Israel-Hamas war: Biden and Netanyahu hold first phone call in a month amid warnings of ‘imminent famine’ in Gaza
US President Joe Biden and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu have held their first phone call in a month, amid warnings of an “imminent famine” in northern Gaza.
It comes as a group of aid agencies warned that an estimated 70% of the population in northern Gaza faced catastrophic hunger, and that virtually everyone in the besieged strip is struggling to get enough food.
The European Union’s top diplomat also blamed Israel for the crisis on Monday, saying an impending famine in Gaza was “entirely man-made”.
Meanwhile, amid talk of tension between the US and Israel, White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, confirmed that Mr Netanyahu had held a phone call – their first in 31 days.
He said they had agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington to discuss with members of Mr Biden’s team to hear US concerns about a possible military assault on the southern Gazan city of Rafah.
He said the talks, expected to involve military, intelligence, and humanitarian experts, were set to be held in the coming days.
But he stressed that the US felt a major ground operation in Rafah would be a “mistake” and that Mr Biden had warned Mr Netanyahu against it.
“It would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza, and further isolate Israel internationally,” Mr Sullivan added.
“Israel has not presented us or the world with a plan for how or where they would safely move those civilians, let alone feed and house them and ensure access to basic things like sanitation.”
President Joe Biden speaks during a Women’s History Month reception at the White House. Pic: AP
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing at the White House. Pic: Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu delivers his speech after a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Jerusalem on Sunday. Pic: AP
In other developments in the Israel-Hamas war:
• Israeli forces launched another raid on the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital on Monday, saying Hamas militants had regrouped there;
• They also said they had killed a Hamas commander who was armed and hiding inside the medical centre;
• It emerged Israel had urged the top UN court to reject the latest request by South Africa for interim orders to prevent starvation in Gaza;
• A top UN aid official for Palestinian areas called for an opening of “all roads” into Gaza to help avert the potential famine.
On Monday, a new report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned of an “imminent famine” in northern Gaza.
The group, a partnership of more than a dozen governments, UN aid and other agencies that determine the severity of food crises, said virtually everyone in Gaza was struggling to get enough food.
It also said that some 210,000 people in the north were in “Phase 5”, its highest category, referred to as “catastrophic hunger”.
A looming Israeli ground attack in Rafah would worsen the crisis, it warned, claiming it would drive around half of the 2.3 million people in Gaza into Phase 5.
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses, shelter in a tent camp in Rafah. Pic: Retuers
On Monday, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, accused Israel of weaponising food to provoke famine.
“In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people,” he said at the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels.
“Trucks are stopped. People are dying, while the land crossings are artificially closed,” he said.
Aid agencies say they have struggled to get enough aid in because of a burdensome Israeli process to import humanitarian aid, and that the continuing conflict has made distribution in the north of Gaza virtually impossible.
Israel says there are “no limits on the amount of aid that can go into Gaza”.
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Israel using starvation as ‘weapon of war’
The US and other countries have carried out airdrops in recent days and a sea corridor has just opened up.
However, aid groups have said those efforts are costly and inefficient and are no substitute for Israel opening up more land routes.
It comes as Israeli forces launched another raid on the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital on Monday, saying Hamas militants had regrouped there and had fired on them from inside the site where Palestinian officials say tens of thousands of people have been sheltering.
The army last raided al Shifa Hospital in November after claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command centre within and beneath the facility.
However, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Israel Securities Authority (ISA) said military activity had not stopped and they had launched a “precise operation to thwart terrorist activity”.
The IDF said it killed a Hamas commander who was armed and hiding inside the medical centre, and that one of its own soldiers was killed in the operation.
Palestinian authorities described the raid as a “war crime” that had resulted in multiple casualties.
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Screams heard after al Shifa raid
Separately, on Monday, the US said Israel had killed Hamas number three, Marwan Issa, in an operation last week.
A spokesperson for the IDF said they had “no comment on the matter”.
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Later on Monday, it emerged that Israel has urged the top UN court to reject the latest request by South Africa for interim orders to prevent starvation in Gaza as part of a case accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention with its military offensive against Hamas.
In a written response published on Monday by the International Court of Justice, Israel said that claims by South Africa in its request filed earlier this month were “wholly unfounded in fact and law, morally repugnant, and represent an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court itself”.
Israel fervently denies that its military campaign in Gaza amounts to a breach of the Genocide Convention.
Last-known photo of Marwan Issa, taken in 2015
It acknowledged in its written response to South Africa’s request that there are “also tragic and agonising civilian casualties in this war”.
“These realities are the painful result of intensive armed hostilities that Israel did not start and did not want,” it said.
No date has been set for judges to rule on the South African request.
At hearings in January, lawyers for Israel argued that the war in Gaza was a legitimate defence of its people and that it was Hamas militants who were guilty of genocide.
After the hearings, the court ordered Israel in late January to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive triggered by the deadly 7 October incursion into southern Israel by Hamas.
