Geneva – The Gaza Strip faces a renewed risk of famine as flour and other basic goods run short, bakeries close, and the population's purchasing power collapses, while the Israeli blockade and restrictions on humanitarian and commercial supplies continue.
Tightening the blockade and controlling the amount, type, and regularity of food entering the enclave, after destroying food-production sources and means of access, leaves more than two million Palestinians without the necessities for survival and entrenches the use of starvation as a tool of the genocide that has been ongoing since October 2023.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor field team visited central markets, shops, and gatherings of displaced people across the Gaza Strip. It found severe shortages of vegetables, fruit, and other basic goods, while prices for what remained were beyond the reach of most residents. Because of the blockade, destruction, repeated displacement, and systematic impoverishment imposed by Israel in violation of international law, people in Gaza have lost their livelihoods and exhausted their savings.
Tightening the blockade and controlling the amount, type, and regularity of food entering the enclave leaves more than two million Palestinians without survival necessities and entrenches the use of starvation as a tool of genocide
Depleted flour stocks and a shortage of operating fuel have forced several bakeries to close in recent days, including two major bakeries in Gaza City that stopped operating yesterday. This has brought back long, exhausting bread queues amid a sharp rise in flour prices and the prices of other basic foodstuffs. The closures deprive thousands of displaced and resident families of their main food source, particularly amid the absence of cooking gas and the difficulty of preparing food in tents and overcrowded shelters.
According to the head of the Bakery Owners Association in the Gaza Strip, the seven remaining bakeries operating with World Food Programme (WFP) support could shut down within 48 hours, especially as the flour trucks they depend on are not being allowed to enter until at least the morning of Sunday, 25 October, amid uncertainty over whether the crossings will operate.
Since 20 October, Euro-Med Monitor's field team has documented widespread panic across the Gaza Strip and a resurgence of severe trauma linked to previous waves of famine. Residents fear falling into acute hunger once again as vegetables and fruit vanish from markets, flour grows scarce, prices rise, and they struggle to feed their children. As a result, many families have cut their daily meals to the bare minimum and turned to food alternatives that lack essential nutrients. Mothers are also finding it increasingly difficult to obtain suitable food for their children, including baby formula and prescribed nutritional supplements.
The Israeli authorities suspended arrangements for commercial goods to enter from 13 October 2026, then announced on 19 October that partial entry would resume. However, the announcement did not ease the crisis on the ground, as permitted quantities remained extremely limited, and fresh vegetables and fruit continued to be barred. Residents and merchants told the field team that when the crossing closes every Friday and Saturday, they are left uncertain until Sunday about whether any trucks will be allowed through. A three-day closure can deplete already limited stocks, worsen shortages, and push prices so high that people can afford even less to meet their basic needs.
Field data and analysis of crossing activity confirm that Israel continues to limit the amount and range of goods entering Gaza, with total supplies meeting, at best, only around 37 per cent of the Strip's actual needs. Israeli authorities deliberately control the makeup of commercial shipments, permitting limited quantities of non-essential goods like snacks and soft drinks while restricting basic food and health-related supplies. This pattern suggests a deliberate policy of nutritionally impoverishing the population and keeping people in constant need and uncertainty, rather than a response to temporary security or logistical concerns.
Allowing non-essential goods in while restricting basic foods does not mean there is no starvation policy. The adequacy of supplies depends not simply on whether goods are available in markets, but on whether the population can obtain enough varied food to meet its needs. These restrictions must be considered alongside the destruction of local production and income sources, which leaves the population dependent on supplies whose quantities, types, and entry schedules Israel controls.
In testimony to Euro-Med Monitor, Abdul-Aziz Saeed, 65, said: "I am an ill elderly man, and I need regular and varied food so that I can cope, given my health condition. However, most of what is available in the market has become beyond what I can afford," adding that vegetables, once a basic part of residents' diet, are no longer available. "We depend on whatever bread, rice, and lentils we can obtain, and sometimes we make do with one meal depending on what is available at home," Saeed said.
Umm Khaled, 43, said: "I have diabetes and need to regulate my meals and choose food suitable for my condition, but food shortages and the high prices of vegetables have made that difficult. Our life is torture. Every day there is a problem. Sometimes the crossing is closed, sometimes there are no arrangements, and sometimes goods with no nutritional value at all are allowed in.
"Most of the time I cannot find suitable food that I can afford, and everything is outrageously expensive. I fear that if this situation continues, my health will deteriorate further, because as a person with diabetes I need regular food," she added.
The crisis on the ground coincides with the WFP's announcement on 19 October that it would suspend monthly assistance to around 500,000 people in the Gaza Strip due to funding shortages. The programme warned that needs remain high and that acute malnutrition could rise sharply and suddenly, particularly among children and pregnant women. This reduction in United Nations assistance, combined with stringent Israeli restrictions on supplies, leaves tens of thousands of families facing compounded food shortages, erodes the limited progress made in recent months, and threatens a serious setback as winter approaches.
These dangerous developments come as the effects of previous starvation remain clearly visible. On 16 October, Gaza's Ministry of Health announced that at least 466 Palestinians, including 157 children, had died from malnutrition and famine since 2024. By August 2026, more than 158,000 cases of acute malnutrition had been recorded among children under five, and an estimated 74,200 children will require treatment through April 2027. Anaemia among pregnant women rose to 61 per cent in 2026, up from 41 per cent before the war. Nearly 4,000 pregnancy losses were recorded in the first half of the year, which is more than triple the number in the previous six months.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) warned that gains in combating malnutrition in the Gaza Strip remain extremely fragile and could quickly be reversed by any disruption to supply chains. The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessments indicate that around 1.4 million people, nearly two-thirds of the population, continue to face acute food insecurity. This is amid the destruction of agricultural land and local production capacity, and continued total dependence on what Israeli authorities allow through crossings under their control.
