The organization made up of United Nations agencies and other non-profit groups also announced 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people faces food insecurity.

Israel’s siege in Gaza has devastated swathes of the territory, diminished food, fuel and water supplies, and crushed the enclave’s medical system.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, also said Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system, in a post on X on Monday.

“It’s unprecedented to make an entire civilian population go hungry this completely & quickly. Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system. Israel is intentionally imposing a high rate of disease, prolonged malnutrition, dehydration + starvation by destroying civilian infrastructure,” Fakhri added.

The United Nations has repeatedly reiterated that Gaza is grappling with catastrophic hunger and nearly half of the population is at a risk of famine, calling for an urgent scaling up of aid. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has recently sounded the alarm on the dire humanitarian crisis in the besieged strip, lamenting that four out of “five of the hungriest people anywhere in the world are” in the coastal territory.

Since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, Israel has continued relentless attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 25,000 Palestinians and injuring many more, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2.3 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine.

Last week, Martin Griffiths, the man in charge of the UN’s relief operations in Gaza, painted a dire picture of conditions in the besieged strip, saying his colleagues have witnessed “scenes of utter horror”.

“Corpses left lying in the road. People with evident signs of starvation stopping trucks in search of anything they can get to survive,” Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told members of the UN Security Council.

Griffiths stated many people no longer had homes to return to, with shelters in the enclave housing far more people than they could cope with.

Food and water was running out and the risk of famine was growing by the day, he added.

The health system, he said, was “in a state of collapse,” where women were unable to give birth safely, children could not get vaccinated, infectious diseases were on the rise and people had been seeking shelter in hospital yards.

In a stinging criticism, Griffiths added his team’s efforts to send humanitarian convoys to the north have been met with delays and denials amid impossible conditions, with the safety of aid workers being put in danger.

“Orders for evacuation are unrelenting. As ground operations move southwards, aerial bombardments have intensified in areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety,” Griffiths said of Israel’s evacuation policies.

“There is no safe place in Gaza. Dignified human life is a near impossibility,” he continued.

Reports in Brussels claimed that Katz made such a proposal during talks with his EU counterparts aimed at de-escalating the conflict in Gaza.

“The land of Palestine is ours and we will remain there,” Al Maliki told reporters as he headed into a meeting with the EU’s 27 foreign affairs ministers shortly after Katz to discuss the Gaza war.

EU officials said the two men would not meet in person.

Without naming Israel, Al Maliki stated that “those who had the idea” of creating an artificial island may go live on it if they wish.

Before the meetings, top EU diplomats said that the bloc would continue pushing for a two-state solution and criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rejection of Palestinian statehood.

Comments made by the bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell hinted at a deepening rift between Israel and the West.

“Which are the other solutions they have in mind?” Borrell noted, adding, “To make all the Palestinians leave? To kill off them? From now on, I will not talk about the peace process but about the two-state solution process. We are serious about that.”

Katz, however, declined to take questions from reporters about Palestinian statehood.

Holding pictures of Israeli hostages in Gaza, including one-year-old baby Kfir Bibas, he said Israeli soldiers were fighting in the enclave with two goals: “to bring back our hostages and restore security for citizens of Israel.”

About 1,200 Israelis died in a Hamas-led attack on October 7. Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians.

Like the US, the EU has not called for a ceasefire due to opposition from several more Israel-aligned states including Germany. They have argued that Israel must be allowed to carry out its military objective to destroy Hamas.

Yet some criticism of Netanyahu’s strategy has started to emerge within Israel. War cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot appeared to criticise the PM on Friday when he stressed that complete victory over Hamas was unrealistic and called for new elections.

Reluctance to call for a ceasefire positioning has caused bewilderment in much of the Arab world, most of all from Palestinians who have accused the West of double standards. “We have to call collectively for a ceasefire,” Al Maliki continued.

He also called for Brussels to introduce sanctions against Israel, which is unlikely to happen. Talk of blacklisting extremist settlers from European soil has been delayed due to reluctance from some member states. The EU issued sanctions on Hamas last week.

“The collective responsibility of the EU right now lies in this particular moment at a time when they have to show leadership and courage,” he added.

“Otherwise, what we have been saying for a long time about double standards will be clearly shown.”