The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) warns that the three internationally recognized indicators for declaring famine in the Gaza Strip are alarmingly close to being met. This means that the population of the Gaza Strip is on the brink of an imminent catastrophe, amid a total inability to intervene or respond due to the ongoing and tightened siege imposed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Gaza since 02 March 2025. PCHR emphasizes that famine in the Gaza Strip has reached unbearable levels, becoming a harrowing reality endured by two million Palestinians besieged under the weight of deprivation and killings. Famine looms over Gaza amid a comprehensive siege, the systematic destruction of all aspects of life, and the international community’s total failure to halt the crime of genocide committed against the population for the past 22 months. This unfolds amid the international community’s failure to stop the crime or allow the entry of essential food and medical aid, effectively enabling the Israeli authorities to persist in their crimes without deterrence and amid impunity.

The latest report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), issued in May 2025, indicated that nearly half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic levels of hunger, classified as Phase 5, the most severe level of food insecurity. Meanwhile, the report confirmed that the entire population of the Strip is suffering from acute food insecurity at varying levels.¹  About two months after the release of this report, the situation has further deteriorated, deepening the tragedy endured by Gaza’s population, particularly as the IOF continue to use starvation as a weapon of war under the full view of the whole world. As a result, the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition has risen to over 71,000, in addition to more than 17,000 women in urgent need of medical intervention.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH) reported that emergency departments in Gaza’s hospitals are receiving unprecedented numbers of patients of all ages suffering from severe exhaustion and fatigue. These patients have lost significant weight and become emaciated after going without food for many days.² Dr. Suhaib Al-Hams, Director of Kuwait Field Hospital in al-Mawasi area in Khan Yunis, also confirmed that all cases arriving at the hospital are in dire need of food before medicine, as their bodies have reached a point beyond endurance and are all at risk of death.

Information collected from the field and testimonies obtained by PCHR’s researcher, who are an integral part of the population subjected to Israel’s systematic starvation policy, indicate that the hunger crisis is rapidly worsening. This brings us alarmingly close to meeting the three internationally recognized indicators of famine. More than 20% of households in Gaza suffer from severe food consumption deficits, while the rate of children affected by acute wasting exceeds 30%. If the current situation continues, it seems that we are heading towards meeting the third criterion for declaring famine: an increase in hunger-related mortality rates, including two deaths per 10,000 people per day. Is the world waiting to reach this level before taking action?

Testimonies of PCHR’s researchers reflect the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. One of them affirmed: “What we are witnessing is a deliberate and calculated famine. The price of flour has exceeded 250 shekels per kilo, and most people can only get it from the black market, if available. I have personally seen men weeping out of helplessness because they cannot afford to feed their children. A friend of mine stood before me and said, ‘Today, I couldn’t feed my children. I felt how helpless he was.’” Another researcher added: “We have come to eat only one meal a day, barely enough to survive. Our faces have changed, and our bodies have wasted away. We no longer recognize each other from extreme emaciation, as if we are slowly fading away and dying.”  A female researcher described the situation in Gaza as follows: “Every day we lose a new type of food until we lost flour. Hunger spares no one, including elderly, women, and children, all groan in pain. In shelters, cases of fainting are increasing, and people suffer from dizziness and constant fatigue. Death under bombardment has become more merciful than this daily slow death that consumes us.”

These testimonies are merely a sample of the comprehensive situation our researchers witness daily, a situation that the IOF deliberately exacerbate through a calculated policy of depriving the population of food, blocking aid entry, and creating chaos that restricts access to the scarce resources available. This is all part of a systematic plan to dismantle civilian life and subjugate the population through hunger and humiliation.

In parallel to this systematic starvation, the IOF have turned the so-called “aid distribution centers” into real death traps, a mechanism for distributing aid that PCHR has repeatedly stressed that it is created to kill and humiliate the starving Gazans and it must be halted. Since they began operating on 27 May 2025, instead of serving as gateways to survival, these centers have become sites of summary execution for starving civilians. The IOF have killed 851 Palestinians and injured more than 5,634 others near those aid centers, while preventing any measures that could provide a real solution to the escalating hunger crisis. These attacks, carried out under circumstances where crowds of innocent civilians pose no threat to the lives of soldiers or workers at these points, are an integral part of the crime of genocide through using humanitarian aid as a trap for killing under the guise of humanitarian work. This blatant political and criminal exploitation of humanitarian aid clearly embodies the policy of collective punishment imposed on the people of Gaza, accompanied by a total disregard for the lives of the poor and hungry.

PCHR emphasizes that the blatant use of starvation as a weapon against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip constitutes a war crime as defined under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It also represents a flagrant violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which obligate the occupying power to ensure the provision of food and medical care to the population. The cumulative impact of these policies, including the denial of aid entry, movement restrictions, and the creation of chaos that hinders access to food, amounts to a crime of genocide under Article 2 of the 1948 Genocide Convention, which includes the total or partial destruction of a national group by deliberately inflicting on the national group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

In light of such incidents on the ground, PCHR affirms that famine in Gaza has become an integral part of an Israeli political project aimed at subjugating the population and dismantling society in the Gaza Strip. This cannot be separated from the policy of collective punishment that the Israeli occupation authorities have pursued for decades, which has unprecedently escalated since 07 October 2023. PCHR believes that the continued silence of the international community and the inaction of the international justice system provide Israel with political and criminal cover to continue the genocide. PCHR also emphasizes that impunity is no longer merely a legal risk but has become a moral threat to what remains of the human values system. Therefore, PCHR:

• Calls on the United Nations and its bodies, especially the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, to take urgent action by conducting a comprehensive field assessment of the situation in the Gaza Strip, and not to wait for Gaza to be officially declared a Phase 5 famine area.
• Calls on the ICC to open an urgent investigation into the ongoing crime of starvation and to hold the Israeli leaders accountable for committing genocide and crimes against humanity.
• Calls on the European Union (EU), which recently announced an agreement with the Israeli authorities regarding the entry of aid, to monitor the implementation of these agreements on the ground and ensure they do not remain mere words on paper, especially after their failure to bring about any tangible change.

1. Risk of famine across all of Gaza, new report says, 12 May 2025. Link ↩︎
2. Palestinian Ministry of Health statement, 18 July 2025, link ↩︎