Israel turns hunger into ‘weapon of slow killing,’ says Hamas
Hamas has called the situation in Gaza a “catastrophic famine” as land crossings continue to be blocked by Israeli occupation despite international calls for the most effective routes to be reopened.
The Palestinian group said Israel has turned food into a “weapon of slow killing and aid into a tool of chaos and looting.”
“Most relief trucks are subjected to looting and attacks as part of a systematic policy pursued by the occupation. The sector needs more than 600 aid and fuel trucks daily to meet its minimum needs. What the occupation actually allows into the Gaza Strip represents only a small percentage,” Hamas said in a statement.
Hamas has called on international organisations to expose Israel’s “starvation engineering” and reiterated that breaking the siege is the only solution to end the spiralling hunger crisis in Gaza.
The statement comes a day after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global hunger monitoring system, has warned that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is now unfolding in Gaza.
“Latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City,” it said in a new report.
The IPC’s alert is short of a formal famine declaration. A formal famine declaration, which is rare, requires the kind of data that the lack of access to Gaza and mobility within has largely denied.
The IPC has declared famine only a few times – in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region last year.
“Amid relentless conflict, mass displacement, severely restricted humanitarian access, and the collapse of essential services, including healthcare, the crisis has reached an alarming and deadly turning point.”
Food consumption has sharply deteriorated, with one in three individuals going without food for days at a time, it said.
Malnutrition rose rapidly in the first half of July, with more than 20,000 children being admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July. More than 3,000 are severely malnourished.
The report says nearly 17 out of every 100 children below the age of five in Gaza City are acutely malnourished.
The IPC alert comes against the backdrop of its latest analysis released in May 2025, which projected that by September 2025, the entire population of Gaza would face high levels of acute food insecurity, with more than 500,000 people expected to be in a state of extreme food deprivation, starvation, and destitution.
Gaza hospitals have recorded seven new deaths from “famine and malnutrition” raising the total hunger-related death toll to 154 since October 2023.
