The head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme warned Thursday that Gaza is “at breaking point” and appealed for the urgent revival of the agency’s network of 200 food distribution points, a day after the Israel Defense Forces announced that it was planning to open an additional aid distribution site in southern Gaza over the coming days.

“Enough is enough,” WFP executive director Cindy McCain said after visiting the besieged territory, where Israel is pressing operations in its offensive against Hamas.

“Gaza is at a breaking point. Desperation is soaring — and I saw it firsthand,” McCain said.

Her comments come less than a week after the United Nations’ Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared a famine in parts of Gaza, blaming the “systematic obstruction” of humanitarian deliveries by Israel. Israel has dismissed the IPC report as “fabricated” and a “modern blood libel.”

McCain went to Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, where she visited a nutrition clinic keeping children alive and met with displaced mothers who say they struggle daily to find scraps of food.

“I met starving children receiving treatment for severe malnutrition — and I saw photos of when they were healthy. Today they are unrecognizable,” McCain said.

“We must urgently be able to revive our vast and trusted network of 200 food distribution points across the Strip, community kitchens and bakeries. It is urgent that the right conditions are in place so we can reach the most vulnerable and save lives,” she said, calling on Israel to shift from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to the previous system run by the UN and other aid groups.

Aid organizations and much of the international community are opposed to the GHF’s aid system, as it requires Gazans to walk long distances in order to pick up a box of dry food products that need to be prepared, though cooking fuel and equipment are scarce in the Strip. There have also been repeated shootings near GHF sites, with Palestinians claiming hundreds have died due to IDF gunfire.

Israel says that Hamas regularly steals supplies from deliveries by the UN and international aid groups, and set up the GHF to provide aid via an alternative that would keep goods out of Hamas’s hands.

McCain met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to press for a “surge of food assistance to reach the most vulnerable.”

She also met Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa in Ramallah, the WFP said.

“What we need is a ceasefire. My heart goes out to the mothers in Gaza, as well as to the mothers of the Israeli hostages, whose children are currently starving,” McCain said.

Meanwhile, Israel has continued to resist international and internal pressure to agree to a proposal for a temporary truce in Gaza and the release of some of the 50 remaining hostages, Egypt’s top diplomat said on Thursday.

After Israel decided to move forward with an operation to capture Gaza City, Hamas said it had accepted a proposed agreement that would see 10 living hostages exchanged for Palestinian security prisoners during a 60-day truce that could be extended to a second phase if the sides agreed to terms on a permanent ceasefire.

But Israel has said it now demands a comprehensive deal that would see the release of all remaining hostages at once, the disarmament of Hamas, the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, overall Israeli security control of the territory, and the transfer of governance to a body that is not Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

As such, it has not formally discussed the phased proposal, despite it being nearly identical to one it approved earlier this year.

“The Qatari and Egyptian mediation efforts have not stopped, despite the unfortunate lack of responsiveness from the Israeli side and its insistence on its position,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said at a press conference with his Qatari counterpart.

“We will continue our pressure and remain in contact with regional and international parties so that they press the Israeli side to accept the ceasefire proposal, which is based on the initiative presented by the American mediator [Steve] Witkoff.”

As it gears up for its offensive in Gaza City, the IDF on Wednesday announced that it will facilitate the opening of two more GHF aid sites in the southern Gaza Strip, while closing Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan distribution point.

Once work is completed, the total number of GHF centers in the Strip will rise from four to five.

“The distribution complex in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood will be replaced by the two complexes that are currently being established in the southern Gaza Strip with the aim of improving the response and the safety of the distribution,” the IDF said.

The UN human rights office said last week it had documented that 1,857 Palestinians had been killed while seeking aid since late May, 1,021 of them near GHF sites. The IDF has acknowledged firing warning shots at crowds that get too close to its soldiers, but called the UN tallies exaggerated, though it hasn’t provided alternate numbers.

The GHF has consistently disavowed responsibility for the reported deaths of people trying to obtain the humanitarian assistance it distributes.

