.
“I really hope they stay open,” he said.
Key Developments
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A Palestinian physiotherapist who worked with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders was killed in an attack on Tuesday night in Gaza City, the organization said in a statement. The Israeli military said on social media that it had killed the man, Fadi al-Wadiya, 33, in a drone attack and claimed that he was a member of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The military called him a “significant terrorist” and said that he had worked on developing the Iran-backed group’s rocket capabilities. Doctors Without Borders said it had no indication that Israel’s claims were true and added that Israel did not ask the organization about the claim before Mr. al-Wadiya was killed, along with five other people, including three children. It called the attack “cynical and abhorrent” and said that “only an independent investigation will be able to establish the facts.”
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday of planning to spread the war in Gaza to Lebanon “with the consent of the West,” in what he said would be a “grave disaster.” Mr. Netanyahu suggested on Sunday that fighting in Gaza was about to enter a less intense stage and that Israel would be able to move some of its forces north, where cross-border strikes have intensified with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. But he stopped well short of announcing plans to send troops into Lebanon. The U.N.’s departing humanitarian aid chief, Martin Griffiths, also warned on Wednesday of the dangers posed by a conflict in Lebanon, calling it a “flashpoint beyond all flashpoints.”
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Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, met with Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, on Wednesday to discuss developments in the war in Gaza, efforts to bring home Israeli hostages, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It was Mr. Gallant’s final meeting with Biden administration officials after four days in Washington. “During the meetings, we made significant progress, obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed,” Mr. Gallant said in a statement, noting that he and Mr. Sullivan spoke specifically about Israel’s weapons needs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has in recent weeks accused the United States of holding up weapons shipments, a claim that American officials have denied. Mr. Gallant struck a more conciliatory tone on Wednesday, saying, “It is moving to see the great support we receive from the U.S. government and the American public.”
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The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on nearly 50 entities and people that it said were part of an Iranian operation to direct billions of dollars toward terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. “The United States is taking action against a vast shadow banking system used by Iran’s military to launder billions of dollars of oil proceeds and other illicit revenue,” Wally Adeyemo, the U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury, said in a statement. The latest U.S. effort to punish Iran and cut off funding for the terrorist groups it backs comes after months of stepped up activity by Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has been striking Israel’s northern border, and by the Houthis in Yemen, who have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea.
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A day after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition appeared to be holding, though at least one far-right party expressed deep reservations about the court decision.
The ruling had for months been viewed as potentially perilous for Mr. Netanyahu because his six-party coalition depends on ultra-Orthodox parties that are opposed to conscription for their constituents. But so far, there was little sign that the decision would jeopardize the coalition in the short term.
There was no immediate comment on the ruling from one of the most prominent far-right ministers, Bezalel Smotrich. Some politicians connected to the coalition criticized the ruling, but did not say whether it might lead them to pull out of the government.
Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, both men and women, and the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox has long been a source of resentment. That resentment has grown because of the strain placed on the Israel Defense Forces by the war in Gaza, which has entered its ninth month.
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On Tuesday, judges said there was no legal basis for a military exemption given to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s mandatory draft laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.
Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party has criticized the Supreme Court for issuing a ruling when it said the government was planning to pass its own legislation that would render the case obsolete.
The government’s proposed law, the party said, would increase the number of ultra-Orthodox conscripts while recognizing the importance of religious study, but it was unclear whether it would ultimately hold up to judicial scrutiny. If passed by Parliament, a new law could face years of court challenges, buying the government additional time.
In reaction to the ruling on Wednesday, Rabbi Shlomo Benizri, who had served in previous governments and is an influential member of the Sephardic Shas party, a coalition member that appeals to Israelis from the Middle East and North Africa, said that the military must ensure that provisions are made for yeshiva students who are drafted as a result of the ruling.
These arrangements must “create the appropriate atmosphere and spiritual greenhouse for them, and then they can be drafted,” he said in an interview on Israel’s Kan radio, without elaborating. .
Meir Porush, the Jerusalem affairs and heritage minister, reserved his disappointment for the court, rather than the government, saying the decision left ultra-Orthodox Jews legally defenseless.
“We feel today we have no protection in the corridors of the courts,” said Mr. Porush, a member of the United Torah Judaism party, in an opinion piece in the HaMevaser newspaper, which is widely read by the ultra-Orthodox. “There is no one who understands how fundamental it is to sit and meditate on the Torah.”
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Mr. Smotrich, the settler activist and ultranationalist who serves as finance minister in the government, had no immediate comment on the ruling, a spokesman said.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from military service since the founding of Israel in 1948, when the country’s leadership promised them autonomy in exchange for their support in creating a largely secular state. At the time, there were only a few hundred yeshiva students.
There are now more than a million ultra-Orthodox in Israel, roughly 13 percent of the population. They wield considerable political clout and their elected leaders have become kingmakers, featuring in most Israeli coalition governments. But as the power of the ultra-Orthodox grew, so did anger over their lack of participation in the military and their relatively small contribution to the economy.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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United Nations aid agencies have been demanding that the Israeli authorities do more to protect aid workers in the Gaza Strip and ensure that assistance reaches those who need it, Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, said on Tuesday.
The agencies are struggling to deliver food and other basic necessities. A report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or I.P.C., a partnership of U.N. bodies and relief agencies, concluded on Tuesday that Gaza was at high risk of famine. It also found that almost 500,000 people there, almost a quarter of the population, faced starvation.
On Monday, a high-ranking U.N. security official contacted the Israeli agency overseeing aid to Gaza to press for more protections for aid workers, Mr. Dujarric said, adding that a letter this month to the agency from the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator had made similar points.
Israeli authorities have resisted blame. On social media on Tuesday, in a post directed at the U.N.’s World Food Program, the Israeli agency overseeing aid in Gaza displayed a photo of supplies that it said were waiting at an offloading area. “Stop making excuses and start playing your role as a humanitarian food organization and the head of the logistic cluster,” it said.
Monday’s I.P.C. report found that the amount of food reaching northern Gaza had increased in recent months, but it underscored the dire conditions people in the enclave were facing and the need for much more aid to be delivered.
Aid groups say they fear for the safety of their workers. The U.N.’s World Food Program suspended deliveries of assistance from the U.S.-built pier off the coast of Gaza this month after it said that its warehouses had been struck in an Israeli hostage rescue mission that killed scores of Palestinians, including women and children.
Last week the U.N. said that Gaza had become the most dangerous place in the world for aid workers. About 250 aid workers have been killed since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 set off this war, the U.N. said. That figure includes nearly 200 who worked for UNRWA, the main U.N. agency for Palestinians.
That temporary suspension of deliveries from the pier has left aid sitting ever since and prompted concerns that the U.N. might halt other operations.
Mr. Dujarric noted the dangers to aid workers and said that humanitarian operations had repeatedly been targeted, pointing to Israeli strikes on hospitals and other areas that were supposed to be “de-conflicted.” The Israeli military said those locations were being used by Hamas militants.
“The risks, frankly, are becoming increasingly intolerable,” Mr. Dujarric said. He added that the need to support millions of Palestinian civilians dependent on humanitarian aid to survive was a priority and that the U.N. assessed the security situation daily to try to operate safely.
Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said that the humanitarian operation in Gaza had become “totally unnecessarily one of the most cumbersome and complex in the world right now.”