For hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, each day brings a struggle to find food.
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A panel of global hunger experts warned this week that the Gaza Strip was on the brink of famine, but to many Gazans, it feels as if it is already here.
“I swear our stomachs are decaying,” said Eman Abu Jaljum, 23, whose family in northern Gaza has been surviving off canned peas and beans.
In a report issued on Tuesday, the experts said that almost half a million people in the territory faced starvation. They stopped short of declaring a famine, a designation that depends on a variety of criteria being met.
But in a Gaza devastated by almost nine months of war between Israel and Hamas, that can seem like a distinction without a difference.
“We are living in a famine that is more extreme than ever before,” Ms. Abu Jaljum said.
Each day brings a new struggle to find food. Fresh vegetables are scarce and meat scarcer still. And at those food markets that are still functioning, the shortages have sent prices skyrocketing, including for staples like flour and rice.
The last time that Iyad al-Sapti, a 30-year-old father of six in Gaza City, was able to get a bag of flour was nearly two months ago — and that required waiting in line for three hours, he said. A single bell pepper, he said, now costs more than $2.
“Who could possibly afford that?” he asked.
One of his daughters, Mr. al-Sapti said, asked for eggs, but there were none to be found. “I would just tell her, ‘I swear, I wish I can provide you with eggs,’” he said.
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While warning of a high risk of famine, the report on Tuesday from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is known as the I.P.C., noted that the amount of food reaching northern Gaza had increased in recent months. The change coincides with the Israeli reopening of border crossings — under intense international pressure — to allow more aid to enter.
An I.P.C. designation of famine depends on a combination of factors, among them the percentages of households facing extreme lack of food, children suffering from acute malnutrition and deaths from starvation or malnutrition.
But many people may die before all the criteria are met.
Since the I.P.C. standards were developed in 2004, they have been used to identify only two famines: in Somalia in 2011, and in South Sudan in 2017. In Somalia, more than 100,000 people died before famine was officially declared.
As of Sunday, the health authorities in Gaza reported, 34 people had died from malnutrition, the majority children.
“Before some simple things were available,” Ms. Abu Jaljum said, “but now there’s barely anything.”
Although the fighting in Gaza is now largely concentrated in the south, food shortages have been reported across the enclave.
In Khan Younis, the southern Gaza city where Nizar Hammad, 30, has been sheltering with his family in a tent, finding food can be less a challenge than cooking it.
“The biggest suffering is preparing the food itself, because you do not have cooking gas,” he said.
Firewood is hard to find, and expensive. But Mr. Hammad said that bread, flour, pasta, rice and lentils were available and relatively affordable in his area, and that he could buy two bags of flour for about $2.60. Chicken, beef, fruit and vegetables were another matter.
“The problem now is the lack of cash, work and income,” Mr. Hammad said.
In the north, bread has become more available as some bakeries in Gaza City reopen their doors, said Mr. al-Sapti. His family has mostly been eating bread with the herb mix za’atar. “The bakeries reopening have helped us a lot,” he said.
But Mr. al-Sapti worries that the bakeries may soon run out of fuel.
“I really hope they stay open,” he said.
— Iyad Abuheweila,Ameera Harouda and Hiba Yazbek
Key Developments
An Israeli strike kills a Doctors Without Borders staff member, and other news.
A Palestinian physiotherapist who worked with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders was killed in an attack on Tuesday night in Gaza City, the organization said in a statement. The Israeli military said on social media that it had killed the man, Fadi al-Wadiya, 33, in a drone attack and claimed that he was a member of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The military called him a “significant terrorist” and said that he had worked on developing the Iran-backed group’s rocket capabilities. Doctors Without Borders said it had no indication that Israel’s claims were true and added that Israel did not ask the organization about the claim before Mr. al-Wadiya was killed, along with five other people, including three children. It called the attack “cynical and abhorrent” and said that “only an independent investigation will be able to establish the facts.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday of planning to spread the war in Gaza to Lebanon “with the consent of the West,” in what he said would be a “grave disaster.” Mr. Netanyahu suggested on Sunday that fighting in Gaza was about to enter a less intense stage and that Israel would be able to move some of its forces north, where cross-border strikes have intensified with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. But he stopped well short of announcing plans to send troops into Lebanon. The U.N.’s departing humanitarian aid chief, Martin Griffiths, also warned on Wednesday of the dangers posed by a conflict in Lebanon, calling it a “flashpoint beyond all flashpoints.”
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, met with Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, on Wednesday to discuss developments in the war in Gaza, efforts to bring home Israeli hostages, tensions along Israel’s border with Lebanon and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It was Mr. Gallant’s final meeting with Biden administration officials after four days in Washington. “During the meetings, we made significant progress, obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were addressed,” Mr. Gallant said in a statement, noting that he and Mr. Sullivan spoke specifically about Israel’s weapons needs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has in recent weeks accused the United States of holding up weapons shipments, a claim that American officials have denied. Mr. Gallant struck a more conciliatory tone on Wednesday, saying, “It is moving to see the great support we receive from the U.S. government and the American public.”
The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on nearly 50 entities and people that it said were part of an Iranian operation to direct billions of dollars toward terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. “The United States is taking action against a vast shadow banking system used by Iran’s military to launder billions of dollars of oil proceeds and other illicit revenue,” Wally Adeyemo, the U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury, said in a statement. The latest U.S. effort to punish Iran and cut off funding for the terrorist groups it backs comes after months of stepped up activity by Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has been striking Israel’s northern border, and by the Houthis in Yemen, who have been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea.
