Michael Fakhri, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food, accused Israel of pursuing a deliberate policy of starvation in Gaza during an interview with the BBC’s Newshour programme on Monday.
“We’ve seen the effects of their starvation campaign, with high mortality rates – people are dying, not just from hunger, but from dehydration and disease, which often follows,” he said.
“Israel has told us what it’s doing, it’s done it, and we’ve seen the effects.”
Thursday’s report by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said about 1.84 million people were experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, with 664,000 of them facing “emergency” levels of hunger and almost 133,000 facing “catastrophic” levels.
The last figure is three-quarters lower than at the time of the last report in June – a fall the IPC attributed to a temporary surge in humanitarian assistance and commercial supplies between May and August.
However, the IPC said it expected the number of people facing “catastrophic” hunger to nearly triple in the coming months because there had been a sharp decline in aid deliveries and food availability since September.
In response to the report, UN Secretary General António Guterres said on X: “Famine looms. This is intolerable. Crossing points must open immediately, bureaucratic impediments must be removed, and law and order restored so UN agencies can deliver lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”
Concerns over the situation have been growing in Washington, and prompted the warning from top officials giving Israel 30 days to boost humanitarian aid access in Gaza or risk having some US military assistance cut off.
The US letter to the Israeli government was signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The pair said they were writing to “underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory”.
But the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, scorned the US warning.
“The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay,” he told reporters in Brussels.
“One month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It’s too many people.”