Food security experts warn Gaza is at critical risk of famine if Israel doesn't end its blockade

The Gaza Strip will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign, food security experts said in a stark warning on Monday.

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Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation, living in “catastrophic” levels of hunger, and 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.

The group said “there is a high risk” of outright famine if circumstances don’t change.

Israel has banned all food, shelter, medicine and any other goods from entering the Palestinian territory for the past 10 weeks, even as it carries out waves of airstrikes and ground operations. Gaza’s population of around 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive, because Israel’s 19-month-old military campaign has wiped away most capacity to produce food inside the territory.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the findings, saying the IPC’s previous forecasts had proven unfounded and that the group undercounted the amount of aid that entered Gaza during a ceasefire earlier this year.