Palestinian children receive medical treatment at the Friends of Patients Hospital in Gaza City on December 02, 2025. Photo / Getty Images
The Gaza Strip is no longer facing famine in any of its regions after humanitarian and commercial food deliveries surged following an October ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the global authority on hunger says.
However, more than three-quarters of the population, or 1.6 million people, still experience acute food insecurity and malnutrition.
The report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) was the first to be published since the international group of experts declared in August that the Gaza City region was experiencing “man-made” famine as a result of two years of war, displacement and harsh Israeli restrictions on food and other aid.
Although the IPC had projected that by September, more than 600,000 people would experience phase five, or “catastrophic” levels of starvation and malnutrition, that figure dropped to 100,000 by the end of November after Israel began loosening the flow of aid as part of an October 10 ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States, according to the latest report.
Even though conditions have improved from catastrophic levels with the recent uptick in aid flows, the humanitarian outlook in Gaza remains severe for the most vulnerable populations, the report added.
“Over the next 12 months, across the entire Gaza Strip, nearly 101,000 children aged 6-59 months are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition and require treatment, with more than 31,000 severe cases,” the report said.
“During the same period, 37,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women will also face acute malnutrition and require treatment.”
Israel has come under intense international criticism this year for choking the flow of humanitarian aid, which it claimed was being stolen by Hamas fighters and resold.
Both the United Nations and US Government, including in an internal review, have said there was no evidence of widespread theft or diversion of aid by Hamas.
In a statement, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the latest report showed “even the IPC had to admit that there is no famine in Gaza”.
The Israeli military agency that oversees the border crossings with Gaza, the Co-ordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), criticised the report for what it said was an underestimation of the total amount of aid that has entered Gaza through other channels, such as bilateral donations or through private charities unaffiliated with the UN.
“Time and again, IPC assessments have proven to be incorrect and disconnected from the data on the ground, contradicting verified facts, including aid volumes, food availability, and market trends,” COGAT said in a statement.
More commercial food items are also entering Gaza, but the UN World Food Programme has said the majority of the goods - including chocolate and soft drinks - are too expensive for cash-strapped Palestinians and have lower nutritional value than essentials such as eggs.
The IPC said that although the nutrition situation has improved since its August report, acute malnutrition is considered “critical,” or phase four in its five-tier classification, in Gaza City; and “serious,” or phase three, in the Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis regions.
North Gaza is also believed to be suffering from malnutrition, the report warned. The IPC defines phase five, or famine, as one in five households facing extreme food shortages and phase four as households commonly resorting to emergency coping strategies, such as scavenging through rubble or begging for food.
Food insecurity in Gaza has been exacerbated by a breakdown of the local economy, the report said.
Its authors noted that more than 96% of cropland in the Gaza Strip is now unusable, and unemployment stands at 80%.
The demarcation of the “Yellow Line” under the ceasefire agreement, which leaves roughly half of the Gaza Strip under Israeli military control, also limits access to farmland and increases population density along the coast.
A “worst-case” scenario that sees a renewal of hostilities and the stoppage of aid could tip large swathes of the enclave back into famine conditions, the report warned.
There has been a “massive improvement” in the food security situation throughout Gaza, Antoine Renard, WFP’s director for the Palestinian territories, said in an interview from the enclave, where he has been visiting families in refugee camps this week.
Whereas families were having one meal a day on average in July, many were reporting having two meals per day now, he said, but the quality of nutrition was inconsistent. The WFP estimates that Gazans consume protein-rich foods less than one day per week on average.
Looking forward, Renard said, one problem was that nearly the entire Gazan population was reliant on “handouts” and lacked any capacity to resume farming or fishing. Aluminium for building greenhouses have been rejected by Israeli authorities as dual civilian-military use goods, as have fishing nets.
“The situation is way better than where we were pre-ceasefire,” Renard said.
“But if you want to bring back a population, we cannot continue to have this constant up and down.”
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