Israel demands UN-backed monitor retract Gaza famine report
JERUSALEM, Undefined (AFP) — Israel on Wednesday called on the United Nations (UN)-backed hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), to immediately retract a report which determined that famine was present in parts of Gaza.
“Israel demands that the IPC retract immediately its fabricated report and publish a notice,” the director general of Israel’s foreign ministry, Eden Bar Tal, told a press conference.
He said Israel would share “evidence” of misconduct in preparing the report with IPC’s donors if the organisation fails to heed “within a short time”.
Bar Tal called the IPC a “politicised” institute that is “working for an evil terror organisation”, referring to Palestinian militant group Hamas whose 2023 attack on Israel triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations officially declared a famine in Gaza on Friday, blaming “systematic obstruction” of aid by Israel during more than 22 months of war.
The Rome-based IPC said famine was affecting 500,000 people in the Gaza governorate, which covers about a fifth of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza City.
The IPC projected that the famine would expand to Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis governorates by the end of September, covering around two-thirds of Gaza.
Israel has severely restricted the aid allowed into Gaza and at times completely cut it off during the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the IPC’s findings as an “outright lie”.
He said Israel “does not have a policy of starvation”, citing figures on aid it had allowed into Gaza.
COGAT, an Israeli defence ministry body which oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, has argued that the IPC’s findings relied on “partial data and unreliable sources”.
Jean-Martin Bauer, director of the UN World Food Programme’s food security analysis, defended the IPC, saying it was the “gold standard” for these kind of assessments.
