Gaza’s Starving Children

Asem Mustafa Awan

Islamabad: In Gaza, the line between war and annihilation has long been crossed. What unfolds today is not a humanitarian crisis it is a deliberate, calculated genocide, where starvation is used as a weapon and infants and children are its most frequent victims. The numbers are monstrous, yet they fail to capture the anguish of a child gasping for breath as hunger shrinks the body before it ever grows.

Even the act of queuing for food has become life-threatening. Throughout this war, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while standing in line at aid distribution points many shot or shelled by Israeli forces.

These are not accidents but part of a chilling pattern that has made hunger fatal. In one of the most horrifying episodes, seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen, including foreign nationals, were killed in an Israeli airstrike while delivering food. Since then, attacks have continued—on both the hungry and those trying to feed them. In Gaza, seeking bread is a death sentence; distributing it, equally deadly.

Every thirty-five minutes, a Palestinian child dies—either in direct attacks or from hunger and disease. Infants are perishing in the arms of mothers who can do nothing but wait. Gaza’s neonatal wards are ruins, incubators useless without power. It is hunger that now screams the loudest.

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The toll is staggering: over 59,700 Palestinians killed, nearly 144,500 wounded. Most are civilians. Thousands are children—starved or obliterated. What began after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks that killed 1,139 Israelis and saw more than 200 taken captive has since become collective punishment on a scale rarely seen in modern history.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) calls it “a constructed and deliberate mass starvation.” The agency’s Commissioner-General has said Gaza is being starved “in full view of the international community,” which remains either complicit or paralyzed.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths described the recent aid allowed in by Israel as “a drop in the ocean.” In southern Gaza, 1.4 million displaced Palestinians struggle without bread, clean water, or medicine. Trucks wait at borders while bureaucracy and blockade do the killing.

Aid convoys, even when allowed in, are often attacked. Desperate crowds are fired upon. Famine has been manufactured, not merely allowed. In some cases, civilians have been crushed to death in stampedes triggered by too little aid reaching too many people. This isn’t a logistical failure—it is a war strategy.

Two of Israel’s own human rights watchdogs—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel—have declared that what’s happening is genocide. Their findings detail not only the targeting of civilians and the obliteration of hospitals, homes, and schools, but also the systematic weaponization of hunger and dehydration. These are not just violations of international law—they are crimes against humanity.

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Even the International Criminal Court has taken notice. Arrest warrants have been issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Israel’s parliament, an unprecedented internal inquiry is underway. But U.S. President Donald Trump has condemned the ICC’s move, calling on it to “back off” and dismissing the probe as a distraction from “Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Yet outrage across the West is building. Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister, whose parents-in-law were trapped in Gaza, has publicly condemned the killings and called for a ceasefire. Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Ireland’s Prime Minister, has demanded an end to the siege and full access for aid.

Spain’s Parliament sent a powerful symbolic message by turning traffic lights red in several cities to protest Israel’s actions—a rare gesture of civil defiance with global visibility.

In Bath, England, on July 4, an 18-hour vigil was held in which the names of 15,618 Palestinian children killed in Gaza were read aloud. Local residents, including Members of Parliament and councillors, took turns reading each name, dawn to dusk. That such humanity came not from power corridors but from ordinary citizens speaks volumes.

Now, French President Emmanuel Macron has declared that France will support the recognition of a Palestinian state during the upcoming UN General Assembly session.

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U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed the move, calling it “symbolic grandstanding.” Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer long silent on Gaza is under mounting pressure from his party and the British public. He has recalled his cabinet for an emergency meeting to reassess Britain’s position on the crisis.

Still, the destruction continues. And nowhere is it felt more painfully than in the bodies of Gaza’s children. Their limbs are thin, eyes sunken, and cries fading. They drink polluted water, sleep in rubble, and die without medicine. For them, there is no shelter, no food, no escape. For them, time is running out.

This is not just war. It is a collapse of global conscience. Each death is preventable. Each starving child reflects a world numbed by media fatigue, paralyzed by geopolitics, and strangled by diplomatic cowardice. The silence of power is now complicit in the roar of bombs and the ache of hunger.

History will not forget what Gaza endured. But more importantly, it will remember who looked away.

The article is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.

Asem Mustafa Awan has extensive reporting experience with leading national and international media organizations. He has also contributed to reference books such as the Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal, among other international publications.