How Gaza's hunger crisis reached its 'worst-case scenario'

Vox

19 hours ago

is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map.
The 'worst-case scenario' is unfolding in Gaza.
Though there are larger hunger crises in the world in terms of sheer numbers, Gaza is, in many ways, the most intense. By September, leading humanitarian groups predict, 100 percent of the population will face acute food insecurity, meaning they will be forced to routinely skip meals. Half a million people will be facing starvation, destitution, and death. There's little agriculture in today's Gaza, next to no commercial trade with the outside world, and no opportunity for people to flee.
The situation has deteriorated sharply in recent weeks: Of the 74 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza in 2025, 63 occurred in July — including 24 children under 5, according to the World Health Organization. 'The worst-case scenario of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,' the world's leading hunger watchdog declared on Tuesday. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the consortium of humanitarian groups that monitors and classifies global hunger crises, warned that 'widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.'
Israel has been waging war in Gaza since Hamas's deadly attack in October 2023, but the territory's suffering this month has grown even more severe, more suddenly, for more people than at any other turn in the conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to claim this week, despite all evidence to the contrary, that there is 'no starvation in Gaza.' That stance has gotten harder to maintain amid increasing media attention, with photos of emaciated children spread across the covers of newspapers around the world.
The Israeli government has made some policy changes, including instituting daily 10-hour 'humanitarian pauses' in some areas, air-dropping some additional aid, and allowing in more food trucks. But aid groups say these measures don't come close to meeting the scale of the problem.
So how did the situation get this bad, and what can be done, at this point, to keep it from getting worse?
How a problem became a crisis
Some human rights groups have accused Israel of deliberately using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, which is illegal under international law. Netanyahu has denied that this is the policy, though some politicians in Israel, and some supporters abroad, have suggested that Gaza shouldn't receive any aid until the hostages Hamas took on October 7, 2023, are released. Israeli officials have charged that Gaza's hunger crisis is either exaggerated or the result of theft by Hamas.
Malnutrition was an issue in Gaza even before the war. Israel has restricted the movement of goods and people in the Gaza Strip for decades. This, in addition to taxation and stockpiling by Hamas authorities, has made vital items hard to come by, and a majority of Gazans were already dependent on food assistance before 2023.
The war made this situation exponentially worse. More than a year ago, the IPC and Biden administration officials were warning that parts of Gaza were close to famine or already there. In April 2024, under pressure from the US, Israel allowed hundreds more aid trucks into the Gaza Strip, though this did not resolve the issue entirely, and access to aid fluctuated for the rest of the year.
When the war stopped with a ceasefire agreement in January of this year, food briefly flooded into the territory.
The situation reached a breaking point in March, though, when the 42-day ceasefire between Hamas and Israel ended. Israeli authorities cut off all aid to Gaza for two months. When Israel began allowing aid across the border in May, far less than was being delivered before.
Israeli authorities have consistently derided the UN aid system in Gaza, claiming that a significant portion of aid is stolen by Hamas, though the New York Times recently reported that senior Israeli military officials say there is no evidence of aid being 'systematically' stolen.
The aid is now being delivered by two competing mechanisms: the United Nations as well as the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed entity operating four distribution sites in southern and central Gaza. The GHF's advocates say it prevents Hamas from siphoning off aid, and the group claims to have distributed more than 97 million meals in its two months of operation, but critics are skeptical about how many people are actually receiving these meals.
They also say the small number of sites means Gazans have to travel long distances on foot through war zones to get to them, and that the sites have inconsistent operating hours, leading to a situation where the most vulnerable civilians are the ones least likely to be helped.
'There is no way that a pregnant woman can walk 5 miles and manage to pick up a box that weighs 22 kilos,' said Or Elrom, a former senior officer with the branch of the Israeli military that oversees humanitarian issues in the Palestinian territories.
Distribution sites have frequently been overwhelmed, and soldiers have fired on crowds trying to get food: hundreds of people have been killed in the vicinity of GHF sites. Palestinian GHF workers have also been killed by gunmen, reportedly affiliated with Hamas.
UN-distributed shipments, located at different sites from the GHF aid, have also been overwhelmed by crowds. Officials say all 55 UN aid trucks that entered Gaza last Sunday were unloaded by crowds before reaching their destinations.
Elrom described the mob scenes — both at the UN convoys and at the GHF distribution sites — as a 'chicken and egg' problem.
When not enough aid is coming in, and it's only coming in via one or two locations, it's more likely to be overwhelmed by desperate people, Elrom said during a panel hosted by the Israel Policy Forum on Tuesday. The risk of looting then makes it harder to distribute aid.