The GHF, which is backed by the US and Israel, was set up as an alternate mechanism to the UN-backed aid distribution efforts that have operated in the Strip for most of the war. According to Israel, the new system was needed due to assistance being siphoned off by Hamas, which sold the goods on the black market to fund its activities, including recruiting new fighters to rebuild its depleted forces.

Also on Thursday, UN rights experts voiced alarm at reports of “enforced disappearances” of starving Palestinians seeking food at distribution sites run by the GHF, urging Israel to end the “heinous crime.”

The seven independent experts said in a joint statement they had received reports that a number of individuals, including one child, had been “forcibly disappeared” after going to aid distribution sites in Rafah, southern Gaza.

“Reports of enforced disappearances targeting starving civilians seeking their basic right to food is not only shocking, but amounts to torture,” said the experts, who are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council, but who do not speak on behalf of the UN itself.

“Using food as a tool to conduct targeted and mass disappearances needs to end now,” they added.

Israel’s military was reportedly “directly involved in the enforced disappearances of people seeking aid,” said the statement signed by the five members of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, along with Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on rights in the Palestinian territories, and her counterpart on the right to food, Michael Fakhri.

Israel’s military was “refusing to provide information on the fate and whereabouts of persons they have deprived of their liberty,” in violation of international law, the statement alleged. “The failure to acknowledge deprivation of liberty by state agents and refusal to acknowledge detention constitute an enforced disappearance.”

Albanese is an outspoken critic of Israel who has been accused of antisemitic and pro-terror rhetoric. An Italian national, she regularly accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza and has said that the October 7, 2023, massacre, torture, rapes and abductions carried out by Hamas in southern Israel must be put in a “context of decades of oppression imposed on the Palestinians.”

There was no immediate response to the claims from the IDF.

In response to the accusation, the GHF said it had found no evidence of “enforced disappearances” at its aid sites.

“We operate in a war zone where serious allegations exist against all parties operating outside our sites. But inside GHF facilities, there is no evidence of enforced disappearances,” the organization told AFP.

The UN has blamed much of the deprivation in Gaza on “systematic obstruction” of humanitarian deliveries by Israel. Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza between March and May, ostensibly to prevent Hamas from looting supplies.

Once it began easing restrictions, the GHF was established to distribute food aid, effectively sidelining UN agencies.

The experts pointed to how “aerial bombardment and daily gunfire at and around the crowded facilities have resulted in mass casualties.”

“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is obligated to provide secure distribution sites and has contracted private military security companies to that end,” they said, warning that “the distribution points pose additional risks for devastated individuals of being forcibly disappeared.”

The experts urged Israeli authorities to “put an end to the heinous crime against an already vulnerable population.”

They demanded that the authorities “clarify the fate and whereabouts of disappeared persons and investigate the enforced disappearances thoroughly and impartially and punish perpetrators.”

Hundreds of UN staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Volker Turk, have asked him to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

The letter sent on Wednesday said the staff consider that the legal criteria for genocide in the nearly two-year Israel-Hamas war in Gaza have been met, citing the scale, scope and nature of violations documented there.

“OHCHR has a strong legal and moral responsibility to denounce acts of genocide,” said the letter signed by the Staff Committee on behalf of over 500 employees. “Failing to denounce an unfolding genocide undermines the credibility of the UN and the human rights system itself,” it added.

It cited the international body’s perceived moral failure for not doing more to stop the 1994 Rwanda genocide that killed more than 1 million people.

“The situation in Gaza has shaken us all to our core,” said OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani, citing difficult circumstances faced by the office as it tries to document facts and raise the alarm. “There have been and will continue to be discussions internally on how to move forward,” she said in reference to the letter.

Turk, who has repeatedly condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza and warned of the increasing risk of atrocity crimes, said the letter raised important concerns.

“I know we all share a feeling of moral indignation at the horrors we are witnessing, as well as frustration in the face of the international community’s inability to bring this situation to an end,” he said in a copy of his response seen by Reuters, calling for employees to “remain united as an Office in the face of such adversity.”

There was no immediate response from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Israel has strongly rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza, citing its right to self-defense following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack in which invading terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. It also maintains it makes efforts to avoid harm to civilians as it continues to fight terror groups in Gaza.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.