How The Hunger Crisis in Gaza Unfolded Despite Months of Warnings

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1:33Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. At this point into the war between Israel and Hamas, it's difficult to get more than anecdotal evidence out of Gaza. Almost every organization that once provided aid and monitored civilian welfare is no longer allowed in or has ceased operations. Very few journalists are left there. But reports of a civilian population facing a hunger crisis are widespread. Experts warn Gaza is on the brink of famine. Hamas robs, steals this humanitarian aid and then accuses Israel of not supplying it. Our doctors, our nurses, our health teams are confirming that malnutrition rates are increasing in Gaza.

2:17To understand the reality on the ground, I talked to Bloomberg reporters around the world, focused on what's happening in Gaza. I'm Ethan Bronner. I'm the Israel Bureau Chief for Bloomberg. I'm Magdalena del Valle, and I cover the UN here at Bloomberg. My name is Faris al-Ghul. I'm a reporter for Bloomberg, covering Gaza. The people in Gaza are in a crowded place that is dependent on foreign aid, and they cannot leave. The UN is trying, and they say they have enough food to feed the population of Gaza, but they just need to be let in. In Gaza, there are people suffering and there is no safe passage for the civilians out into safety.

2:57They can't leave. Yeah, they can't leave.

3:02I'm David Gura, and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, we bring together reporting from around the globe to understand how a hunger crisis unfolded in Gaza, despite months of warnings, and what it would take to end it.

3:22Reporter Fariz Al Ghul is from Gaza, but he's currently based in Canada. Fariz told me that before the October 7, 2023 terror attacks by Hamas and the war Israel started in response, Gaza was producing a lot of its own food. Gaza had achieved self-sufficiency when it comes to vegetables. They were actually exporting vegetables like tomato and eggplant to the West Bank and Israel. And in the winter and spring, Gaza would export strawberry to the West Bank and to some Arab countries. But back then, Israel Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner says Gaza relied heavily on international aid for schools and other essential services, including food.

4:04After Hamas's deadly attack on October 7th, during which it took 250 people hostage, the Israeli government cut the flow of aid into Gaza. Was this the likelihood of there being a hunger crisis, something that Israelis were thinking about or talking about or considering in the early days of this war? No. The early days of this war showed an Israel completely devastated, humiliated, frightened, and furious about the October 7th attack. There was no sense that it was Israel's job to worry about feeding the people in Gaza. That's partly because I think Hamas had been running Gaza for the previous 16 years, and Israelis were never giving a lot of thought to their role and how that worked.

4:53As the fighting between Israel and Hamas ratcheted up after October 7th, nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population in Gaza was almost immediately dislocated and lost access to the land where they farmed. In the first month of the war, even before Israel began a ground invasion of Gaza, retaliatory airstrikes killed over 7 ,000 people, according to Gazan authorities. Many heads of state and experts on the conflict warned that there could be devastating consequences. But in those early days, most of the international community supported Israel's response. That included, critically, then-U.S.

5:29President Joe Biden. If the United States stands with Israel, we will not ever fail to have their back. He came here a week or so into the war, which was an act of, you know, incredible loyalty. And the Israelis were just amazingly grateful. They just couldn't believe it. But when it felt that the Israelis were being insufficiently careful about protecting civilian lives, then the Biden administration started talking about withholding arms and then things got tense. And that's pretty much where they remained until the administration switched. In President Trump, Netanyahu appears to have an ally he both gets along with and who sides with him consistently.

6:13But Ethan says there are clear limits to how much influence Trump has over Netanyahu. They have a strong bond. I would say that both are nakedly quite transactional and political in their handling of all of their relations. But I have to tell you that there are certain things that this prime minister and those around him believe in so strongly that I think if Trump were to demand of Israel to do certain things like accept a Palestinian state or stop worrying about defeating Hamas, I believe that this government would say, sir, we will do this on our own. We will fight with our fingernails if we have to.

