UPDATED: Starvation spreads in Gaza as European powers discuss ending the catastrophe
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that a quarter of the young children and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers it had screened at its clinics last week were malnourished, a day after the United Nations said one in five children in Gaza City were suffering from malnutrition.
With fears of mass starvation growing, Britain, France and Germany were set to hold an emergency call to push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and discuss steps towards Palestinian statehood.
"I will hold an emergency call with E3 partners tomorrow, where we will discuss what we can do urgently to stop the killing and get people the food they desperately need while pulling together all the steps necessary to build a lasting peace," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said.
The UK is facing renewed pressure to recognise the state of Palestine after French President Emmanuel Macron pledged France would do so by September, prompting fresh calls for Britain to act.
Demands for immediate recognition had already been building across Westminster and are expected to intensify following the French announcement, according to the BBC. A report published Friday by the UK Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee also urged the government to recognise Palestinian statehood without delay.
Labour figures have voiced support for recognition, while the Liberal Democrats warned the UK should not fall behind its European allies on the issue. Downing Street, however, continues to insist a ceasefire must come first, with ministers maintaining that sovereignty must be 'exercised at the moment of attaining statehood'.
"The UK has missed multiple opportunities to act decisively in the past. We must not let another opportunity pass us by," wrote Emily Thornberry, the Chair of the UK's Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, urging her government to recognise the State of Palestine.
We have published our report on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
We have spent the last nine months taking evidence on the conflict. Today, we are calling on the Government to act more boldly and bravely to deliver a two-state solution.
Read the report ⬇️https://t.co/c5JvtcPYQl pic.twitter.com/R7DQOJxoIm — Foreign Affairs Committee (@CommonsForeign) July 25, 2025
Israel/US quit
The call between European leaders comes after hopes of a new ceasefire in Gaza faded on Thursday when Israel and the United States quit indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar.
US envoy Steve Witkoff accused the Palestinian militant group of not "acting in good faith".
President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that France would formally recognise a Palestinian state in September, drawing a furious rebuke from Israel.
'Mass starvation'
More than 100 aid and human rights groups warned this week that "mass starvation" was spreading in Gaza.
Israel has rejected accusations it is responsible for the deepening crisis, which the World Health Organization has called "man-made".
Israel placed the Gaza Strip under an aid blockade in March, which it only partially eased two months later.
The trickle of aid since then has been controlled by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, replacing the longstanding UN-led distribution system.
Aid groups have refused to work with it, accusing it of aiding Israeli military goals.
The GHF system, in which Gazans have to travel long distances and join huge queues to reach one of four sites, has often proved deadly, with the UN saying that more than 750 Palestinian aid-seekers have been killed by Israeli forces near GHF centres since late May.
An AFP photographer saw bloodied patients, wounded while attempting to get humanitarian aid, being treated on the floor of Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis on Thursday.
Accusing Israel of the "weaponisation of food", MSF said that: "Across screenings of children aged six months to five years old and pregnant and breastfeeding women, at MSF facilities last week, 25 per cent were malnourished."
It said malnutrition cases had quadrupled since May 18 at its Gaza City clinic and that the facility was enrolling 25 new patients every day.
Aid groups and medics have also warned that a lack of food is preventing the sick and wounded from recovering.
US Representative Wesley Bell, whose primary race saw heavy influence from pro-Israel groups, has condemned Israel's starvation of civilians in Gaza and the attacks on aid seekers searching for food, stating, 'This is not self-defense. It must stop.'https://t.co/uGIIqyhckg — Quds News Network (@QudsNen) July 25, 2025
'High risk of dying'
On Thursday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that one in five children in Gaza City were malnourished.
Agency chief Philippe Lazzarini said: "Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they don't get the treatment they urgently need."
He also warned that "UNRWA frontline health workers, are surviving on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if at all".
EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / People mourn a relative at the Nasser hospital, one of several Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi refugee camp and the eastern neighbourhoods of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, on July 24, 2025. (Photo by AFP)
Lazzarini said that the agency had "the equivalent of 6,000 loaded trucks of food and medical supplies" ready to send into Gaza if Israel allowed "unrestricted and uninterrupted" access to the territory.
Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed 59,587 Palestinians and wounded nearly 150,000, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza..
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