In the overcrowded, rubble strewn streets of Gaza City, there was little surprise at the announcement that UN-backed experts believed the scenes of desperation could now be formally described as a famine.
“This is something we have been saying for months now, and we have witnessed this and we have been living this and suffering this. We feel very powerless and very sick and very tired,” said Amjad Shawa, the director of the Palestinian NGO Network, who has been in Gaza City throughout the 22-month war.
On Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a globally recognised organisation that classifies the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition, found that three key thresholds for a declaration of famine had been met in the once bustling commercial and administrative hub.
Only four famines have been declared by the IPC since it was established in 2004, most recently in Sudan last year. “This famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed,” the report said. It warned of an exponential increase in deaths if “a ceasefire is not implemented … and essential food supplies and basic … services are not restored immediately”.
It is the most vulnerable among the Palestinians now living in Gaza City, thought to be between 500,00 and 800,000 people, that are most at risk, especially elderly people, the young, sick or socially isolated, aid officials have said.
“I have nothing to cook and no money to buy firewood for cooking. We eat a little food in the morning to stop our hunger and a little more at night. I eat just some za’atar [spice mix], cheese or just salt with bread, no vegetables, nothing cooked,” said Sabah Antaiz, 55, who was displaced from the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City by recent Israeli offensives.
Antaiz has hypertension, diabetes and a heart condition. Her husband, 60, is very ill and cannot work or collect food. “We have no one left, no one to support me or even bring us food. I lost about 10 members of my family in an airstrike on Tuffah neighbourhood: my father, mother, nephews and nieces, the children of my brothers and sisters,” Antaiz said.
Israeli authorities tightened their existing blockade of Gaza at the beginning of the conflict in October 2023 and imposed a two-month total ban on supplies in March and April. More has reached Gaza in recent weeks, though only a fraction of what is needed, aid agencies say. The price of sugar has gone from about $100 (£74) for a kilogram to about $7, but much else remains too expensive for the 90% of people who have no income. Tomatoes cost $30 a kg.
Ibtisam Saleh, 50, who lives in a tent in Gaza City after being displaced 20 times, said she had no food and no source of income. “What we have now comes only from aid or gifts. Before the war, I used to receive $100 each month from the Qatari embassy because I was divorced and had a son. But since the war began, we have not received anything,” Saleh said.
Saleh eats one meal a day, usually lentils, though earlier this week a neighbour gave her a small bag of rice. “I do not have the strength to stand in line waiting to get my share [of any food aid]. One time I fainted while waiting. The sun was very hot and I am hypertensive. Because of the heat, my blood pressure dropped and I lost consciousness,” Saleh said.
Along with the sick and elderly people, there are those who are destitute. After almost two years of displacement and deprivation, few in Gaza City have any physical or financial reserves.
“This is a population that has been stripped of any resilience … They have absolutely nothing. There is no safety margin at all. They are right on the very edge,” said one UN aid official with oversight of operations across Gaza.
There are deep concerns about the very north of Gaza, where thousands still live among ruins in the worst humanitarian conditions anywhere in the battered territory, though data there was insufficient for the IPC to make a judgment on the category of the crisis.
In Gaza City, families sleep in the open on streets without shelter or pack into crowded, damaged apartments or tented camps where flies, mosquitoes and infectious diseases are rife. Rubbish piles up everywhere and choking smoke from plastic burning on fires causes chronic coughs. In recent weeks, temperatures have soared.
Riham Kraiem, 35, lives in a tent in Gaza City with her unemployed husband and their 10 children aged between two and 18. They had to leave their home in Beit Hanoun, a now flattened northern town, three months ago. An Israeli military assault near the school where they were sheltering initially pushed them to Gaza City.
“For the past three months, we haven’t received any money or aid. We no longer have money to buy anything, even though prices have come down,” Kraiem said. “My children ask for many things … They want me to make them sweets but I can’t because we have no money. We eat only two meals a day, one in the morning and one in the evening. This morning, I cooked a can of lentils and we ate that. In the evening, we usually eat thyme or cheese with bread and sometimes just bread alone.”
Kraiem said she had no food supplies left. “We left some behind in our home when we fled, and the house was destroyed,” she said. “Yesterday, my son went to look for aid and got one kilogram of pasta and a can of tomato sauce. He was given it by a young man who had got it from a food distribution site. He came back feeling like he was flying from happiness.”
Israel has rejected the findings of the IPC report, saying there is no famine in Gaza and that the findings were based on “Hamas lies laundered through organisations with vested interests”.