Data released by an authoritative global malnutrition tracking organization has demonstrated that a crucial hunger threshold was never breached in Gaza during a period in which a famine declaration in the territory fueled intense criticism of Israel and played a key role in the country’s isolation on the world stage.
The figures released last month by the Global Nutrition Cluster’s State of Palestine department, along with mortality statistics from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, raise serious doubts about the findings of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system (IPC) famine monitoring organization over the summer, though experts say devastating malnutrition was still rampant in the Strip, even if not at levels previously claimed.
The October data from the nutrition cluster shows that malnutrition levels in Gaza in July and August were some 23 percent lower than figures used by the IPC to underpin a declaration of famine. At the same time, while figures on “malnutrition-related deaths” spiked in that period, the level of excess mortality appears to have been greatly below what would be expected during a famine.
Israeli analysts acknowledge that even if the strict parameters of famine were not breached, the humanitarian situation in Gaza was extremely difficult and remains so, with hundreds of thousands of people suffering from deprivation of food, poor sanitary conditions, and limited access to healthcare, not to mention the traumas of a two-year war.
But the experts also underlined that establishing precisely whether or not there was a real famine in Gaza is critical in addressing the grave allegations made against Israel in international legal forums and in the international community more broadly, which seized on the famine claims to undergird charges that Israel was committing genocide through a policy of deliberate starvation and other means.
“The whole famine narrative is used to accuse Israel of deliberate starvation,” said Mark Zlochin, an independent data analyst who has closely monitored the IPC’s reports and drew attention to the new data when it was published in mid-October.
“No one serious would argue that there was not hunger in Gaza. If that hunger is a result of the war then it is serious, but something which happens all around the world… But the claim is that Israel deliberately starved a civilian population not involved in war,” said Zlochin.
A charge of deliberate starvation could exacerbate allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity already taken up by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
But figuring out whether or not there actually was a famine at the levels claimed by the IPC could be critical in determining if those charges gain purchase, Zlochin argued.
The Nutrition Cluster data does indeed show malnutrition rising sharply from June to July in the Gaza Governorate, and less sharply, but nevertheless significantly, in the Deir Balah and Khan Younis Governorates.
This was likely a result of Israel’s decision to cut off all aid to Gaza from March 2 to May 18, which led to dwindling food supplies in the territory and extreme price spikes for basic food items.
However, the highest rate of Global Acute Malnutrition in Gaza as determined by measuring the sizes of the arms of babies and toddlers was 11.9 percent in the Gaza Governorate in the month of July.
According to IPC standards, the threshold for a finding of full-blown famine is 15% prevalence among children aged 6 months to 5 years, using the Mid-Upper Arm Circumference, or MUAC, measurement.
The malnutrition rate as measured by MUAC began to decline in August, albeit very slightly, going from 11.9% to 11.8% that month.
Nonetheless, in August the IPC released a report that determined that over half a million people were already suffering from famine conditions in Gaza between July and mid-August this year, and that the famine would expand to affect over 640,000 people from that point until at least the end of September.
The August report and the “Special Snapshot” overview that accompanied it said that malnutrition rates by MUAC had reached “12.7 – 19.9 percent” in the Gaza Governorate in July 2025, and later stated that the rate reached 16.4% in late July.
The report, published on August 22, determined that there was a famine in the Gaza Governorate of the Gaza Strip, and that 514,000 people had experienced famine conditions throughout the entire territory between July 1 and August 15.
The report also predicted that the famine would increase in severity in the second half of August and September, projecting 640,000 Gazans would suffer from famine conditions in that period.
Critics, including the Israeli government, pointed out at the time that the data was for the most part based on only the first half of July, using a smaller data set than was normally available, and that the IPC had also appeared to use unweighted data, which would skew the findings.
And the critics noted that even data available at the time but not used by IPC showed that famine levels had not been breached, and that the IPC’s assertions of famine were not supported by its own data.
“When the correct data are examined, it turns out that the 15% threshold was never crossed in Gaza City — even when looking at the biweekly rather than the monthly data,” Zlochin wrote in October.
Speaking to The Times of Israel, he also pointed out that the IPC had never before used biweekly malnutrition data in Gaza until its August report, when it pointed to the elevated rates in the first half of July as the basis for its famine declaration.
