Country: occupied Palestinian territory Source: Human Rights Watch Please refer to the attached file. Famine Risk Returns as Board of Peace Fails to Deliver (Beirut) – The humanitarian infrastructure sustaining life in Gaza remains in peril over six months after the ceasefire agreement in October 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. As the Board of Peace prepares to brief the United Nations Security Council on May 21 on its newly-issued six-month progress report, Israeli authorities are undermining humanitarian lifelines. Continuing Israeli attacks have killed at least 856 Palestinians and wounded 2,463 others, according to Gaza Health Ministry. The Board of Peace, authorized under UN Security Council Resolution 2803, is tasked with assessing parties’ compliance with the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict. Rapidly expanding and safeguarding aid is central to the plan, alongside restoring essential civilian infrastructure. But aid volumes remain far below required levels and critical humanitarian access routes have been repeatedly obstructed, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, (OCHA). ‘The plan was supposed to bring relief. Instead, Palestinians in Gaza are still hungry, still cannot reach medical care, and civilians are still being killed,’ said Adam Coogle, Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch. ‘Whatever the Board of Peace tells the Security Council, that is what life looks like six months in.’ In its May 15 report, the Board of Peace said that aid distributed by UN agencies and partners increased by over 70 percent during the reporting period compared to pre-ceasefire levels, and that ‘basic food needs have been stabilized for the first time since 2023.’ The Board’s headline figures leave out that aid volumes have fallen since early 2026, have not recovered to where they were before the US and Israel-Iran war began in late February, and have never reached the minimum the UN says is needed. Four UN agencies warned in December 2025 that famine, pushed back only weeks earlier through the ceasefire, could rapidly return without sustained access and supplies. On February 28, 2026, at the start of Israeli-US military operations against Iran, Israeli authorities closed all crossings into Gaza. Trucks entering in the following weeks fell from a weekly average of 4,200 to just 590, based on US military coordination figures reported by Haaretz. The Kerem Shalom crossing partially reopened on March 3, following reported US pressure, and Kerem Shalom and Zikim remain the only operational entry points for humanitarian and commercial goods. In the first 11 days of May, only half of the aid trucks arriving from Egypt were allowed to unload at Israeli-controlled crossings. Commercial trucks have started entering Gaza again in larger numbers, with 789 private trucks crossing between May 4 and 10, according to OCHA. But total deliveries remain below pre-February 28 levels and far short of what Gaza’s population needs. According to OCHA’s May 1 situation report, aid groups reached around 197,000 families with food parcels in April, covering 75 percent of minimum daily calorie needs, an improvement from March, when rations covered only half of those needs. But the total number of meals served daily has dropped since late March, with some aid groups scaling back direct food distribution, OCHA said. The World Food Programme reported that people in Gaza were eating less in the first half of April than in March, with most families eating vegetables, fruit, or protein only once a week or less. With cooking gas in short supply, 68 percent of people are now burning waste to cook their meals, up 13 percent from March. As of February 5, none of Gaza’s 37 hospitals were fully operational, and only 19 were even partially functioning, according to OCHA. Over 43,000 people have suffered life-changing injuries, one in four of them children, and more than 50,000 need long-term rehabilitation care, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates. No rehabilitation facility is fully running. Israeli delays in approving specialized surgical equipment are limiting complex care, and at least 46 percent of essential medicines are out of stock, according to WHO. Israeli restrictions on bringing in generators, engine oil, and spare parts are causing breakdowns across health care, sanitation, debris removal, and humanitarian work, according to OCHA. Rodents and insects are spreading across displacement camps, and skin infections and other diseases are on the rise, OCHA reported. UN agencies and aid groups working on water and sanitation warn that severe shortages of lubricant oil and spare parts are causing generators to fail. In Khan Younis, sewage pumping stations have stopped working and untreated waste is flooding residential streets. Across Gaza, more than 200 water and sanitation facilities have been running on backup generators for over two and a half years, most now on recycled oil. On April 6, Al Jazeera reported that Israeli forces fired on a WHO vehicle in eastern Khan Younis, killing a contractor and wounding several others. WHO suspended medical evacuations via Rafah for six days in response. As of late April, OCHA had recorded the killing of at least 593 aid workers in Gaza since October 2023, including 8 since the ceasefire. Airstrikes killed an aid worker at a water well in Gaza City on April 20 and a worker for the NGO Ard El Insan on April 26, both triggering the suspension of essential services. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 1,400 patients have died waiting for medical evacuation since the Rafah crossing was seized in May 2024, and over 18,500 patients, including 4,000 children, still await evacuation. The NGO Gisha has reported how Israeli authorities have categorically prevented access for Gaza patients in hospitals in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, since October 2023, though they have at times facilitated limited access to treatment abroad, including through Israeli territory since July 2024. Since the ceasefire, Israeli forces have moved the ‘Yellow Line,’ the agreed limit of Israeli territorial control inside Gaza, westward beyond its agreed boundaries. They have established at least 32 outposts and constructing what appears to be a permanent or long-term ground barrier, according to satellite imagery analysis published by Haaretz. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documened at least 167 Palestinians killed near the line between October 11 and January 21, including 26 children and 17 women. The head of Doctors Without Borders in Gaza told Haaretz that as the line moves west, it is swallowing up water points and health facilities. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), 127 of its facilities now fall behind the line or in areas requiring Israeli approval for access. Since March 2025, Israeli authorities have blocked the agency from taking humanitarian assistance directly into Gaza. The Comprehensive Plan includes commitments by Israel that remain unfulfilled, including a scale-up of humanitarian assistance. Human Rights Watch has previously raised concerns about other elements of the plan, including the creation of a Board of Peace with no Palestinian representation. At the Board of Peace’s inaugural meeting in February, ten Board member states and observers pledged a total of US$17 billion for reconstruction against UN estimates of $70 billion needed. As of April, the Board had received less than $1 billion of the pledged amount, with only three contributors having delivered funds, according to Reuters. Israel, as the occupying power, is required under international humanitarian law to ensure the civilian population has access to food, water, medical care, and essential supplies, and to facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief. Starving civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime under the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). Deliberately imposing conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a population constitutes an act of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Human Rights Watch documented in December 2023 that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, and in December 2024 published a report in which it found that Israel’s deliberate deprivation of water amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide. Israeli authorities should immediately comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, including ensuring the unobstructed passage of humanitarian aid at scale through all crossings, lifting unlawful restrictions on UNRWA and other international humanitarian organizations, and ensuring the safety of humanitarian personnel, Human Rights Watch said. Governments should suspend arms transfers to the Israeli government, impose targeted sanctions on Israeli officials credibly implicated in serious abuses, suspend preferential trade agreements with Israel, and promote accountability by supporting the International Court of Justice and the ICC, including by enforcing the ICC’s arrest warrants. ‘When the Board of Peace briefs the Security Council, members should weigh what they hear against what UN agencies are reporting from the ground,’ Coogle said. ‘No spin can hide the fact that aid is not entering at the needed scale, patients do not have access to adequate medical care, and crossings to Gaza remain limited.’