"A crucial study by a key international organization that found in March that a famine had begun in northern Gaza relied on small sample sizes and undisclosed data sources, rendering its conclusions and projections unreliable, an Israeli review has found.
The Health Ministry review of the study — which has been cited by the UN, human rights organizations and even by the International Court of Justice in its genocide case against Israel — also found that there appeared to have been ‘a consistent effort to ignore… a significant decline in the war’s intensity and a significant increase in the humanitarian effort and the flow of aid’ when making its famine projections.
On March 18, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) organization issued a ‘Special Brief‘ on the food insecurity situation in the Gaza Strip, finding that hundreds of thousands of people were already experiencing famine and that that figure would rise to over a million by July if there was no immediate cessation of hostilities.
The IPC — which is connected to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN — is seen as a neutral and highly credible organization for evaluating where famines might be occurring around the globe.
Its assessment in March that famine had already taken hold in parts of Gaza and was likely to spread was explicitly cited and accepted by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its March 28 ruling and was used as the basis for its specific order for Israel to increase the supply of humanitarian aid to Gaza. That order was recalled in the ICJ’s ruling last week when it issued new orders against Israel.
And International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has filed crimes against humanity charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant based on the allegation that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against the Gazan population, a claim which is also likely connected to the IPC finding.
However, the Health Ministry review, authored by public health officials in the ministry and published by the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, found significant flaws in the methodology of the IPC Special Brief and notably found that it had deviated from IPC’s standards and principles as laid out by the organization itself.
According to the review, the IPC report, which covered the period from December 21, 2023, until March 10, 2024, failed to acknowledge the increase in the supply of humanitarian aid during that time; repeatedly cited unreliable and unrepresentative surveys of Gazans regarding their level of food security; and did not provide any statistics on the mortality rate from malnutrition, as would be expected to occur in a famine and as is IPC’s practice in evaluating famine.
It also allegedly used data on physical manifestations of malnutrition from undisclosed sources and gathered in an undisclosed manner, and ignored positive trends on the ground such as the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the intensity of combat operations when making its projection of worsening famine..."