Famine warnings return to Gaza

Gaza is dealing with a growing hunger crisis—again—due to Israeli limits of food deliveries under its siege over the Palestinian territory.

"People here are living on a day-to-day eating system," journalist Tamer Nahed in Gaza told Arab News about living on one meal a day. "Today they might manage to get food, but tomorrow they won’t be able to."

Abdel Nasser Al-Ajrami, the leader of an association of bakery operators, told the Middle East Eye and the New Arab that bakeries are closing due to less flour being let through border crossings.

The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification in September forecasted that 1.4 million people would experience "high levels of acute food insecurity through December" and all of Gaza is in risk of a hunger crisis.

The occupied territory already underwent famine conditions in August 2025, and Israel allowed in food provisions after international pressure at that time.

However, healthy levels of access to food in Gaza has barely resumed under Israel's controls. And Euro-Med Monitor and other international organizations warned Palestinians are at risk of famine again given high food costs, low food deliveries, and less humanitarian aid.

And there's little reprieve: The World Food Program on 19 October said it has to cut food assistance by a third, affecting half a million people in Gaza.

"Since the ceasefire was announced in October 2025, the agency has been reaching around 1.6 million people every month with food parcels, wheat flour, bread, hot meals, nutrition support, school snacks and cash assistance. WFP no longer has sufficient funding to sustain this level of support."

Claire Nevill, the agency's communications officer for Palestine, told Arab News that it understood "humanitarian assistance has been a lifeline" but "we just run out of funding, literally."

Gaza officials called on Israel to end its "systematic policy of starvation and the use of food as a weapon against unarmed civilians."

Thanks for reading Conflict Journal's Gaza Notes installment. Sign up to receive it in your inbox starting today:

In Gaza

At least eight people in Gaza were killed by alleged Israeli strikes in the last two days, the territory's health ministry said on 24 October, AFP reported. Israel claims they killed "two operatives" who crossed their imposed "Yellow Line" in occupied Gaza on 23 October.

Gaza officials also asserted that Israeli strikes damaged a major water source from Israeli corporation Mekorot, worsening access to clean water.

Earlier in the week, health officials in Gaza said hospital generators urgently needed oil soon, and their engine failure threatens essential care like ICU spaces, ventilators, and incubators for babies.

“Repeated engagements with Israeli authorities have yielded nothing, this blockage is a political decision with profoundly human consequences," the executive director of Association of International Development Agencies said (PDF) about Israel's limits on oil. "Palestinians in Gaza pay the price of global inaction."

• "When we opened the school year in September this year, we met children who should have been in third grade but were entering a school building for the first time," UNRWA's educational director told Asharq al-Aswat.
• UNICEF's regional director demanded Israeli authorities protect kids in Gaza after it recorded 351 children killed since the October 2025 "ceasefire" began.
• Journalist Maha Hussaini talked about the emotional difficulty of caring for a pet amid starvation in Gaza and Israeli blockades of veterinary items.
• "I wished I had been killed with them,” a teenage orphan told the Middle East Eye after an Israeli airstrike killed her whole family at their Deir al-Balah home.

And in Israel

On 23 October, the Jersualem News Syndicate reported that fifteen families, as part of a "Pioneers of Gaza" movement, started living in a forest close to Gaza—in the hopes to settle property in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Earlier in the week, Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in an interview with TIME Magazine, “If Israel wants to continue to live and not be destroyed, we have to capture all of Gaza."

And wider Palestine

After two Israelis were killed in a West Bank shooting, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich suggested there should be an Israeli military campaign "like in Gaza."

"There is no other option but a comprehensive military campaign [...] to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, collect weapons and eliminate terrorists, exactly like in Gaza and Lebanon," he threatened.

Smotrich has repeatedly encouraged for "war" in the occupied West Bank, along with further illegal settlements.

In the Middle East and globally

On 23 October, a court in Turkey's Istanbul started hearings over a case against dozens of Israeli officials, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over how the country handled activist attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza by boat.

There are charges filed on armed robbery, hijacking of boats, and illegal detention, along with other accusations by Global Sumud Flotilla participants.

The court asked prosecutors if any defendants own assets in Turkey, the Jerusalem Post reported, and told authorities to consider filing its genocide and crimes against humanity charges against Israel in a separate case.

Some reading

• More from that Asharq al-Aswat interview with UNRWA's educational director: She said 200,000 are left out of "structured learning" this new school year, adding it could take seven years for Gaza's educational system to fully rebuild.
• "Almost no progress has been made on rebuilding," a piece in Globe and Mail read, since Israel's restrictions continues on "entry of materials and supplies."
• A scoop by Drop Site News suggests the UN is leaving its role in returning Palestinians to Gaza via the Rafah crossing in November.
• The New Arab looked into the future of "Gaza's ancient Christian community."
• UN's special rapporteur Francesca Albanese suggested that Indonesia should rethink its part in US-led "board of peace" plans for Palestine.
• An activist in the US claimed they were detained by ICE for its pro-Palestine speech, and shared his experiences in USA Today.
• A Palestinian-American activist wrote in Mondoweiss about winning a preliminary injunction against the US government and gaining freedom to present genocide evidence at the International Criminal Court.