6:55We will live without your weapons. President Trump's inauguration coincided with a ceasefire in Gaza that lasted nearly two months. But when fighting resumed, there was a noticeable drop-off in aid. Here's Fariz Alghul, who reported on how it changed. In the previous administration, at least the aid continued to enter into Gaza. not necessarily enough, but the minimum. During Trump's administration, we have seen periods of time in which no single truck entered Gaza and the administration looked okay for that. As food availability in Gaza deteriorated, aid groups sounded the alarm about the effects of food shortages.

7:34Over the past 22 months, from the very first week or two, aid organizations were warning that Gaza was on the brink of starvation, that it was starving, that it was famine. And much of that seems to have not ultimately been true in those early months or that first period of time. And so there became a crying wolf question in which Israel would say, you see, they're constantly lying. And so we're not going to worry about it. And then when it actually seemed to be somewhat true, Israel was caught in a very difficult situation in which much of the world believes that this has been a policy to starve people.

8:10That's not my sense. I think it was carelessness and an inability to calculate properly. I think they miscalculated. I think they believed that ordinary people were stocking up. They were not. And so suddenly, when there was nothing available, ordinary people were in desperate shape. Because of restrictions Israel has put in place on foreign aid workers and foreign journalists, it's been impossible to get a full sense of what's happening on the ground in Gaza. This raises urgent questions about whether the world will even know if the scales fully tip. After the break, what we do know about the food crisis on the ground today.

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10:58Almost two years into the war in Gaza, Israel has taken control of all checkpoints into Gaza, including the Rafah crossing with Egypt. My colleague Magdalena Devaye covers the United Nations for Bloomberg. She describes what that means in practical terms. Sometimes they let U.N. aid trucks in. Sometimes they don't. Now there's countries doing airdrops and things like that, but the best way to actually get food to the people of Gaza is by car through the roads, and Israel controls those roads, and often they don't want to let people in. That doesn't mean that international agencies aren't trying to get food into Gaza and distribute it.

11:35Israel stopped working with the UN's United Nations Relief and Works Agency at the beginning of the war, and other groups are now trying to do what the United Nations used to do. There's the World Food Program and all sorts of organizations that are trying to work together to get food in. But there's way more food that they want to get in than that actually gets in. Magdalena says the situation took a turn for the worse on March 18th when the ceasefire ended and Israel put Gaza under a blockade. By then, the Trump administration had effectively shut down USAID, the U.N.'s most important partner in the supply and distribution of aid.

12:11And the U.N. was struggling to kind of get aid in there by themselves. They had, say, 10 trucks that they had ready to deliver aid, and maybe one day five made it in, another day maybe three made it in. This is just food. For two months, nothing carrying food has entered Gaza. That's Bloomberg's Faris Alghul again. Faris says Israel restricted entry for many reasons, but a main one was concern about how Hamas might use the aid and control its distribution. So Israel has accused Hamas of diverting aid. And not only Israel, many residents of Gaza also speak about that. I spoke to a Hamas official and he said we take 25 percent of the aid as a government to provide it for our civil servants, for the doctors, for the hospitals and the clinics and the rescue workers.

12:59He didn't deny it. Because Israel doesn't want any role for Hamas in handling the aid, it would strike or target Hamas members policing truck convoys. This has also opened the way for people to steal or loot the aid. They would stop the convoys and unload them. So we stopped seeing a fair distribution of aid. This also has contributed to the crisis. In May, after two months of that blockade, the U.S. backed a new aid organization that said it would step in and distribute food. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was based in Switzerland until the Swiss government ordered its offices closed. Now it's headquartered in Delaware.

13:45The U.S. gave them$30 million and then they got another$30 million from we're not 100 percent sure where. The GHF doesn't disclose who funds them. We're not sure. They were launched in May to kind of do what the UN had been doing. Israel had approved of this organization to be the one that delivered aid in Gaza. They wanted some sort of system that could keep Hamas out of this aid. But from the get-go, it had a lot of hurdles. The GHF aimed to feed one million people within its first week. The day it was launched, the CO quit. He resigned hours before the launch because he was concerned over the independence and impartiality of the organization.

