UN Says Over 1 Million in Gaza Could Experience
Highest Level of Starvation by Mid-July
Samy Magdy / The Independent

(June 6, 2024) — United Nations agencies warned Wednesday that over 1 million Palestinians in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by the middle of next month if hostilities continue.

The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a joint report that hunger is worsening because of heavy restrictions on humanitarian access and the collapse of the local food system in the nearly eight-month Israel-Hamas war.

It says the situation remains dire in northern Gaza, which has been surrounded and largely isolated by Israeli troops for months. Israel recently opened land crossings in the north but they are only able to facilitate truckloads in the dozens each day for hundreds of thousands of people.

Israel’s incursion into Rafah has meanwhile severely disrupted aid operations in the south. Egypt has refused to open its Rafah crossing with Gaza since Israeli forces seized the Gaza side of it nearly a month ago, instead diverting aid to Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing nearby.

The Israeli military says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter through Kerem Shalom in recent weeks, but the UN says it is often unable to retrieve the aid because of the security situation. It says distribution within Gaza is also severely hampered by ongoing fighting, the breakdown of law and order, and other Israeli restrictions.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the world authority on determining the extent of hunger crises, said in March that around 677,000 people in Gaza were experiencing Phase 5 hunger, the highest level and the equivalent of famine.

The two UN agencies said in their report Wednesday that that figure could climb to more than 1 million — or nearly half of Gaza’s total population of 2.3 million — by the middle of next month.

“In the absence of a cessation of hostilities and increased access, the impact on mortality and the lives of the Palestinians now, and in future generations, will increase markedly with every day, even if famine is avoided in the near term,” it said.

On Tuesday, a separate group of experts said it’s possible that famine is underway in northern Gaza but that the war, and restrictions on humanitarian access, have impeded the data collection to prove it.

“It is possible, if not likely,” the group known as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, said about famine in Gaza.

Last month, the head of the World Food Program, Cindy McCain, said northern Gaza had already entered “full-blown famine,” but experts at the UN agency later said she was expressing a personal opinion.

An area is considered to be in famine when three things occur: Twenty percent of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving; at least 30% of the children suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they’re too thin for their height; and two adults or four children per every 10,000 people are dying daily of hunger and its complications.

The war began when Hamas and other militants stormed across the border into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 36,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. Most of Gaza’s population have fled their homes, often multiple times, and the offensive has caused widespread destruction.

Gaza’s Sick and Malnourished Children Die
as Hospitals Collapse from Israel’s War
Aya Batrawy / NPR All Things Considered

(June 5, 2024) —A lethal combination of displacement, disease and malnutrition are killing Gaza’s children as they wither away without healthcare.

TRANSCRIPT
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: For the past eight months, hospitals across Gaza have shut down as Israeli raids and evacuation orders pushed from north to south. Israel says it is going after Hamas fighters, including in hospitals. International aid groups say hospitals must be protected. NPR correspondent Aya Batrawy and NPR producer Anas Baba have this report on the children dying as a consequence. And a warning to listeners, you will hear graphic descriptions of illness and death.

AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: At the ER in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza, photographers snapped photos of Mohammed Atayeh, holding the emaciated body of his son, Fayez.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAMERAS CLICKING)

BATRAWY: Every rib protrudes. The skin around his knees and ligaments wrinkles. At 6 months old, he weighed just three pounds when he died May 31. The local press declared him the latest child to die from hunger as a result of not enough aid going into Gaza. But the baby’s medical reports and a doctor who treated him show malnutrition is only part of the story. The short arc of Fayez’s life mirrors the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. He was born just two months after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel October 7.

MOHAMMED ATAYEH: (Non-English language spoken).

BATRAWY: “He was my life and my soul,” the father tells me on the phone. “He came after four girls and my prayers to God,” he says.

NPR producer Anas Baba meets Atayeh the day after he’s buried his son, Fayez. He scrolls through his phone.

ATAYEH: Allah.

BATRAWY: Photos show that for the first few weeks of his life, Fayez had a roof over his head. He’s nursing and surrounded by warm blankets. Fayez’s gummy smile lights up the screen. It’s not long before the photos turned to Fayez in a tent and then a hospital bed connected to oxygen. Atayeh is by his son’s bedside, caressing his cheeks.

ATAYEH: (Non-English language spoken).

BATRAWY: He tells NPR his son’s health started deteriorating when he was 2 months old.

ATAYEH: (Through interpreter) The number one thing were the air strikes. When they fired them, the boy inhaled all the black smoke of that air strike.

BATRAWY: He says the bombs followed them as they fled from one place to another before they settled in Rafah in southern Gaza. Terse, handwritten medical notes seen by NPR show how as the family searched for safety, they were also searching for treatment for Fayez, who was no longer nursing and losing weight.

Doctors’ notes from various hospitals and clinics show him diagnosed with pneumonia, fever, whooping cough. And at 4 months old, one doctor writes poor feeding. One of his sisters sits by his hospital bed. He smiles at her.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Non-English language spoken).

BATRAWY: He’s eventually operated on to remove a non-cancerous tumor impeding his breathing.

HOUSAM AL-TAWEL: The operation itself — it was successful without complications.

BATRAWY: That’s Dr. Housam Al-Tawel, who performed the surgery in late April in Gaza, the same day he left back for Germany. He says the baby should have been kept on a ventilator after the surgery and given medications to recover, but the hospital is overwhelmed with victims of Israeli airstrikes.

ATAYEH: (Through interpreter) They kicked me out of the hospital against my will. I told them he isn’t well enough to be discharged.

BATRAWY: By the time the boy arrives at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital a month later, his father had exhausted all available options, and they’d been displaced again. The final scribbled hospital report says he arrived with no vital sign — cold baby, dead body, heart rate zero. The cause of death isn’t noted. Here’s doctor Al-Tawel again.

AL-TAWEL: He didn’t die because of the tumor itself. He died because of the lack of essential requirement, which required after such an operation. There is lack of food, lack of proper nutrition and lack of proper medication.

BATRAWY: The World Health Organization’s director for the occupied Palestinian territories, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, says Gaza never had acute malnutrition before this war.

RIK PEEPERKORN: We all know that malnutrition is not just dependent on food. It’s you need the right food and the right food groups, etc. But of course, it links as well to the water and sanitation situation, which is dire everywhere, and of course, health services availability.

(SOUNDBITE OF BABY CRYING)

BATRAWY: At the same hospital where Fayez is pronounced dead, at least 78 people are recorded killed in one 24-hour period this week. Wounded and sick children line the hallways sharing beds. One of them is 3-year-old Hana al-Ra’i, withering away from diabetes and hepatitis A.

(SOUNDBITE OF BABY CRYING)

BATRAWY: Gaza’s Health Ministry says it’s identified around 8,000 children killed by air strikes in direct fire since the start of Israel’s offensive. But there’s no death count for the children dying every day from other causes of this war, like Fayez, and doctors say likely Hana soon too. Aya Batrawy, NPR News in Dubai, with Anas Baba in Gaza.

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