Experts warn 'famine is imminent' in Northern Gaza

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) issued a report Friday stating Northern Gaza's citizens are threatened by an “imminent and substantial likelihood of extreme famine."

The organization defines famine as a situation where at least 20 percent of households in a given area have an extreme lack of food. An extreme famine is likely to occur between November of 2024 and April of 2025, predicted the IPC, noting that food access is "at critical levels and rapidly deteriorating."

Gaza has been in conflict ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. Israel’s ongoing response to the kidnapping of hostages launched tensions with surrounding countries like Lebanon and Iran.

"It is already abundantly clear that the worst-case scenario developed by the analysis team is now playing out in areas of the northern Gaza Strip," IPC wrote in the report. "It can therefore be assumed that starvation, malnutrition, and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease, are rapidly increasing in these areas. Famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future."

Agencies like Oxfam, a British non-governmental organization dedicated to alleviating global poverty, have echoed the IPC’s concerns. 

“The situation in northern Gaza is now beyond catastrophic and families there literally have nothing to eat. In southern Gaza, things are also rapidly deteriorating, with almost no food left in the markets in Deir El Balah,” Oxfam’s Middle East Director Sally Abi Khalil said in a statement.

“Famine has been looming for months and humanitarian agencies like Oxfam have repeatedly warned of how horrific the situation is, yet we’ve been repeatedly blocked from getting enough aid into Gaza.”

Israel recently passed a law banning the United Nations Relief and Work Agency from operating in its territory in parliament on October 28. IPC urged the nation’s government to act by supplying food to people in Gaza within the next few days. 

“There is a pre-existing, and increasing vulnerability of the population after more than a year of war, with population displaced multiple times as a result of conflict or evacuation orders, and large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure,” the IPC wrote. 

“The unprecedented speed of deterioration and deviation from the most-likely scenario requires an extremely urgent response - in days not weeks.”