Famine looming in Gaza

The food situation in the Gaza Strip is slipping deeper into catastrophe, with the risk of famine rising by the day, the UN’s World Food Programme warned yesterday.

A study conducted between November 24 and December 7 found that all 2.2 million people living in the Palestinian territory were in a crisis level of acute food insecurity, or worse.

The situation has only deteriorated since then, said Abeer Etefa, the WFP’s senior Middle East spokeswoman.

“The situation in Gaza is of course slipping every day into a much more catastrophic situation,” with “a looming threat of famine”, she told a press briefing in Geneva, via video-link from Cairo.

“The risks of having pockets of famine in Gaza is very much still there.

“More than half a million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic food insecurity levels and the risk of famine increases each day, as the conflict is limiting delivery of life-saving food assistance to people in need.”

Etefa said that around 70 percent of requests to deliver food to northern Gaza were rejected by the Israeli authorities.

The last deliveries to the north were around January 11 and 13, carrying 200 tonnes of food for 15,000 people.

“That’s really very, very small numbers,” the spokeswoman said. “This is why we’re seeing people becoming more desperate,” as they have no confidence that the trucks will come again.

In January so far, over 730 trucks carrying more than 13,000 tonnes of food have crossed into Gaza, the WFP said.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has displaced about 75 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and triggered a major humanitarian crisis, said the UN.

Mariam Abu Haleeb and her family were on the move again on Monday, the seventh time they had been displaced in less than four months of Israeli offensive.

She and other Gazans, their cars and donkey carts piled high with belongings, fled what they said was a terrifying night at the al-Aqsa university in the west of Khan Younis, where they had taken shelter after being told again it was risky to stay put.

They had no idea where to go next. “What hurts me most is that my old mother is under siege. My siblings and their children are besieged. Everyone, everyone. All of Khan Younis needed help yesterday,” she said.

“This is the seventh time I’ve been displaced, or maybe even more. Torture, torture, torture,” she said, weeping.

Mohammad Abu Haleeb said many people had pitched their tents at the university after the Israeli military warned them to move from other areas as they stormed through the southern Gaza city, where they now say Hamas leaders are hiding.

“In the evening, gunfire started – shelling and air strikes from every direction. I couldn’t move with my nine children at all. There was a building inside that we all entered and we stayed there until the morning. No one was able to leave.”

“There were injured and martyred people that no one was able to reach,” he said.