The UN-Israel blame game
Israel's government blamed the UN for the failure to get more aid into Gaza, with officials posting videos of hundreds of trucks' worth of food sitting in a fenced-off area near the Kerem Shalom border crossing into southern Gaza that the Israeli officials say the UN is not delivering.
The UN retorted: 'Kerem Shalom is not a McDonald's drive-through where we just pull up and pick up what we've ordered, right?' spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters. 'There are tremendous bureaucratic impediments. There are tremendous security impediments. And, frankly, I think there's a lack of willingness to allow us to do our work.'
The UN and other aid groups have called for the GHF to be shut down, describing it as an inefficient and dangerous method of aid distribution with little hope of addressing the severity of Gaza's crisis.
The blame game is just the latest chapter in a long history of recrimination and mistrust between Israel and the United Nations.
Israel has long claimed to be unfairly singled out for criticism at the UN, and the relationship has only gotten more toxic since the start of the war in Gaza. High-ranking UN officials have accused Israel of genocide, and Israel has alleged that employees of the UN's organization for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, participated in the October 7 attacks. (The UN found the claim credible; it said nine of UNWRA's 14,000 employees 'may have' participated, and no longer work for UNWRA. UNRWA is not the UN agency coordinating food aid delivery.)
What changed?
Recent weeks have seen a major shift not only in the severity of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but in the public debate around it. Netanyahu may deny that anyone is starving in Gaza, but President Donald Trump does not, telling reporters in Scotland on Monday, 'Some of those kids are — that's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake that.' Trump pledged to work with allies to set up more 'food centers' in Gaza and make them more accessible.
The European Union has found Israel to be in violation of its human rights obligations under their trade deal, and is debating suspending a major science research program over the situation in Gaza. France and Britain are planning to recognize Palestinian statehood in September. Even Germany's government, which has been very reluctant to criticize Israeli policy, may be shifting its stance.
Some prominent academics and human rights groups within Israel are now describing their government's actions as 'genocide,' after long resisting the label. While that's far from a mainstream position within Israel, a number of prominent Israeli journalists who have consistently defended the war in Gaza are now sounding the alarm about the hunger crisis.
Not all Israelis are likely to see this as a problem. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has called the airdrops of food a 'disgrace' and posted on X, 'I support starving Hamas in Gaza.' Netanyahu reportedly made the decision to boost aid last weekend without informing Ben Gvir and his other far-right coalition partners.
The terms of the debate may be shifting, but Bob Kitchen, director of emergency response of the International Rescue Committee, told Vox that the additional aid being provided is still 'literally nothing compared to what's required.'
He singled out the air drops of aid by the IDF, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan for particular scorn, calling them 'the most expensive, least effective way of delivering aid, and it's almost farcical that on such a small piece of land where we're having to resort to air drops when all this food is waiting to be driven across in trucks.'
What can be done to help Gaza?
Kitchen said the most immediate step that could be taken is for Israel and Egypt to open the crossings into Gaza and allow unimpeded humanitarian assistance.
'The NGO and the UN community have proven over the last several years that we can deliver aid at scale from within an active war zone,' he added. 'It's dangerous, high risk, but we have proven that we can do it.'
At a bare minimum, it would probably also help for the IDF, GHF, and UN agencies to cooperate in facilitating safe and efficient aid deliveries rather than continuing the current blame game.
But these are all stopgap measures. Actually addressing Gaza's humanitarian crisis will require an end to the war that is causing it — and that seems to be getting less likely.
Last week, the US and Israel pulled their negotiating teams out of ongoing talks in Doha, blaming Hamas for a 'lack of desire to reach a ceasefire.'
Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff said the US would 'consider alternative options' to end the war and bring home the remaining hostages, though it's not clear what those are. The fighting that resumed in March does not appear to have moved the needle in getting Hamas to agree to Israel's terms. And Hamas's leaders certainly don't appear to be motivated to compromise by the increasing suffering of Gaza's people.
For all that Trump is disturbed by the images of starving children and frustrated with Netanyahu on multiple fronts, he has also urged Israel, in the absence of a ceasefire deal, to 'finish the job' against Hamas. He does not appear inclined to pressure Netanyahu to agree to end the war in exchange for the release of the hostages. Such a deal would be favored by a majority of Israelis but would likely bring down Netanyahu's government, which relies on far-right coalition partners who have threatened to leave his government if a ceasefire is signed.
As long as the war continues, measures to address the hunger crisis — needed as they are — are likely only stopgaps.