REACTION: Oxfam response to the Gaza IPC hunger figures

“Gaza’s starvation is not incidental - it is deliberate, entirely engineered - and has now created the largest population facing starvation anywhere in the world - a preventable famine unfolding in real time. It is unconscionable and is being allowed to happen.

“For over two months, Israel has enforced a total siege, blocking food, water, medicine and aid, while thousands of trucks filled with life-saving supplies ready for swift distribution, are waiting at the border, metres away, blocked from entering.

“Oxfam staff and partners are witnessing scenes that defy belief: families wasting away from hunger, malnourished children too weak to cry, and entire communities surviving without food or clean water. In one displacement camp, only five of 500 families had any flour left to make bread. We distributed our last food parcels weeks ago.”

Israel’s plan to militarise the delivery of humanitarian aid - an egregious violation of international humanitarian law - threatens to push this already catastrophic crisis into full collapse. Turning aid into a tool of control endangers civilians, erodes the neutrality of humanitarian work, and risks unleashing even greater chaos and suffering across Gaza.

Silence in the face of this manmade starvation is complicity. Oxfam urges governments to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the release of hostages and unlawfully detained prisoners, an end to the siege, unimpeded humanitarian access, and to hold Israel accountable for the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

Ends

Notes to the Editor

Read the IPC Gaza Snapshot, 12 May 2025