FEWS NET takes down report warning of famine in north Gaza
The report by the US-funded group that warned a famine is likely under way in north Gaza is no longer accessible on the group’s website. The development comes after the US envoy to Israel criticised the group’s assessment as “irresponsible”.
FEWS NET was created by the US Agency for International Development in the mid-1980s to warn of global food crises.
Al Jazeera has reached out to the group for comment.
US talks about Gaza truce, aid but ignores Israeli policy of starvation
Hassan Barari, a professor of international relations at Qatar University, spoke to Al Jazeera about why the statement by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) we have been reporting on is proving so controversial in the US.
He said it reflects the “rift within the administration about how to manage the war and how to manage Netanyahu”.
“Biden is seen as if he’s given a blank cheque to Netanyahu to do whatever he wants to do in Gaza. “He has refused to sign a ceasefire. He [is] depopulating … blockading the north of Gaza, and this cost the Democratic Party [the general] election, or it actually contributed to their losses,” he said.
The US administration speaks about a ceasefire and humanitarian aid, but at the same time, “they try to deny the facts, which is Israeli systematic policy of genocide”, Barari said.
A Palestinian mother holds her five-year-old daughter suffering from malnutrition
‘Preventable deaths’ in Gaza due to Israeli blockade
Ayesha Khan, associate professor of emergency medicine and part of a medical mission in central Gaza, says they see “preventable deaths” due to the Israeli blockade.
“We have one bottle of antiseptic that we can use in a month. When we clean a wound to do a lifesaving intervention, even if we save the patient now, the antibiotic-resistant infections will take them later,” Khan told Al Jazeera.
“We see shrapnel wounds, [but] the wounds will never heal because there’s no protein in the market. We see children who have had diarrhoea for almost a year now because of the water filtration,” she said.
Khan added that Gaza has an “entire population that is not healing and that is not able to make a recovery.”
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