WASHINGTON —
A lead organization monitoring for food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of imminent famine in north Gaza under what it called Israel’s “near-total blockade,” after the U.S. asked for its retraction, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
The move follows public criticism of the report from the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
The rare public dispute drew accusations from prominent aid and human-rights figures that the work of the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System Network, meant to reflect the data-driven analysis of unbiased international experts, has been tainted by politics.
A declaration of famine would be a great embarrassment for Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month war in Gaza is aimed against the Hamas militant group and not against its civilian population.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew earlier this week called the warning by the internationally recognized group inaccurate and irresponsible. Lew and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds the monitoring group, both said the findings failed to properly account for rapidly changing circumstances in north Gaza.
Humanitarian and human rights officials expressed fear of U.S. political interference in the world’s monitoring system for famines. The U.S. Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined comment. FEWS officials did not respond to questions.
“We work day and night with the U.N. and our Israeli partners to meet humanitarian needs — which are great — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lew said Tuesday.
USAID confirmed to the AP that it had asked the famine-monitoring organization to withdraw its stepped-up warning issued in a report dated Monday. The report did not appear among the top updates on the group’s website Thursday, but the link to it remained active.
The dispute points in part to the difficulty of assessing the extent of starvation in largely isolated northern Gaza.
Thousands in recent weeks have fled an intensified Israeli military crackdown that aid groups say has allowed delivery of only a dozen trucks of food and water since roughly October.
FEWS Net said in its withdrawn report that unless Israel changes its policy, it expects the number of people dying of starvation and related ailments in north Gaza to reach between two and 15 per day sometime between January and March.
The internationally recognized mortality threshold for famine is two or more deaths a day per 10,000 people.
FEWS was created by the U.S. development agency in the 1980s and is still funded by it. FEWS is intended to provide independent, neutral and data-driven assessments of hunger crises, including in war zones. Its findings help guide decisions on aid by the U.S. and other governments and agencies around the world.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Oren Marmorstein, welcomed the U.S. ambassador’s public challenge of the famine warning. “FEWS NET – Stop spreading these lies!” Marmorstein wrote on X.
In challenging the findings publicly, the U.S. ambassador “leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency,” said Scott Paul, a senior manager at the Oxfam America humanitarian nonprofit. Paul stressed that he was not weighing in on the accuracy of the data or methodology of the report.
“The whole point of creating FEWS is to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor in international affairs at Princeton University. “It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations — the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy — to interfere.”
Israel says the vast majority of the area’s residents have fled and relocated to Gaza City, where most aid destined for the north is delivered.
Lew, the U.S. ambassador, said the famine warning was based on “outdated and inaccurate” data. He pointed to uncertainty over how many of the 65,000-75,000 people remaining in northern Gaza had fled in recent weeks, saying that skewed the findings.
FEWS said in its report that its famine assessment holds even if as few as 10,000 people remain.
Roth criticized the U.S. challenge of the report in light of the gravity of the crisis there.
“This quibbling over the number of people desperate for food seems a politicized diversion from the fact that the Israeli government is blocking virtually all food from getting in,” he said, adding that “the Biden administration seems to be closing its eyes to that reality, but putting its head in the sand won’t feed anyone.”
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