The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification says its previous projections of famine in Gaza stem from its reliance on ‘assumptions and inference’
After several months of warnings that a “famine is imminent” in the Gaza Strip, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) walked back its claim in its latest report issued on Tuesday.
“The IPC acute food insecurity analysis conducted in February 2024 projected that Famine would likely occur in the northern governorates (of Gaza) by the end of May, based on the assumption that conflict would persist with the same intensity and humanitarian access would remain very low,” the report states.
“While the use of assumptions and inference is standard practice in IPC generally, the limitations of the available body of evidence and the extent of its convergence for northern Gaza in April leads to a very high level of uncertainty regarding the current food security and nutritional status of the population.”
David Adesnik, a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said that IPC’s changing tune is “one of the greatest slanders of the last eight months,” referring to the beginning of hostilities in October when Hamas invaded Israel.
“After months of hearing that Israel was blocking the delivery of sufficient aid to Gaza, we now see that Israeli authorities facilitated a massive increase in shipments of both aid and commercial goods, alleviating shortages in Gaza while Israeli forces continued to prosecute the war against Hamas,” Adesnik said in an email to National Post. “This is a decisive rebuke to malicious claims that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war against the people of Gaza.”