The blockade that Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip, after the attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023, drastically reduced commercial and humanitarian deliveries of food. Together with heavy bombing that damaged more than half the farmland in Gaza, all sources of access to food were systematically undermined, and the population was exposed to several months of catastrophic food insecurity.
Three assessments by the international community concluded that there was ‘a risk of famine’ in December 2023, that a famine was ‘imminent’ in March 2024, but that this threat had receded by June 2024 as restrictions on humanitarian relief were eased. Nonetheless, other sources including the World Food Programme assert that a famine did occur in northern Gaza in April–May 2024.
This paper reviews the evidence and concludes that, whether or not a ‘technical’ famine occurred, Israel’s use of food as a weapon of war against civilians in Gaza caused avoidable hunger and starvation deaths, and almost certainly constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity.
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