Israel-made famine in Gaza: How weaponising food led to mass starvation

Israel has long used aid as a bargaining chip in ceasefire negotiations

The UN has formally declared famine in Gaza, following more than 22 months of war in the Palestinian enclave.

Israel has tightened its siege of the territory since the October 2023 attacks and has restricted aid deliveries, often allowing only limited supplies to enter.

Hundreds of people have died of hunger in recent months, particularly in Gaza city, the enclave’s largest urban centre, where Israel has launched a new ground assault aimed at seizing control. Israeli forces have killed other people as they try to reach aid sites or convoys.

The famine declaration in the Gaza governorate comes as Israel is expected to issue a formal response to a ceasefire proposal already accepted by Hamas.

Here is what you need to know about famine and how it unfolded in Gaza:

What is famine?

The UN defines famine through the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a system that sets hard thresholds for catastrophe.

A famine is declared when at least 20 per cent of households face extreme food shortages, more than 30 per cent of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, and the daily death rate reaches or exceeds two out of every 10,000 people.

Famine isn’t just hunger or poverty. It’s when widespread starvation, disease and malnutrition have converged to such a degree that mass death is already underway.

While many countries and regions face shortages of food, famine is only declared by the UN when certain conditions are met.

Palestinians gather to receive cooked meals from a food distribution centre in central Gaza. AFP

What are the five stages?

The IPC is a five-stage scale that measures food security.

The first stage is none or minimal. In this case, people have access to essential and non-essential foods and their needs are met without having to engage in any unusual attempts to secure food.

The second stage is "stressed". Here, households have “minimally adequate” food consumption but are unable to afford some essential non-food items.

The third stage is "crisis". In this stage, people either have “food consumption gaps” that are reflected by high levels of “acute malnutrition", or they are able to meet their minimal food needs, but only through selling some assets or deploying crisis strategies.

In the fourth stage, the UN declares an “emergency". In a food security emergency, the lack of food is leading to “very high acute malnutrition” and excess deaths. Households are only able to cope with the lack of food by “employing emergency livelihood strategies” or liquidating their assets.

The fifth stage of the IPC scale is a catastrophe or a famine. In this case, households have an extreme lack of food and basic needs, even after they have tried all of their coping strategies.

Lama’s voice from Gaza

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When were famines formally declared?

Famines are rare because the declaration carries such significance. Until now, the IPC had confirmed four famines in the previous 15 years: Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and most recently Sudan in 2024.

Famine was officially declared in a part of North Darfur in Sudan in July 2024 due to escalating violence which had been persisting for more than 15 months, severely impeding humanitarian access.

In 2020, famine was declared in four parts of South Sudan after violence and flooding destroyed homes, caused massive displacement and cut off access to humanitarian services.

The same country had suffered the same fate in 2017, when famine was declared in parts of Unity State, the central-northern part of South Sudan. Nearly 80,000 people faced famine conditions, with another one million people being classified in "emergency", IPC's fourth phase. By then, three years of civil war had devastated livelihoods.

Before that, famine was declared in two regions of southern Somalia in 2011, affecting about 490,000 people, after a catastrophic drought and war.

People in New York participate in a protest against the Gaza war. Reuters

What happens when famine is declared?

A famine declaration forces governments, donors and agencies to mobilise resources fast. It is designed to save lives by drawing an urgent response, but history shows it rarely reverses the damage already done.

The official declaration also has political consequences. It can embarrass governments, expose neglect, or reveal that conflict is being used as a weapon of hunger.

In Gaza, Israel has faced repeated accusations of using food as a weapon. Several Israeli politicians have openly argued that restricting the entry of supplies is a legitimate strategy to weaken armed groups.

UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said that its data showed a six-fold increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition in Gaza city since March.

How did famine hit Gaza?

Gaza’s case is extreme because it is man-made and systematic. Food production has been destroyed, farmland bombed and fisheries blocked, with bakeries and mills out of service.

Blockades and restrictions choke off outside supplies. People are surviving on scraps, with entire families going days without food. Many experts described it as starvation by design.

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organisation backed by Israel and the US, began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution that the UN has rejected as inadequate, dangerous and a violation of impartiality rules.

But scenes of chaos immediately unfolded at or near GHF distribution sites. The system was heavily criticised. The UN declined to take part in the GHF's operations, accusing the group of militarising aid delivery and putting Palestinians at dire risk.

The GHF distribution system was introduced after Israel had prevented all aid, food and water from entering the Gaza Strip for nearly three months, leading to severe food shortages and famine warnings for the territory's 2.3 million residents.

Children are the most visible victims: rates of acute malnutrition have surged beyond emergency thresholds. Aid groups report infants dying from dehydration and starvation.

Most famines in modern times are linked to drought, crop failure, or conflict blocking aid. In Gaza, the infrastructure was dismantled in months, food and fuel are systematically denied, and the crisis is used as a tool of war.

UN World Food Programme director of emergencies Ross Smith said last month: “It's clearly a disaster unfolding in front of our eyes, in front of our television screens. This is not a warning, this is a call to action. This is unlike anything we have seen in this century.”