The US says it pushed retraction of a famine warning for north Gaza. Aid groups express concern

WASHINGTON (AP) — A lead organization monitoring for food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of imminent famine in north Gaza under what it called Israel's “near-total blockade,” after the U.S. asked for its retraction, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The move follows public criticism of the report from the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

The rare public challenge from the Biden administration of the work of the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System, which is meant to reflect the data-driven analysis of unbiased experts, drew accusations from aid and human-rights figures of possible U.S. political interference. A finding of famine would be a rebuke of close U.S. ally Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month war in Gaza is aimed against the Hamas militant group and not against its civilian population.

U.S. ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew earlier this week called the warning by the internationally recognized group inaccurate and “irresponsible." Lew and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds the monitoring group, both said the findings failed to properly account for rapidly changing circumstances in north Gaza.

The U.S. Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined comment. FEWS confirmed Thursday it had retracted its famine warning, and said it expected to re-release the report in January with updated data and analysis. The group declined further comment.

“We work day and night with the U.N. and our Israeli partners to meet humanitarian needs — which are great — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lew said Tuesday.

USAID confirmed to the AP that it had asked the famine-monitoring organization to withdraw its stepped-up warning of imminent famine, issued in a report dated Monday.

The dispute points in part to the difficulty of assessing the extent of starvation in largely isolated northern Gaza, where thousands in recent weeks have fled an intensified Israeli military crackdown that aid groups say has allowed delivery of only a dozen trucks of food and water since roughly October.

FEWS Net said in its withdrawn report that unless Israel changes its policy, it expects the number of people dying of starvation and related ailments in north Gaza to reach between two and 15 per day sometime between January and March.

The internationally recognized mortality threshold for famine is two or more deaths a day per 10,000 people.

FEWS was created by the U.S. development agency in the 1980s and is still funded by it. But it is intended to provide independent, neutral and data-driven assessments of hunger crises, including in war zones. Its findings help guide decisions on aid by the U.S. and other governments and agencies around the world.

A spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, welcomed the U.S. ambassador's public challenge of the famine warning. “FEWS NET - Stop spreading these lies!” Marmorstein said on X.

In challenging the findings publicly, the U.S. ambassador "leveraged his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency,” said Scott Paul, a senior manager at the Oxfam America humanitarian nonprofit. Paul stressed that he was not weighing in on the accuracy of the data or methodology of the report.

“The whole point of creating FEWS is to have a group of experts make assessments about imminent famine that are untainted by political considerations,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor in international affairs at Princeton University. “It sure looks like USAID is allowing political considerations -- the Biden administration’s worry about funding Israel’s starvation strategy -- to interfere."

Israel says it has been operating in recent months against Hamas militants still active in northern Gaza. It says the vast majority of the area’s residents have fled and relocated to Gaza City, where most aid destined for the north is delivered. But some critics, including a former defense minister, have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in Gaza’s far north, near the Israeli border.

North Gaza has been one of the areas hardest-hit by fighting and Israel’s restrictions on aid throughout its war with Hamas militants. Global famine monitors and U.N. and U.S. officials have warned repeatedly of the imminent risk of malnutrition and deaths from starvation hitting famine levels.

International officials say Israel last summer increased the amount of aid it was admitting there, under U.S. pressure