What happened:
On 14 October Israel stopped all commercial goods entering Gaza, including flour. By 23 October 14 of the 17 commercial bakeries had shut because they had none, and bakeries reopened only on flour that aid agencies handed over as a stopgap. On 19 October the World Food Programme cut its monthly food assistance from 1.6 million people to 1.1 million, halved the ration for those still on the list and cut hot meals from 250,000 a day to 150,000. The UN's humanitarian office says food partners can now reach "less than one million people out of an estimated 2.1 million in Gaza". The Gaza Health Ministry counts 466 people dead of starvation and malnutrition since 2024, 157 of them children. In Gaza City Huda Abu Leila, 30, told Al Jazeera she is feeding her five daughters, aged 18 months to 10, bread dipped in tea.
Who did it:
Israel shut the crossings to flour. It is a ceasefire, and the UN Commission of Inquiry said on 26 October that Israel's genocidal acts in Gaza have continued since it began. The World Food Programme's cut is a different failure: its Palestine director Shaun Hughes said "that's not because we don't have humanitarian access to deliver food; that's because we don't have funding". The UN's funding tracker records Britain giving the World Food Programme in Palestine $4.4 million this year, about £3.3 million. The United States gave $250 million, Canada $31 million and Japan $29 million.
What Britain has said:
On 8 September Ed Miliband told the Commons the hunger in Gaza was "a totally avoidable humanitarian catastrophe, I am afraid, driven by decisions of the Israeli government". On 24 September he signed a Call to Action demanding that Israel "open all crossings and land routes". In the fifteen days after Parliament returned on 12 October nobody in either House mentioned the ration cut or the flour. At Foreign Office questions on 27 October Richard Burgon asked the Foreign Secretary to commit to food aid for Gaza at least at last year's level. Miliband called the blocking of aid outrageous, spoke about sanctions, and did not answer on food aid. No MP has tabled a written question about it. The Times, the Daily Mail and the Sun each ran dozens of Gaza stories in the same fortnight and none on the cut.
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