A top official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that food availability across Gaza has reached “an all-time low” under Israel’s suffocating blockade, which has heavily restricted the entrance of lifesaving humanitarian assistance and plunged the enclave into famine.
“Food supply has sharply deteriorated,” FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said at a conference in Cairo, Egypt. “The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow. Food, medicine, and fuel are self-evident priorities, but we must also prioritize the ability to grow food locally where it is needed most to ensure survival.”
Bechdol’s grim assessment came weeks after the Biden administration pressured Israel to improve conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been utterly devastated by more than a year of bombing.
Aid organizations say that far from improving, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse since the Biden administration threatened to cut off the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel. Last month, the U.S. effectively dropped its pressure campaign by concluding that Israel was not violating international law by blocking American humanitarian assistance.
Most of Gaza’s population is currently experiencing “high levels of food insecurity,” according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) figures, and the “risk of Famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip.”
In addition to obstructing aid deliveries, Israeli forces have decimated Gaza’s agricultural infrastructure and cropland, repeatedly attacked aid workers, and facilitated the looting of humanitarian supplies, fueling desperation among Gaza’s starving population. Last week, as The Associated Press reported, “two children and a woman were crushed to death… as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the Gaza Strip amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory.”
Amina Mohammed, the U.N.’s deputy secretary-general, said at the Cairo conference on Monday that “conditions for Palestinians in Gaza are appalling and apocalyptic,” with malnutrition running “rampant” and famine “imminent.”
“In the past four months alone, nearly 19,000 children were hospitalized due to acute malnutrition — nearly double the cases in the first half of the year,” Mohammed said. “In the face of the gigantic needs, humanitarian aid is — outrageously — being blocked. This flies in the face of the clear requirements under international humanitarian law to respect and to protect civilians and to ensure their essential needs are met.”
“It’s past time for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” she added. “The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop. We cannot continue to look away.”
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