Acute food shortages in the war-torn Gaza Strip have become so severe that “famine is imminent” and the enclave is on the brink of a “major acceleration in deaths and malnutrition”, a report by a global authority on food security and nutrition. he said on Monday.
The group, the Global Initiative Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which was established in 2004 by UN agencies and international aid groups, has sounded the alarm for famine only twice before: in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017 .
The warning came as Israeli forces stormed Al-Shifa Hospital in the northern enclave again on Monday, in an operation they said targeted senior Hamas officials who had regrouped at the facility, setting off an hours-long battle that both sides said it resulted in casualties.
The raid on Al-Shifa, in Gaza City, raised questions about the level of control Israeli forces have in northern Gaza. In December, the Israeli military said it was nearing “full operational control” there.
Overall, the fighting and severe food shortages underscored the chaos and desperation in Gaza after 23 weeks of war. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres renewed his call on Monday for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and said the report on the impending famine was “a horrific indictment of the conditions on the ground for civilians”.
As Israeli negotiators arrived in Qatar for a new round of talks on a ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas and its allies, President Biden spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, according to Jake Sullivan. national security adviser to the president.
Mr. Biden said he was “deeply concerned” about the prospect of Israel’s next phase in the war, an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is filled with families displaced from other parts of the territory, Mr. Sullivan said in during a news update.
Mr. Netanyahu agreed to send a team of military and humanitarian officials to Washington to hear the government’s concerns, according to Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Biden, who asked Mr. Netanyahu about the visit, also asked the Israeli delegation to offer an alternative proposal to target senior Hamas leaders without a major invasion.
The call came as the global initiative’s report highlighted that up to 1.1 million people in Gaza are likely to face “catastrophic” food shortages. The group said ongoing fighting and a lack of aid access to northern Gaza, the first stretch of territory Israeli forces invaded in October after the Hamas offensive, had made conditions particularly tense there.
Eilon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli government, rejected the report, calling it an “outdated picture” that “does not take into account the latest developments on the ground,” including major humanitarian initiatives last week. He also said Israel was taking “precautionary measures” to extend aid to northern Gaza.
In recent weeks, some foreign leaders have increasingly blamed Israel for the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Opening a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell Fontelles accused Israel of “causing famine”.
Hunger is being used as a “weapon of war,” he said.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, rejected Mr Borrell’s criticism, saying the country had allowed extensive air, land and sea aid.
Across the Gaza Strip, severe shortages of food and other basic goods come amid Israeli bombardment and a near-total blockade. Central and southern parts of the territory also face a risk of famine by July if worst-case scenarios materialize, the Integrated Food Security group said.
In December, the group said famine could occur within six months in Gaza unless fighting stopped immediately and more humanitarian supplies arrived in the region. “Since then, the conditions necessary to prevent famine have not been met,” the report said.
The vast majority of people in Gaza have been forced from their homes by the war, and many were on the move again on Monday after the Israeli army ordered civilians to leave the area near Al-Shifa Hospital.
The military said it launched Monday’s raid on the hospital based on new information that Hamas officials were operating from the facility. It came four months after Israeli forces stormed the compound and found a tunnel shaft they said supported their claim the armed group had used it to hide military operations. Since then, Israel has withdrawn many troops from northern Gaza and shifted the focus of its invasion to the south.
The military said its forces killed 20 militants during operations on Monday, including a senior Hamas official it identified as Faik Mabhouh, the head of operations for the Hamas government’s internal security forces in Gaza. He was “armed and hiding in a compound” at the hospital, Israel said.
(Mr Sullivan, the national security adviser, confirmed on Monday that Israel also killed Hamas deputy commander Marwan Issa this month.)
Israel said the hospital complex also serves as a military command center for Hamas, calling it one of many examples of urban facilities the militants use to shield their operations. US intelligence agencies said their own intelligence showed that Hamas and another Palestinian group used Al-Shifa to command forces and hold hostages taken in the October 7 attacks.
The hospital and the surrounding area also house about 30,000 patients, doctors and displaced civilians, and several people were killed and wounded in Monday’s raid, Gaza’s health ministry said.
By noon, about 15 Israeli tanks and several bulldozers were on the hospital grounds, said Alaa Abu al-Kaas, who lived at the hospital with her father, who was being treated.
“Fear and terror are really eating us alive,” he said in a phone call from a hallway in one of the hospital buildings where he was hiding. Her voice was barely audible amid loud booms and explosions.
Ms al-Kaas, 19, said that in the early hours of Monday, she heard gunfire and the sound of tanks before Israeli soldiers, using loudspeakers, ordered people in the compound to stay inside and close the windows. He said Israeli forces told the people they would be taken to the Al-Mawasi area in southern Gaza, although it was not immediately clear when and how. Israel said it tried to establish a humanitarian “safe zone” in Al-Mawasi, although civilians found little shelter there.
Ms al-Kaas said she had also seen Israeli soldiers holding several people, their hands tied and their clothes partially undressed, in the courtyard of the hospital complex. He added that bodies of people who had apparently been shot were lying in the yard. Her account could not be independently verified.
“We’re just sitting here,” he said, “waiting to be taken out of here.”
The report was made by Yan Zhuang, Amera Harouda, Himba Yazbek, Myra Noveck, Abu Bakr Bashir and Zach Montague.
