A leading organization that monitors food crises around the world withdrew a new report this week warning of impending famine in northern Gaza under what it called a “near-total Israeli blockade,” after the United States demanded its withdrawal, U.S. officials told The Associated Press. The move came after public criticism of the report from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew.

The Biden administration’s rare public challenge to the work of a U.S.-funded famine early warning system, which is supposed to reflect data-driven analysis by neutral experts, has drawn accusations from aid and human rights figures of U.S. political interference to falsify the facts, as the famine finding is a rebuke to close U.S. ally Israel, which has insisted that its 15-month-old war in Gaza is aimed at the militant group Hamas, not its own civilian population.

Earlier this week, US Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew called the internationally recognized group’s warning inaccurate and “irresponsible.” Lew and USAID, which funds the monitoring group, said the findings failed to properly account for rapidly changing conditions in northern Gaza.

The U.S. Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined to comment on the AP report. FuseNet confirmed Thursday that it had retracted its famine warning and said it expected to reissue the report in January with updated data and analysis.

It is noteworthy that FEWS, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, is an American monitoring organization funded by the US government.

“We are working day and night with the UN and our Israeli partners to meet the humanitarian needs — which are vast — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lu said Tuesday.

The U.S. Agency for International Development confirmed to The Associated Press that it had asked Famine Watch to withdraw its escalating warning of impending famine, which was issued in a report dated Monday, December 23, 2024.

The dispute partly reflects the difficulty of assessing the extent of the famine in largely isolated northern Gaza, where thousands have died in recent weeks. Thousands of Gazans have fled an intense Israeli military crackdown that aid groups say has allowed just a dozen trucks of food and water into the territory since October.

The Views Net program said in its withdrawn report that unless Israel changes its policy, it expects the number of people dying from hunger and related diseases in northern Gaza to reach between two and fifteen people per day between January and March.

The internationally recognized death threshold for famine is two or more deaths per day per ten thousand people.

The FUSE program was created by USAID in the 1980s and continues to be funded by the agency. But its purpose is to provide independent, impartial, data-driven assessments of hunger crises, including in war zones. Its findings help guide aid decisions by the United States and other governments and agencies around the world.

Scott Paul, a senior director at the nonprofit humanitarian group Oxfam America, told AP that the U.S. ambassador “used his political power to undermine the work of this expert agency” by publicly challenging the findings.

“The whole point of the Famine Early Warning System is for a group of experts to make assessments of impending famine without any political considerations,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor of international affairs at Princeton University. “It’s as if USAID is letting politics—the Biden administration’s concerns about its funding of Israel’s famine strategy—into the picture.”

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 moved to Gaza City, where most of the aid destined for the north is delivered. But some critics, including a former defense minister, have accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing in the far north of Gaza, near the Israeli border.

Northern Gaza has been one of the areas hardest hit by fighting and Israeli restrictions on aid throughout its war on the blockaded territory. Global famine monitors and U.N. and U.S. officials have repeatedly warned of the imminent threat of malnutrition and starvation deaths reaching famine levels.

The United States and the United Nations said that the people of Gaza as a whole need between 350 and 500 trucks of aid per day, but the Israeli occupation army is preventing the vast majority of aid from entering.

Earlier this month, Cindy McCain, head of the UN World Food Programme, called for political pressure to get food to the Palestinians there.

The United Nations and other aid organizations say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting, looting and inadequate security by Israeli forces make it impossible to deliver aid effectively.

US Ambassador Lew, known for his staunch support for Israel, claimed the famine warning was based on “outdated and inaccurate” data. He pointed to uncertainty over the number of people who have fled northern Gaza, estimated at between 65,000 and 75,000 in recent weeks, saying this could skew the results. The Famine Early Warning System said in its report that its famine assessment would still be valid even if as few as 10,000 people remained in the country.

In a statement to The Associated Press, USAID said it reviewed the report before it was made public, and noted “inconsistencies” in the population estimates and some other data. It said the agency asked the famine warning group to address these uncertainties and be clear in its final report how those uncertainties affected its famine forecasts.

“This was communicated prior to Ambassador Lu’s statement,” USAID said in a statement. “The Famine Early Warning System did not address any of these concerns and was published despite these technical comments and a request for substantive engagement prior to publication. As such, USAID has requested that the report be withdrawn.”