U.S. Government Believes Famine Is Occurring In Gaza, Samantha Power Says

The U.S. believes famine is underway in Gaza, U.S. Agency for International Development administrator Samantha Power said on Wednesday ― a striking admission prompted by questioning over a HuffPost story revealing USAID officials privately reached that conclusion last week.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) asked Power during a congressional hearing about HuffPost’s April 2 story on a USAID cable that referred to famine in northern Gaza without caveats and argued “even in the best-case scenario the threshold to support a Famine determination has likely already been crossed.”

“Famine is already occurring there?” Castro asked. Power responded: “Yes.”

Her comment is the Biden administration’s most prominent public acknowledgement of the severity of the crisis among Palestinians in Gaza amid the six-month U.S.-backed Israeli offensive in the strip. USAID had previously deemed famine “imminent.”

The outbreak of famine is a major development in the conflict. Humanitarian experts say that degree of food scarcity can quickly take on its own momentum, requiring huge efforts to combat it, while worsening other crises like health problems and incurring a major human toll before it can be stamped out. In the USAID cable obtained by HuffPost, officials wrote that the combination of “starvation, malnutrition and disease” would between mid-March and late May kill dozens of children in Gaza who are younger than 5 years old.

“Many of the coping strategies employed by people in Gaza will have long-term effects on the nutritional status and future livelihoods of those who survive the crisis,” the government experts added.

The USAID staff extensively described in the cable how Israeli limits on food and other vital goods for Gaza are driving