Ann Arbor – The European Union’s Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borell and the European Commissioner for Crisis management Janez Lenarčič, issued a statement March 18 on the findings of a UN-backed report that found that Israel’s total war on Gaza has put the remaining Palestinian population in imminent risk of starving to death.
They said of the just-released Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment, “This is unprecedented. No IPC analysis has ever recorded such levels of food insecurity anywhere in the world.” [Emphasis added.]
They continued, “Life-threatening levels of acute malnutrition have risen at an alarming rate since the last report, and we are already witnessing with horror the death of children due to starvation. Hunger cannot be used as a weapon of war. What we are seeing is not a natural hazard, but a manmade disaster, and it is our moral duty to stop it.”
Borell said in Brussels, “In Gaza, we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people.” He added, “This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.”
Sometimes, a telling detail outweighs a statistic. Something like 25,000 babies have been born in Gaza since the Israeli campaign began.
According to reporters on the scene, many of their mothers are too malnourished to produce milk for them. Imagine the anguish and the guilt.
There is no powdered milk in the market. Most of the available water is full of bacteria, which kills newborns by giving them diarrhea and dehydrating them. One mother said that her two-month-old is like a two-week-old because of malnutrition.
The IPC review [pdf] found that 100% of the Palestinians in Gaza face food insecurity as a result of Israel’s war strategy. But matters have gone beyond the level of food insecurity in some parts of the Gaza Strip, for instance in the north.
The report says, “Famine is now projected and imminent in the North Gaza and Gaza Governorates and is expected to become manifest from mid-March 2024 to May 2024.”
We’re in mid-March. Something like 300,000 people remain in these two governorates.
People there are now suffering acute malnutrition.
Acute malnutrition, the World Health Organization (WHO) explains, shows up in four broad ways: “wasting, stunting, underweight, and micronutrient deficiencies.” These conditions make people horrifyingly skinny, reducing their limbs to the dimension of sticks. Physicians measure limbs according to mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC), which tells them about the degree of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM).
In Gaza’s children from a half-year old to 4.9 years in age, 1% were considered to be suffering from Global Acute Malnutrition according to their MUAC in September, 2023. By January it had risen to 6-9%. By February, it was 12%-16%. It has been just about doubling. So by the end of March you’re looking at at least 24%-26% of infants and toddlers and young children suffering from Global Acute Malnutrition so severely that their upper-arm circumference is tiny. But what if the numbers aren’t just doubling?
We don’t have the raw data to nail it down, but we probably aren’t seeing more than two deaths per 10,000 per day yet from malnutrition, according to the IPC. But that would be 60 people starving to death per day in north Gaza, or 1,800 a month.
The Israelis only let in half as many aid trucks in February as they had in January. That is a recipe for an exponential, not just serial increase in hunger. We could be going to half or more of north Gaza’s children suffering this extreme malnutrition. Of course, it isn’t just children, but children are half the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.
The IPC expects a big spike in deaths from starvation beginning as early as now through May.
The worst level of malnutrition is Phase 5, which has two stages, famine and catastrophe.
The report found that fully 70% of the population of north Gaza is now in Phase 5-Catastrophe. That is 200,000 people.
An Israeli ground offensive in Rafah will push more 500,000 people into Phase 5-Catastrophe. If just two per 10,000 of them died daily of starvation as a result, that would be 100 per day or 3,000 a month, on top of the ones in the north. That is nearly 5,000 people a month dead of malnutrition, and that is if it stays at the rate of two per 10,000 per day. It won’t.
The IPC concludes, “The persistent attacks on hospitals, health posts, ambulances, water services, civilian telecoms services, and IDP sites must cease. Attacks against health care workers must cease. Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected, as required under International Humanitarian Law. (Already stipulated in the December 2023 FRC report.”
The authors note that the only proven way to avert famine is to deliver food to those threatened by it. Moreover, they point out that unless people are in fair health, they can’t take in the nutrition, so health care has to be restored as well.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, “Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires” and “Engaging the Muslim World.” He blogs at juancole.com; follow him at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page