High risk of hunger due to Israel’s war on Gaza and aid restrictions | News on the Israel-Palestine conflict

The Gaza Strip remains at high risk of famine as Israel’s war on the enclave continues and access to humanitarian aid is limited, but the delivery of limited supplies has curbed the predicted spread of extreme hunger in the north, a global observer said.

According to the United Nations hunger monitoring system, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), more than 495,000 people across the besieged Palestinian territory are affected by “catastrophic food shortages.”

While this is a decrease from the 1.1 million forecast in the last update three months ago, it still represents more than a fifth of Gaza’s population, the IPC said on Tuesday.

There was an extreme lack of food in households, leading to acute malnutrition among young children, an immediate risk of starvation and deaths, it said.

More than 20 percent of people said they had to go whole days and nights without food. Overall, around 96 percent of the population will continue to suffer from acute food shortages until September.

According to the IPC analysis, more than half of the Palestinian households surveyed had to sell clothes to buy food, and a third collected and sold garbage.

The delivery of food and nutrients in March and April appears to have alleviated the severity of hunger in northern Gaza, where the IPC had previously predicted likely famine.

However, Israel’s offensive around the southern city of Rafah since the beginning of May as well as further fighting and displacement in recent weeks have led to a further deterioration of the situation, it said.

“The humanitarian space in the Gaza Strip is shrinking and the ability to safely deliver aid to the population is diminishing. The latest development is negative and highly unstable,” the update said.

The Famine Review Committee, a group of experts that reviews the IPC’s findings, said in a report also published on Tuesday that there was “extreme human suffering” in Gaza and that the risk of famine had not diminished.

“Eight months of extreme pressure on the population makes them even more vulnerable to famine,” it said.