14:26And so this was kind of the first hurdle that they had to get over. They got a new CO, started delivering aid. But then very often people would get killed near these sites. Part of the problem with GHF aid sites is the way they're set up. Faris Alkul has reported for Bloomberg that the design and placement of the aid sites has led to violence. The distribution of aid through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is taking place in militarized sites, in a dangerous road which is overseen by the Israeli military. There are frequent deadly incidents surrounding the aid process, not inside the distribution center, but around it or on the routes leading to them.

15:09More than 700 people have been killed while waiting for the aid, waiting for the GHF sites to open, or when they were going there to get the aid. The source of fire is a challenge here, because in most of the cases, the Israeli military denies involvement. On the other hand, Hamas accuses the Israeli military of targeting the people. Even when Palestinians manage to get aid from a GHF site, it can be challenging to get supplies home. They distribute randomly on the basis first come, first serve. So many people in Gaza cannot walk five or six kilometers on foot and return carrying a box weighing 20 kilograms.

15:57Let's not forget that the people in Gaza are very weak because of the starvation. There were a lot of issues and a lot of international organizations were saying that the GHF should get shut down. The UN refused to work with the GHF because they say they don't meet their requirements for humanitarian assistance. A couple of weeks ago, there was a hint that the UN and GHF are trying to find a way to work together. The GHF and the UN had a meeting at the U.S. mission to the UN. But it was very secretive, so we don't actually know what was said there. There were no phones allowed. It happened on Wednesday, and we kind of only found out about it later in the week, so we don't know.

16:36In recent days, the GHF has begun operating women-only distribution sites, which were designated to get food to women and children safely and directly, according to the GHF-X account. As the war in Gaza grinds on, this is all culminated in what the UN says is a hunger crisis. Fares says that when he talks to his sources on the ground, he hears the same things over and over again. Most of the people I know and most of the people I speak to say they sleep hungry, they skip meals because simply they are not available. They cannot calm down their children when they cry because they want food. The question isn't whether many Gazans aren't getting enough to eat.

17:21It's clear they're not. But the language used to describe the severity of the crisis can impact the global response. At the end of July, the United Nations reported that, quote, Two out of three famine thresholds have been reached in Gaza, plummeting food consumption and acute malnutrition. Mounting evidence of famine, they said. But because they were unable to demonstrate deaths due to malnutrition, they couldn't call it that. They can't call it a famine just because of semantics, really. People from different UN organizations have been there, have talked to people, and they come back and they say, yeah, we've never seen anything like this.

17:56One-third of the population isn't eating for days at a time. The number of children who has died from malnutrition has surpassed 100 since the war started. And they say that 300 ,000 children are at severe risk of acute malnutrition. So it's really, really bad. You can't call it a famine, but it doesn't matter. It's getting there. In a statement, the Israeli government denied there's famine in Gaza. It said it studied the situation on the ground and reviewed the deaths of specific individuals and concluded, quote, There are no signs of a widespread malnutrition phenomenon among the population in Gaza.

18:32Part of the disconnect between the situation on the ground and how it can be described is due again to the blocking of journalists and aid groups and also to the dissolution of Gaza's health care system. Gaza's health ministry is run by Hamas, which has made it more complicated for international groups to trust their published figures. The finger-pointing and denying persisted as the crisis worsened over the spring and early summer. But things got so bad on the ground and enough media coverage got out that even some of Israel's staunchest allies began to express concern, including President Trump, who pushed back on the Israeli government's assessment.

