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Refugee Palestinian woman with child in an aid camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip: “Man-made starvation”

Photo: Rizek Abdeljawad / Xinhua / IMAGO

The Israeli army has been bombing the Gaza Strip for more than five months, and many people live in catastrophic conditions in the narrow coastal strip.

International experts are now warning of imminent famine.

At the same time, Israel is refusing entry to Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the criticized United Nations Palestinian Relief Agency (UNRWA).

Lazzarini announced this on the X platform.

Lazzarini wrote that he was not allowed to enter the country on the very day on which new data about an impending famine became public.

He accuses the authorities of “man-made starvation.”

Half of the population in the Gaza Strip is suffering and children are dying of thirst.

All of this happens under the eyes of humanity.

“Famine can be averted with political will,” wrote Lazzarini.

Specifically, around half of the population in the sealed-off coastal strip - around 1.1 million people - is in the worst emergency situation, according to the so-called Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

The UN-funded initiative has a multi-tiered system that assesses how many people are affected by hunger and how severely.

The highest level 5 is described as “famine-like conditions”.

According to the IPC analysis, famine is likely in the northern Gaza Strip within the next two months.

Urging an immediate ceasefire

It is said that this situation can still be avoided.

However, for this to happen, Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas would have to stop their fighting immediately and aid organizations would have to be given access.

The aid organization Care is also pushing for help.

"An immediate ceasefire and urgent measures to ensure access to medical care, food, water and other essential goods for the civilian population in the Gaza Strip - especially children and women - are necessary to contain this crisis," said Hiba Tibi, Care country director for the West Bank and Gaza.

The trigger for the latest Gaza war and Israel's massive ground offensive was the bloody Hamas attack on October 7th last year.

Israel also accuses UNRWA that twelve of the 13,000 employees in Gaza were involved in the massacre.

UNRWA has condemned the attack and said Israel's allegations, if true, would be a betrayal of UN values.

It laid off several employees so it could continue to provide help.

mrc/Reuters