Tom Fletcher, speaking on behalf of the United Nations, did not mince his words.
Gaza was suffering from famine, the evidence was irrefutable and Israel had not just obstructed aid but had also used hunger as a weapon of war.
His anger seeped through every sentence, just as desperation is laced through the report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
Gaza latest: UK calls out Israel for ‘manmade catastrophe’
Conditions are expected to worsen, it says, even though the Gaza Strip has been classified as a level 5 famine. There is no level 6.
A child attempts to access food from a charity kitchen in Khan Younis. Pic: Reuters
But it took only moments for the Israeli government to respond in terms that were just as strident. The report dismissed as wholly inaccurate, based on biased, inaccurate data and influenced not by fact, but by the whims of Hamas.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees humanitarian efforts in Gaza, claimed the IPC had ignored its data and presented a “one-sided report”, before claiming that “hundreds of truckloads of aid are still awaiting collection by the UN and international organisations”.
What is so striking is that there is no grey area between these two versions.
In one, Israel has obstructed the delivery of aid and allowed hunger to turn into famine; in the other, it is Hamas that has caused the crisis by stealing aid and exploiting hunger as a political tool to try to win global sympathy.
People in Beit Lahia take sacks of flour from an aid convoy en route to Gaza City. Pic: AP
Journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, so we are reliant on the work of colleagues who live there.
But the images are striking – emaciated people holding begging bowls, people scrambling towards aid drops or clambering over trucks carrying bags of flour. And all around them, shattered buildings.
Aid is continuing to be dropped by air, but humanitarian groups say it is not enough. Pic: Reuters
We heard from a man in his 70s, who used to weigh 70kg, but who has lost almost half his body weight.
“Now, because of malnutrition, my weight has dropped to just 40,” Hassan Abu Seble said. “I suffered both a stroke and a heart attack. They had to put in a stent to help me recover, and I thank God that my organs are still functioning.”
The Israeli government, and many across the country, will maintain that Hamas bears the responsibility for everything that has happened to Gazans – that it was the attack on 7 October, 2023, that was the sole precipitant for the suffering, death and hunger that has followed.
But from around much of the rest of the world, the condemnation is deafening, accusing Israel of allowing famine to fester.
The body of a child is carried from the scene of an Israeli military strike in Gaza City. Pic: AP
David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the Israeli government had caused a “man-made famine” by blocking the distribution of aid, and described that as a “moral outrage”.
The question, as so often before, is what that rhetoric leads to. And, so long as the United States doesn’t join the chorus of disapproval, does widespread global disapproval mean anything?
There is also a question now of Gaza’s future.
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In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, we found a large sign that says “Make Gaza Jewish Again”. It is a slogan, and a sentiment, that is supported by plenty.
“Yes, of course I agree,” says one man as he walks past, carrying a large pack of drinks. It turns out that he used to live in a Jewish settlement in Gaza until it was shut by the Israeli government two decades ago, but he has never stopped believing that Gaza is rightly Israel’s property.
“The people there now – they should leave. They could go to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. It is our land. And yes, I would like to go back there.”
He did not believe there was a famine. “They have lots of food,” he told me.
Another man, Avraham, was more conciliatory, but insisted there had never been a country like Israel “that is fighting a war against a country but is also sending in so much humanitarian aid for the people”.
Gaza City is now the focal point of so much. Famine is spreading from this heart just as troops prepare to encircle the city. A ceasefire could come, but so could a huge military assault. And all the while, the hunger will get worse.
Approval of a huge new Chinese embassy in London has been delayed by the government over redacted areas on the embassy’s plans.
Beijing hasn’t fully explained why there are blacked-out areas in its planning application after housing minister Angela Rayner demanded an explanation earlier this month.
The government has now delayed its decision over whether construction can go ahead from 9 September to 21 October, saying it needed more time to consider the application.
The Chinese embassy in London expressed “serious concern” over the delay and said host countries have an “international obligation” to support the construction of diplomatic buildings.
“The Chinese side urges the UK side to fulfil its obligation and approve the planning application without delay,” said the embassy in a statement.
Site of planned Chinese embassy
Royal Mint Court, the site of the proposed embassy. File pic: PA
DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans.
It added that additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out.
Protests have been held outside the proposed site. File pic: Feb 2025, PA
“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” said DP9 in a letter to the government.
“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”
The embassy, which would be the largest in Europe, is planned for the 216-year-old site of the old Royal Mint Court next to the Tower of London.
However, opposition from local residents, lawmakers and pro-democracy campaigners means planning approval has been delayed for the past three years.
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Earlier this month, the embassy described claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s
national security as “despicable slandering”.
However, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has ties to a network of politicians critical of the country, called the explanations “far from satisfactory”.
Luke de Pulford, who is a long-standing critic of the embassy plans, said the “assurances amount to ‘trust me bro'”.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
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