19:07Some of those kids are, that's real starvation stuff, I see it. And you can't fake that. So we're going to be even more involved. The Israeli military did begin to let more aid through in August, but Fares cautioned against taking the development at face value. Even the Israeli government's recent announcement that they are stepping up eight deliveries to Gaza is marketed as a breakthrough. We talk about 100 trucks a day. But this remains far below the number of trucks that Gaza need, which is at least 600 trucks a day. Coming up, what it would take to change the situation in Gaza, and what Netanyahu, Hamas, and Trump are considering next.

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21:31In my conversations with Magdalena Del Valle, Faris Al Ghul, and Ethan Bronner, it was clear that there were many warnings that a hunger crisis could take hold in Gaza. I asked them what, at this point, could turn the situation around, and whether the steps necessary are at all aligned with what the major players in the conflict are weighing next. Far has summarized the case some aid groups are making for letting aid in and letting people out. The solution is simple. Allow more aid into Gaza through the different crossing points. Increase the deliveries of aid. Allow safe passages and routes for the civilians.

22:09Open the crossings for those who want to survive. Magdalena Delvaye, who covers the United Nations for Bloomberg, said that the U.N. continues to call for another ceasefire in order to surge in aid and determine the appropriate course of action. What the U.N. has said over and over again is that they need a ceasefire in order to be able to properly assess and fix the situation because right now it's just impossible to get all their convoy in. And, you know, it also puts people who work for the U.N. in danger when they go in there. So there needs to be the right conditions for them. Another ceasefire is, of course, dependent on the Israeli government and Hamas coming to an agreement through negotiators.

22:51I asked Bloomberg's Israel bureau chief, Ethan Bronner, how Israelis have reacted to what they've heard about Gaza and if that's created any internal pressure on their own government. So for Israelis for these 22 months, there has been virtually no interest except for the left in this country and the human rights organizations. The almost obsessive interest in this country has been on the hostages as well as on their soldiers. A percentage of 5 or 10 percent of the population just feel that their government shouldn't be doing this terrible thing. But that is a very small percentage. This is a country that feels under siege after October 7th.

23:30But as the world took notice of the hunger crisis in Gaza, so have more Israelis. That began to change when the notion that there was real hunger broke through, when suddenly you couldn't completely deny it. So it is discussed, some on TV, some in newspapers. But broadly, it's all about, you know, how there are lies out there that the hunger isn't as real as it is being portrayed. And we're losing the public relations battle. The public relations battle. That's a phrase the Israeli government and media often use to describe the global narrative and who has the greatest sympathy on the world stage at that point in time.

24:08In Israel, that battle is being won by the government. The vast majority of press is aligned with the government and does not publish the Palestinian side of the narrative. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the war, Israel has largely restricted international journalists from reporting on the ground in Gaza. I think it's a mistaken policy of the government of Israel to bar foreign journalists or any journalist from going into Gaza. This is my fourth tour as a journalist here in Israel. In the 2008-2009 war against Hamas, journalists were barred from going into Gaza. We, the Foreign Press Association, sued the government and the Supreme Court ordered the government to let us in.

24:47The change in the society is evident by the fact that the current Supreme Court has turned us down time and again and has sided with the government against us. The lack of media coverage means the world has increasingly little insight into what is actually happening day to day in Gaza. And that could become even more urgent as Israel prepares its next major military operation, the seizure of Gaza City. Israel controls 70 to 75 percent of the Gaza Strip. There are parts around the central refugee camps and around Gaza City which are heavily populated that the army is not operating in and where we believe the remaining hostages are being held.

25:27And Israel is planning to force those people to leave and then to go in and to do what it can to destroy the Hamas military infrastructure and the command structure in those areas. So they're looking at a very difficult, for both sides, battle in the coming weeks or months. The Israeli government is bolstered by the shared sentiment of nearly 80 percent of the Israeli people who responded to a recent survey that they are not so troubled or not at all troubled by events in Gaza. And though only 40 percent of Israelis trust Netanyahu, according to recent polling, the government appears intent on this next phase, regardless of the impending humanitarian crisis it could trigger, Fares says.