Netanyahu’s coalition appears steady after a court ruling threatened to split his government.
A day after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition appeared to be holding, though at least one far-right party expressed deep reservations about the court decision.
The ruling had for months been viewed as potentially perilous for Mr. Netanyahu because his six-party coalition depends on ultra-Orthodox parties that are opposed to conscription for their constituents. But so far, there was little sign that the decision would jeopardize the coalition in the short term.
There was no immediate comment on the ruling from one of the most prominent far-right ministers, Bezalel Smotrich. Some politicians connected to the coalition criticized the ruling, but did not say whether it might lead them to pull out of the government.
Military service is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis, both men and women, and the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox has long been a source of resentment. That resentment has grown because of the strain placed on the Israel Defense Forces by the war in Gaza, which has entered its ninth month.
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On Tuesday, judges said there was no legal basis for a military exemption given to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s mandatory draft laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.
Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party has criticized the Supreme Court for issuing a ruling when it said the government was planning to pass its own legislation that would render the case obsolete.
The government’s proposed law, the party said, would increase the number of ultra-Orthodox conscripts while recognizing the importance of religious study, but it was unclear whether it would ultimately hold up to judicial scrutiny. If passed by Parliament, a new law could face years of court challenges, buying the government additional time.
In reaction to the ruling on Wednesday, Rabbi Shlomo Benizri, who had served in previous governments and is an influential member of the Sephardic Shas party, a coalition member that appeals to Israelis from the Middle East and North Africa, said that the military must ensure that provisions are made for yeshiva students who are drafted as a result of the ruling.
These arrangements must “create the appropriate atmosphere and spiritual greenhouse for them, and then they can be drafted,” he said in an interview on Israel’s Kan radio, without elaborating. .
Meir Porush, the Jerusalem affairs and heritage minister, reserved his disappointment for the court, rather than the government, saying the decision left ultra-Orthodox Jews legally defenseless.
“We feel today we have no protection in the corridors of the courts,” said Mr. Porush, a member of the United Torah Judaism party, in an opinion piece in the HaMevaser newspaper, which is widely read by the ultra-Orthodox. “There is no one who understands how fundamental it is to sit and meditate on the Torah.”
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Mr. Smotrich, the settler activist and ultranationalist who serves as finance minister in the government, had no immediate comment on the ruling, a spokesman said.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from military service since the founding of Israel in 1948, when the country’s leadership promised them autonomy in exchange for their support in creating a largely secular state. At the time, there were only a few hundred yeshiva students.
There are now more than a million ultra-Orthodox in Israel, roughly 13 percent of the population. They wield considerable political clout and their elected leaders have become kingmakers, featuring in most Israeli coalition governments. But as the power of the ultra-Orthodox grew, so did anger over their lack of participation in the military and their relatively small contribution to the economy.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
— Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Gabby Sobelman
Israel readies troops for a potential escalation in Lebanon.
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Israel’s prime minister and president toured northern Israel’s border and met with military commanders there on Wednesday, amid escalating tensions with Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and mounting concerns from world leaders that a wider war could break out.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, posted a video on social media during his visit of him saying that Israeli forces were “determined and committed to the mission of achieving victory, and no less.”
The tours by Israeli officials along the border with Lebanon came as Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, concluded four days of meetings in Washington with senior Biden administration officials, who repeatedly stressed the need for a diplomatic solution to tensions with Hezbollah. The Iran-backed militia has been targeting Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack set off a war with Hamas in Gaza. Tensions have flared in recent weeks.
“Hezbollah’s provocations threaten to drag the Israeli and Lebanese people into a war that they do not want,” Lloyd J. Austin III, the U.S. secretary of defense, said in a meeting with Mr. Gallant on Tuesday. Mr. Austin added that “such a war would be a catastrophe for Lebanon, and it would be devastating for innocent Israeli and Lebanese civilians.”
Mr. Gallant, in that same meeting, said Israel was working to “achieve an agreement.” But he added that Israel was “determined to establish security” in the north and change “the reality on the ground.”
“We must also discuss readiness for every possible scenario,” Mr. Gallant said.
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Israeli news media on Wednesday reported that more troops were being sent to the northern border region. On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said in a television interview that the war in Gaza was entering a new, less intense phase, allowing the military to turn more attention to Lebanon. “We will be able to move part of our forces to the north,” he said.
On Wednesday, Herzl Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, also visited the northern border with Lebanon and held a “situational assessment” with local commanders, according to a statement from the Israeli military.
Israeli troops in the north on Wednesday trained for what the military called “extreme scenarios,” including “combat in complex and mountainous terrain, activating fire and urban warfare.” The exercise was conducted “as part of increasing readiness in the northern arena,” the military said.
The Israeli military on Wednesday said that its fighter jets struck a Hezbollah military structure and targeted several other sites in southern Lebanon.
Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, addressed community leaders in northern Israel during his two-day visit to the region and said the international community should not be surprised if “the situation spirals out of control.” He accused Hezbollah in Lebanon of repeated violations of treaties and international agreements.
Last week, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, said the Lebanese militia did not want a wider conflict but was prepared for war. “We have prepared ourselves for the most difficult days,” Mr. Nasrallah said. He added: “If war is imposed, the resistance will fight without constraints, rules or limits.”
Both sides have sought to keep the cycle of strikes and counterstrikes from spiraling, but the rhetoric from leaders and frequency of attacks have ratcheted up in recent weeks. Civilians in Israel and Lebanon have been killed, and more than 150,000 people have been forced from their homes along the border since the latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began.
— Ephrat Livni
