Claire Schnatterbeck
Foreign Policy / August 22, 2025
“Just when it seems there are no words left to describe the living hell in Gaza, a new one has been added: ‘famine,’” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wrote on social media on Friday. His statement was in response to a new report released that same day by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the world’s leading hunger monitor, which found that famine is currently occurring in Gaza City and the surrounding areas.
The report, which notes that more than half a million Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing famine and “catastrophic conditions,” marks the first official confirmation of famine in the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israel-Hamas war almost two years ago and the first time the IPC has declared a famine in the Middle East.
According to the report, the place facing the most extreme hunger is the Gaza Governorate, which consists of Gaza City and the surrounding territory. The IPC report classifies the situation there as a “Phase 5” famine—the most severe level, which is characterized by “starvation, destitution, and death.”
Additionally, according to the report, another million people—half of Gaza’s population—are facing emergency levels of malnourishment, and 132,000 children under 5 years old risk death due to acute malnutrition.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected the findings, accusing the IPC of publishing “a ‘tailor-made’ fabricated report to fit Hamas’s fake campaign.” The ministry also asserted that aid has been allowed to flow into Gaza and denied the existence of famine, continuing the trend of Israeli officials playing down the severity of hunger in the enclave.
Israel has heavily restricted aid access in Gaza over the course of the war, including enforcing an 11-week blockade on all humanitarian aid inflows in March. Though it lifted that blockade in May under strong international pressure, Israel has continued to impose restrictions, claiming that doing so is necessary to prevent Hamas from hijacking aid. The IPC report also found that Israeli efforts to loosen restrictions have proved “insufficient.”
The report comes as Israel calls in more reservists and continues to prepare for an invasion into Gaza City in an attempt to snuff out Hamas and retrieve hostages, despite the location’s high density of Palestinian civilians. On Thursday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved military plans to take control of Gaza City and ordered “immediate negotiations” to release hostages.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz posted on social media on Friday in response to Netanyahu’s approval, saying, “Soon, the gates of hell will open upon the heads of Hamas’s murderers and rapists in Gaza—until they agree to Israel’s conditions for ending the war, primarily the release of all hostages and their disarmament.
“If they do not agree, Gaza, the capital of Hamas, will become Rafah and Beit Hanoun,” he added. “Exactly as I promised—so it shall be.” Those two cities have been flattened by Israeli military operations over the course of the war.
The IPC report warns that due to the inability of outside parties to enter Gaza, the current statistics could be an underestimate of the actual conditions and that the situation will continue to worsen. Humanitarian organizations and world leaders have used this as an opportunity to reassert calls for a sustainable cease-fire that would put an end to the war.
Claire Schnatterbeck is an editorial fellow at Foreign Policy
