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According to the regional director of the World Food Programme (WFP), Gaza’s food supply has continued to decline in the two months since international experts warned of famine in the enclave; so far the programme has only been able to deliver about half of the amount needed.

“We are clearly not managing to get enough food into Gaza,” Corinne Fleischer told the Financial Times after returning from the devastated area, citing access problems including the closure of most border crossings, long delays at Israeli checkpoints and looting by gangs in the Gaza Strip.

Fleischer said the WFP needs to import 24,000 tons of food per month to feed 1.1 million people, or half of Gaza’s population. UNRWA, the other major UN agency in Gaza, is responsible for supplying the other half.

“But in the last two months we have raised about half of what we need,” she said.

According to Fleischer, the WFP has faced numerous obstacles in delivering aid to its camps in Gaza. “We clearly need more border crossings and that is what we are asking for,” she said.

“It is also about maintaining public order, collecting supplies at the Kerem Shalom crossing (and avoiding looters) and … being able to move safely and at an acceptable speed within the Gaza Strip.”

The IPC, an international advisory body that monitors hunger, warned on June 25 that 96 percent of Gaza’s population was facing acute food insecurity at “crisis” levels or higher, with some 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” conditions.

“The threat of famine is still there because there is war and we cannot get to the places we need to go often enough, and there needs to be enough food,” says Fleischer, whose organization supports 13 of the area’s 18 bakeries and supplies hot meals to more than 70 kitchens.

Fleischer described a trip she took with a convoy from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza to pick up aid arriving at the western Erez crossing on the northern border with Israel.

A journey that would have previously taken 40 minutes now took seven hours, she said, “because the roads are destroyed” and they “have to wait for the green light at the (Israeli) checkpoints.”

Fleischer said they not only wanted more border crossings, but also that Israel could achieve “faster processing of aid and a much more streamlined process at the checkpoints” to speed up the movement of humanitarian convoys.

The WFP Regional Director added that access problems were exacerbated by recent evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military, which had led to the closure of around 20 of her organization’s food distribution sites and the loss of access to one of its warehouses that still had food supplies.

According to Israeli health authorities, around 40,000 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza offensive. The offensive came in response to the October 7 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, the government said.

Overall, humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip has more than halved since Israel occupied the important Rafah border crossing with Egypt and closed it in early May, according to a statement by the UN agency OCHA, which coordinates humanitarian operations.

The average of 169 aid trucks per day in April fell to 94 in May and less than 80 in June and July. Before the war, about 500 trucks carrying goods reached Gaza every day.

“The people are already very weakened by the numerous expulsions,” said Fleischer.

“And when basic services collapse, diseases spread. There is no clean water supply, no functioning sanitation and not enough food. This weakens the body and the immune system.”

Data visualization by Aditi Bhandari