As the occupying power, Israel is obliged under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to ensure the population's access to food and medical supplies to the fullest extent of the means available to it and to import necessary goods when the territory's resources are inadequate. Under Article 59, it must agree to and facilitate relief schemes by all means at its disposal when the whole or part of the population is inadequately supplied. Customary rule 55 also requires it to allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of impartial humanitarian relief, subject to its legitimate right of control. This obligation includes enabling supplies to be safely transported and distributed to civilians, which Israel violates by destroying the logistical infrastructure needed to transport food and medicine and by obstructing its repair, despite knowing of the spread of hunger and disease.
Israeli obligations extend beyond allowing trucks to cross the border. They also include facilitating the safe transport and distribution of supplies, protecting relief workers and facilities, and enabling the repair of infrastructure necessary for access to food, water, and medicine. Deliberately depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, including by intentionally impeding relief, constitutes a war crime under Article 8(2)(b)(25) of the Rome Statute when carried out with the intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare. Security considerations or inspection procedures cannot justify such conduct.
On 21 November 2024, the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. It found reasonable grounds to believe they were responsible for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare. This requires an investigation into the continued starvation policy and the determination of individual criminal responsibility. It confirms the need for States Parties to the Rome Statute to fulfil their obligations to cooperate with the ICC and to execute the arrest warrants it has issued.
The deliberate subjecting of Palestinians to living conditions that deprive them of the necessities of life and are intended to bring about their physical destruction, in whole or in part, falls within the acts of genocide set out in Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention. The continued imposition of these lethal conditions, after their deadly consequences have materialised and become known and repeatedly warned about, when read together with the systematic destruction of the means of life, the prevention of their restoration, and statements by Israeli officials indicating an intent to destroy Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, constitutes converging evidence of the specific intent required for genocide. This makes the management of crossings and supplies a tool for carrying out genocide and for perpetuating conditions that lead to the physical destruction of the population.
The continuation of these practices also constitutes non-compliance with the binding provisional measures set out in the International Court of Justice's order of 28 March 2024, which required Israel to take all necessary and effective measures, in full cooperation with the United Nations, to ensure the unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and keeping them open for as long as necessary. In its advisory opinion of 22 October 2025, the Court affirmed Israel's duties to ensure essential supplies, facilitate relief, and cooperate with the United Nations, including UNRWA. A ceasefire declaration does not suspend these duties so long as effective control and humanitarian needs remain.
The international community and the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions must act immediately to end the ongoing Israeli genocide, halt all hostilities, and lift the comprehensive and unlawful blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. Israel must be compelled to immediately and unconditionally remove all restrictions on the entry of goods, foodstuffs, and fuel in quantities commensurate with the population's actual needs; open all land crossings to regular humanitarian and commercial flows and operate them according to clear, publicly announced schedules; end all quantitative restrictions and arbitrary procedures; impose a binding time limit for inspection and clearance; and publish detailed daily data on the number of trucks, their cargoes, entry times, and actual arrival at their destinations.
All states should take concrete measures to hold Israel accountable for the ongoing genocide and starvation policy, impose economic and diplomatic sanctions, and establish a comprehensive ban on the export of weapons, ammunition, and military equipment to Israel, and on the import of such items from Israel, including spare parts, technology with military applications, maintenance services, and training. All forms of cooperation and support that contribute to the commission or continuation of crimes must be halted.
Donor states and international organisations, foremost among them the WFP and UNICEF, must urgently provide financial and logistical support to close the funding gap, immediately reverse the decision to suspend monthly food assistance for half a million people in Gaza, increase supplies of flour and therapeutic nutritional supplements for children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, older people, and people with chronic illnesses, and support the reopening of bakeries and the restoration of local supply chains. These measures should ensure that the population can regain safe and sustainable access to food, water, medicine, and livelihoods without remaining dependent on fluctuating Israeli decisions.
UN agencies operating in the Gaza Strip must publish regular, detailed data on the population's actual needs; the quantities and types of humanitarian and commercial supplies permitted to enter; the regularity of their flow; and what actually reaches beneficiaries across the enclave. They should identify the gap between needs and supplies, its causes, and the decisions by the Israeli authorities to block or delay supplies, along with their impact on the population's lives and health. They should also publish the findings of this monitoring so that those responsible for obstructing supplies can be held accountable. An adequate response is measured by whether the population actually, safely, and regularly obtains food, water, and medicine sufficient to meet its needs, rather than merely by the number of trucks that cross into Gaza.
The ICC Prosecutor must investigate the continuation of the starvation policy and the decisions that restrict supplies, preserve relevant evidence, determine the individual responsibility of civilian and military officials and others who contribute to these policies, and seek additional arrest warrants where the evidence meets the legal requirements. Euro-Med Monitor urges all states to cooperate in executing arrest warrants, protect the Court from sanctions and obstruction, and initiate investigations and prosecutions before national courts, including under universal jurisdiction where its conditions are met, to ensure that Palestinians are not deprived of the necessities of life.
Euro-Med Monitor calls for an end to Israel's unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territories as soon as possible, in accordance with international law and the conclusions of the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024. This requires the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the lifting of the blockade, the end of control over its crossings and resources, and the enabling of the Palestinian people to exercise self-determination and sovereignty over their land and resources.
Relief and reconstruction arrangements must not be used to perpetuate the occupation or to keep Palestinian lives dependent on Israeli decisions. States must take concrete steps to end this unlawful presence and refrain from recognising the situation it creates or from providing any aid or assistance that contributes to its continuation.
