Half a Million in Gaza Face Starvation, Report Says

Middle East Crisis Half a Million in Gaza Face Starvation, Report Says

Updated 

June 25, 2024, 6:40 a.m. ET4 minutes ago

Children waiting to receive food at a kitchen in Khan Younis in southern Gaza this month.Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock

“Here’s what we know:

A U.N.-backed panel of experts said Israel’s war in Gaza had created a catastrophic lack of food, but stopped short of declaring a famine in the territory.

• Experts on hunger say that almost half a million people in Gaza face starvation.
• Israel’s Supreme Court rules that the military must draft ultra-Orthodox Jews.
• Austin and Gallant will meet as attacks intensify across Israel’s border with Lebanon.
• An Israeli strike kills the coordinator of ambulance services in Gaza, health officials say.

Gaza is at high risk of famine and almost half a million people there face starvation because of a catastrophic lack of food, a group of global experts said on Tuesday. The experts stopped short of saying that a famine had begun in the enclave as a result of Israel’s war against Hamas.

The analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or I.P.C., carries considerable weight. The group is a partnership of U.N. bodies and major relief agencies, and global leaders use its determinations to gauge the severity of hunger crises and allocate humanitarian aid.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza.

In a unanimous decision, nine judges held that there was no legal basis for the longstanding military exemption given to many ultra-Orthodox religious students. Given the absence of a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s compulsory service laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, will meet on Tuesday in Washington to discuss the war with Hamas in Gaza  and to address the intensifying conflict along Israel’s border with Lebanon.

Mr. Gallant’s last visit to the Pentagon was in March, but the two defense chiefs have been in “almost weekly” contact since the Hamas-led attack in Israel on Oct. 7 set off the war in Gaza, Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a briefing on Monday.

A senior official in charge of coordinating ambulance movements in Gaza was killed by an Israeli strike, the health ministry in the enclave said in a statement on Monday.

The official, Hani al-Jafarawi, the director of ambulance and emergency services in Gaza, was killed in a strike on a health clinic in Gaza City, the ministry said.“