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In the two months since international experts warned of the threat of famine in the Gaza Strip, food supplies to the Strip have dwindled further to just about half the amount needed, according to the World Food Programme's regional director.
“It's clear they're not getting enough food into Gaza,” Corinne Fleischer, who returned from the devastated area, told the Financial Times, citing access problems including the closure of most crossings, long delays at Israeli checkpoints and looting by gangs inside Gaza.
Fleischer said the WFP needs to procure 24,000 tonnes of food each month to feed half the Gaza Strip's population of 1.1 million people. UNRWA, the other main UN agency in the Strip, is responsible for feeding the other half.
“But in the last two months, we've only been able to get about half of what we need,” she said.
Fleischer said the WFP faced some obstacles in getting supplies to its warehouses in the Gaza Strip. “Obviously we need more transit points, that's what we're asking for,” he said.
“There are also law and order issues in collecting supplies from the Kerem Shalom checkpoint (avoiding looters) and being able to move around the Gaza Strip safely and at an acceptable speed.”
The IPC, an international hunger monitoring body, warned on June 25 that 96 percent of Gaza's residents face severe food insecurity at “crisis” levels or above, with around half a million of them enduring “catastrophic” conditions.
“There's still a risk of famine because there's war and the places we have to go are often and insufficiently accessible and we need to get enough food,” said Fleischer, whose organization supports 13 of the territory's 18 bakeries and supplies food to more than 70 kitchens that serve hot meals.
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Fleischer described the journey, which began with a convoy from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza to collect supplies that would arrive at the West Erez checkpoint on the northern border with Israel.
A journey that once took 40 minutes now took seven hours because of destroyed roads and “we had to wait for the green light at (Israeli) checkpoints,” she said.
Fleischer said Israel wanted “quicker processing of aid and more streamlined operations at the checkpoints” as well as more checkpoints to speed up the delivery of humanitarian supplies.
The WFP regional director added that recent evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army have led to the closure of around 20 WFP food distribution points, preventing access to one warehouse where food still remains, further exacerbating the access problem.
Health officials said some 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive against Gaza, which the government said was in retaliation for an October 7 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel.
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Overall humanitarian aid entering Gaza has fallen by more than half since Israel seized the key Rafah crossing with Egypt, which closed it in early May, according to the U.N. OCHA agency, which coordinates humanitarian efforts.
The report said an average of 169 relief trucks a day in April fell to 94 in May and fewer than 80 in June and July. Before the war, some 500 trucks loaded with supplies entered Gaza every day.
“People are already pretty weakened from having to evacuate multiple times,” Fleischer said.
“And when basic services collapse, disease spreads — there's no clean water, no functioning sewage systems, and then there's food shortages. This weakens the body and the immune system.”
Data Visualization: Aditi Bhandari
