Famine by February: How bad is Gaza’s hunger crisis under Israeli attacks?

Spending a day without eating any food has become usual. In early December, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that nine out of 10 people across the enclave skip meals for long periods.

Nutritionally vulnerable groups such as pregnant women are at heightened risk, while baby formula and milk have been in severely short supply for toddlers who rely on it.

Even preparing meals requires finding alternatives to cooking gas, and aside from using firewood or cardboard, at least 13 percent of displaced people have been forced to burn solid waste, says the WFP.

Hunger has also quickly escalated since a brief truce ended in early December. Just 12 days after it ended, the WFP found that at least half of internally displaced people surveyed knew someone who had resorted to consuming raw meat.

Access to water is also scarce, with less than two litres (0.5 gallons) available for each person per day – far short of the 15 litres needed to survive, according to the WFP.

What level of food aid is entering Gaza?

Since October 7, the number of trucks carrying food that entered Gaza in a month fell by more than half, compared with at least 10,000 trucks before the war.

Over two months of war, only 1,249 trucks carrying food assistance reached Gaza, the WFP reported on December 6. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also reported that over the first 70 days of the war, only 10 percent of the food needed for Gaza’s entire population entered the enclave.

The WFP has recommended that at least 100 trucks carrying just food and water enter Gaza a day, but on most days since the war even the total amount of trucks entering has been less than that. The agency also noted that damaged roads near Rafah at the border with Egypt – where must aid is now dispersed from – cannot accommodate this increase.

At the height of aid supply during the truce lasting from November 24 to December 1, some 200 trucks entered daily, while the WFP was only able to reach about 10 percent of Gaza’s population with in-kind and cash-based food assistance.

Even once food aid is supplied, access to a sufficient share has not been possible. A report from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Mezan, a human rights organisation based in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, on December 14 found that people near Rafah’s food distribution centres would often have to wait in line for 10 hours, and sometimes still returned home empty-handed.

“I have to walk three kilometres to get one gallon [of water],” Marwan, a 30-year-old Palestinian, who fled south with his pregnant wife and two children on November 9, told Human Rights Watch. “And there is no food. If we are able to find food, it is canned food. Not all of us are eating well.”

Still, Gaza’s population primarily relies on humanitarian assistance for food, followed by local markets and assistance from friends or relatives. With rising shortages across all of these, support from relatives is also dwindling, according to the WFP.

As more of Gaza’s population is pushed into shelters in southern governorates, which are also under intense bombardment, competition for food is expected to increase, said the IPC.