Zlochin said the IPC’s claim that malnutrition rates in Gaza were rising “exponentially” might have justified its use of such partial data, but only if there was also significant evidence of mortality rates from malnutrition approaching famine levels, which there was not. He added that the data did not back up the claim of an “exponential” rise in hunger.
Mortality figures published by the UN in August and October, based on information from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, showed lower-than-expected levels of mortality from malnutrition during the July to September period in which the IPC determined famine was taking place.
Although precise data for the mortality metric used to determined famine is yet to be published for Gaza in the relevant period, the number of deaths from malnutrition appears to indicate that the situation in Gaza was nowhere near famine levels.
The IPC said in response that “due to the highly volatile conditions in recent weeks and significant population movements,” it had not been feasible to review the latest data. It said that a new analysis was “tentatively planned for November.”
Crude numbers
The new data, considered final and conclusive, was published following a bi-weekly meeting by the Nutrition Cluster’s State of Palestine department on September 17, which the IPC will presumably need to use in its future reports, on malnutrition in Gaza up to the end of August 2025.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system, a department of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, is considered an authoritative agency for monitoring malnutrition and famine around the world, and its reports on Gaza have been cited by the International Court of Justice in the genocide suit filed by South Africa against Israel.
The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant that include charges of “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and “Extermination… in the context of deaths caused by starvation,” as a crime against humanity.
The allegations of starvation form the most severe charges against Netanyahu and Gallant in the ICC warrants, and the statement by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan in May 2024 announcing the warrants referenced claims by UN Secretary-General António Guterres that famine was present in parts of Gaza, a claim which was itself based on an IPC report that the organization has since acknowledged was wrong.
The IPC uses three key factors for determining famine; household food consumption evaluated through phone surveys, malnutrition determined by physical measurements such as MUAC, and mortality using the crude death rate metric of two out of every 10,000 people dying from all causes other than traumatic injury.
The organization usually requires all three to breach specific thresholds for a famine declaration.
According to World Bank data, the crude death rate, or CDR, for the West Bank and Gaza in 2020 to 2022 was on average 0.1 deaths per 10,000 population, per day, amounting to 22 people dying every day of all causes aside from military action.
If the IPC’s determination of famine in Gaza between July 1 and August 15 was accurate, the CDR among the 514,000 people the IPC said were suffering from famine conditions over the 46-day period should have amounted to at least 4,728 deaths, or 102.8 per day.
The IPC has yet to provide any CDR data for the period in question.
Figures put out by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, based on Hamas records, show there were 170 malnutrition related deaths from July 1 to August 13, amounting to 3.9 deaths per day for Gaza’s total population of approximately 2 million.
Although the Gaza Ministry of Health’s “malnutrition-related deaths” is not comparable to the crude death rate, which includes all deaths unrelated to combat, the vast discrepancy between the figures has raised further difficult questions for the IPC’s report.
Instead of providing CDR data, the IPC’s August 22 report cited unspecified surveys of heightened CDR without providing citations to them or providing their data, as well as claiming that “anonymous household surveys have also indicated elevated crude death rates,” but again without providing hard numbers.
The IPC report acknowledged the relatively low number of “malnutrition-related deaths” reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health and OCHA, but insisted that those reports “are likely to only capture a fraction of the true toll of malnutrition related mortality.”
Arnon Yafin, a data analyst and member of the Gaza Humanitarian Forum who has critiqued the IPC’s August report, assessed that the rate of death from malnutrition in Gaza in the 46 day period from July 1 to August 15 was at least three times lower than famine levels.
However he cautioned that even that level of death, as well as the 11.9% malnutrition rate, was still highly problematic.
“Many people in Gaza died from malnutrition. But if you compare it to other crises in recent decades then numbers are much lower,” he told The Times of Israel.
Yafin also noted that the period of intense food insecurity was very short, since Israel “corrected its policy” when malnutrition indicators began to rise, and enabled the entry of higher amounts of humanitarian aid to address the problems.
“Does the IPC report treat Israel fairly? There are severe methodological flaws in the report, which are partially political and partially natural,” he said. “You can always expect some flaws — but these are big enough to say it did not meet IPC famine levels.”
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