Gaza is on the brink of a man-made famine

AS American ships were crossing the Atlantic to build a humanitarian pier in Gaza, American diplomats withheld their veto when the UN Security Council voted on March 25th for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas during the month of Ramadan, which ends on April 9th. America’s dispatch of ships and this diplomatic rebuke reflect the growing frustration of President Joe Biden’s administration with Israel’s conduct of the war as well as wider concerns that many of Gaza’s 2.2m inhabitants will starve unless they get urgent aid.

These worries crystallised on March 18th with the release of a report warning that about half of Gaza’s population faces “catastrophic food insecurity” and that around 70% of an estimated 300,000 people still in Gaza city will probably experience “famine” within the next two months. The report was compiled by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system, an international network that provides apolitical assessments. Israel, which previously denied accounts of starvation, has tellingly not rebutted the IPC report.