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Gaza faces worst hunger crisis yet as truce talks stall over aid access
The crisis is spiraling as Israel and Hamas mull a truce and comes two weeks after the European Union announced an agreement with Israel to increase the flow of food to Gaza.
A major dispute in the ceasefire negotiations, officials from both sides say, is over a Hamas demand for the restoration of a United Nations-administered relief network that Israel sidelined, arguing the Palestinian militant group was stealing food and medicine.
World anger toward Israel's government is growing amid increasing reports of emaciated babies, children crammed into soup queues and men tussling over bags of flour. Foreign doctors volunteering in Gaza say they too are going hungry. International news agencies are withdrawing staff for fear of famine.
'There is no real change on the ground,' Médecins Sans Frontières said in a statement, referring to the July 10 accord between Israel and the EU. MSF and many other humanitarian groups accused Israel of failing to make good on the arrangement.
'Every day without a sustained flow means more people dying of preventable illnesses,' MSF said. 'Children starve while waiting for promises that never arrive.'
The World Health Organization added its voice to the alarm.
'The 2.1 million people trapped in the war zone that is Gaza are facing yet another killer on top of bombs and bullets: starvation,' said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday. 'We are now witnessing a deadly surge in malnutrition-related deaths.'
These accusations are a 'coordinated, scripted campaign,' according to Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon.
Iran-backed Hamas, which is on terrorism blacklists in much of the West, called on Wednesday for global protests against Israel 'until the siege is broken and the famine ends.' Thirty-three Palestinians have died of malnutrition over the last 48 hours, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
More than 59,000 people have been killed since the war started in October 2023, according to the ministry. Hamas triggered the conflict with an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Israel has lost more than 400 troops in Gaza combat.
Israel says it must continue the war until the remaining 50 captives — roughly 20 of who Israel believes are alive — are freed. It's negotiating a 60-day truce with Hamas that would lead to the return of 10 living and and around 18 deceased hostages. During the ceasefire, the sides would continue talks to end the war permanently and release the last captives.
Aid dispute
Like other Israeli officials, Danon said what problems do exist in Gaza are due to distribution shortfalls within Palestinian-controlled areas.
'It's really easy for the UN to blame Israel for everything,' Danon told Israel's Kan radio. 'They don't talk about the drivers who flee and aren't willing to go to all kind of places. They don't talk about the pillaging by Hamas.'
Israel blocked aid supplies for Gaza in early March, shortly before a ceasefire that started in January broke down. It said that was necessary to put more pressure on Hamas to surrender.
In May, Israel allowed aid to enter Gaza again via a new US-backed entity called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Designed to stop Hamas from getting aid, GHF has been dogged by controversy and chaos, with hundreds of Palestinians being shot near distribution sites. The UN and other groups say GHF has politicized the supply of aid and is giving out nowhere near enough to meet the needs of Gazans.
GHF and Israel dispute reports that Palestinians killed or hurt near aid sites have been hit by their fire, instead blaming Hamas.
On Monday, 26 countries including the UK, Italy, Japan and Switzerland put out a joint statement calling on Israel to end the war immediately.
'The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,' they said. 'The Israeli government's aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity. We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food.'
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In March 2024, he sent Ibrahim's medical files to Shriners Hospitals for Children, headquartered in Florida. The group had facilities across the U.S. and specialized in amputation and burns cases. It had a history of accepting kids injured by war, including from Ukraine. In Gaza, Ibrahim was doing a bit better, yet there was so little food that he and his mother sometimes went for days without eating. Every day, Hilat checked the official list of approved evacuees to see if PCRF's children appeared. On March 21, 2024, the list showed Ibrahim—but not his mother. Hilat knew that Egyptian security guards sometimes let mothers of young children through the border crossing even if their names weren't on the exit list. He suggested that Abuowda try with Ibrahim the very next day. The two went on foot. An official on the Gaza side waved them through. On the Egyptian side however, the security official refused to let Abuowda pass. In her excitement, she had let slip that they were headed to America. The man then insisted that an official from the U.S. Embassy meet them at the border. They tried the same crossing and failed twice more over the next few weeks. Each time, Ibrahim walked back to the hospital in silence and climbed into his cot, burying his head into the covers. His mother, who didn't have a bed, retreated to her sleeping spot on the ground underneath Ibrahim's cot. She heard her son's faint weeping. She wept too. In September, a State Department official reached out to Hilat at PCRF to ask for a list of children it wanted to evacuate. The border crossing with Egypt was now closed, but the U.S. government had worked out an alternative exit route through Israel into Jordan. Hilat chose 10 children with some of the most dire situations among hundreds of names. There was 2-year-old Rahaf Saed, who had lost both of her legs in an explosion that also injured her mother. 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Many of them had never been beyond Gaza's fences until that day. At a hotel in Amman, PCRF staff led the families to a buffet-style dining room where they were told to help themselves. Abuowda said she and the other mothers began to cry, thinking of their hungry relatives in Gaza. On the flight from Jordan to the U.S., Abuowda prayed again and again for God to protect them. It was their first time flying. They landed in Chicago in December. The freezing weather was a shock to them, as was the snow that covered the ground a few weeks later. Abuowda and Ibrahim's first stop was the house of a young American couple who were Egyptian and Syrian, but didn't speak much Arabic. The families used a combination of broken Arabic and English to understand each other. A few days later, a PCRF volunteer took Abuowda and Ibrahim to Shriners Children's Chicago for the first time. The doctors began running tests on Ibrahim, including a CT scan of his abdomen and pelvic area. They thought the shrapnel was small enough that his body would absorb it over time, so chose not to remove it. In January, the hospital presented Ibrahim with options for a prosthetic arm. One had a metal hook, while another was shaped like a hand. Neither option seemed particularly versatile to the boy, who said he had imagined something more like a bionic arm. He went with the plastic hand and months of physical therapy followed. The weight of the limb and the straps around his back have been hard for Ibrahim to get used to. He has to use his shoulder muscles to pick up a cup. Ibrahim has at times returned to his boisterous self. He was able to enroll in the second half of eighth grade, and is learning English and discovering the joys of using a calculator for math. The highlight of his summer so far was going on the roller coasters at Six Flags. Abuowda is building an online teaching platform for Arabic and religion. But her thoughts frequently turn back to Gaza, where the rest of the family is living in a tent and have to move constantly due to the fighting. The flow of agonizing news is relentless. Her father died in an explosion in Gaza. More recently, her son Mohammed was caught in an explosion when he was out looking for food; shrapnel flew into his head, killing him quickly. Another son, Muath, has made it to Egypt, where he is trying to get medical treatment for his injury. Abuowda says her eldest son was detained late last year and is on a list of Palestinians at Ofer prison, an Israeli facility in the occupied West Bank. Her girls depend on their father now. 'We miss you so much. You can yell at us, just come back soon," they keep saying. The youngest is now 8. Abuowda and Ibrahim's visitor visas allow them to stay in the U.S. up to five years, but they are heading to Egypt soon, so they can at least reunite with Abuowda's son there. What they really want is to go back home, to Gaza. But it feels out of reach for now, perhaps more improbable than their journey out. Write to Chao Deng at
