On Nov. 29, 2024, three Palestinians, a woman and two children, were crushed to death while waiting in line outside a bakery in central Gaza. The images of thousands of Palestinians huddled against each other, pressing inwards for a bag of pita bread, with young girls on camera desperately gasping for air, made headline news all over the world.

Humanitarian organizations said that people in Gaza were on the “brink of famine.” Ajith Sunghay, the head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said, “The breakdown of public order and safety is exacerbating the situation with rampant looting and fighting over scarce resources.” He added that “prices of the meager commodities that are available have skyrocketed.”

The agency running the United Nations’ World Food Programme warned in early December that the “humanitarian response in Gaza is nearing collapse. For over 50 days almost no food has reached North Gaza.”

Similar warnings were proclaimed in the past. In March, the Food Security Analysis Unit, which works under the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, released a report that stated, “Famine is now projected and imminent in the North Gaza and Gaza Governorates and is expected to become manifest during the projection period from mid-March 2024 to May 2024.”

But the projected famine never came to pass.