The UN sounded the alarm on Tuesday about “almost inevitable widespread famine” in the Gaza Strip, especially in the northern part of the enclave besieged by the Israeli army, where, in the absence of access to humanitarian aid and with crops suffering huge losses disaster, is threatened “immediately”.

“If nothing changes, famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), told the UN Security Council.

Since January 23, no aid convoys have been able to reach the northern Gaza Strip, according to the UN, which criticizes restrictions by Israeli authorities.

The northern part of the small Palestinian territory is not the only one at risk, after almost five months of war between Israel and Hamas.

“If nothing is done, we fear that widespread famine in the Gaza Strip is almost inevitable,” said Ramesh Rajasigam, who represented Martin Griffiths, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator.

“We are at the end of February with at least 576,000 people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — one step away from starvation,” and virtually all of the 2.2 million residents “dependent on appallingly inadequate humanitarian aid to survive,” he continued. .

“As devastating as this painting is today, it can only get worse” if the situation does not change, he warned.

The meeting followed a briefing note distributed to the SA on 22 February by Martin Griffiths, which addressed the food security implications of Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip.

In the text, which came to the attention of AFP yesterday, it calls on the Security Council to “guarantee compliance with international humanitarian law”, preventing “the use of food deprivation of the civilian population as a method of waging war”.

Based on “the most likely scenario, agricultural production will have collapsed in the north until May,” Maurizio Martina, deputy director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), said addressing SA.

As of February 15, 46.2% of agricultural land had been damaged in the Gaza Strip, buildings used for agricultural production also, more than a quarter of wells were destroyed, most of the livestock of the farmers were lost, especially the 70% of cows and other farmed animals, while 97% of groundwater is now unfit for human drinking.

Humanitarian aid continues to flow into the Palestinian enclave, but at a trickle. The day before Monday, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, highlighted via X (the former Twitter) that in February, aid reaching the Gaza Strip dropped by 50 % compared to January.

“Nearly 1,000 trucks loaded with 15,000 tons of food are in Egypt, ready to move,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric noted yesterday.

“It is not Israel that is blocking these trucks,” countered Jonathan Miller, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UN, to the Security Council, blaming the agency and its agencies’ inability to organize aid deliveries “effectively,” according to him.

“There is absolutely no limit (…) to the amount of humanitarian aid that can be offered to the civilian population in Gaza,” he assured, adding that since the beginning of 2024, Israel has rejected 16% of requests for aid deliveries because of ” danger” of ending up “in the hands” of Hamas.

The UN Secretary-General and humanitarian agencies are calling for the outbreak of war to be declared a humanitarian ceasefire, specifically to allow sufficient humanitarian aid to be distributed to the Gazans.