Mass starvation is now in Gaza. It is here. It is deadly. And it is getting worse by the day.
Exactly two months since the Israeli government-controlled Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating, more than 100 organisations including ActionAid published a letter sounding the alarm on hunger, urging governments to act. We are desperate for the world to listen.
Massacres at the GHF food distribution sites in Gaza are occurring almost daily, with more than 1,000 starving people desperate for food killed to date. Thousands more have been injured. This is on top of the fact that nearly two million exhausted Palestinians have been forcibly displaced by Israel, with the most recent mass displacement order issued on July 20th, confining Palestinians to less than 12 per cent of Gaza.
These conditions are impossible.
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The starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime. In warehouses just outside Gaza, and even within Gaza itself, tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them. The government of Israel’s restrictions, delays and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation and death.
Illnesses such as acute watery diarrhoea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration. Distributions in Gaza average just 28 trucks a day, far from enough for more than two million people, many of whom have gone weeks without assistance.
As the letter from more than 100 organisations stated, the UN-led humanitarian system has not failed, it has been prevented from functioning.
In my home city of Deir al-Balah in northern Gaza, where I am currently displaced with my family and working as a humanitarian worker for ActionAid Palestine, starving children are everywhere, sunken-eyed and limp in their mothers’ arms, their skin hanging loosely on skeletal frames.
Older children with limbs as thin as sticks walk around in a daze, eyes dull, too tired to play and too hungry to cry, their bodies failing from lack of food.
These children are dying in plain sight with heartbreaking images of emaciated bodies dominating newspapers and screens, telling the true story of what is happening in Gaza. And the world is watching. But not acting.
I write this not only as a humanitarian worker, but as a father of three children in Gaza witnessing a catastrophe unfold before my eyes. A catastrophe not just measured in shattered buildings and bombs, but in the slow, agonising deaths of the population – especially children – from hunger and thirst.
More than 90 per cent of Gaza’s people are now facing either crisis-level or catastrophic levels of food insecurity, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report. That is nearly two million people – many of them children – who have run out of ways to feed themselves. One hundred and thirteen people have died from starvation since October 2023, and 81 of those are children.
What we are seeing here is not a famine warning. It is famine, plain and simple. And it is claiming lives.
Every day I see the heartbreaking consequences. Not just children with protruding ribs and swollen bellies, but parents who haven’t eaten for days. People collapsing, not from injury, but from hunger. Malnutrition has become as deadly as the bombs.
In displacement camps, families count themselves lucky if they get to eat one meal a day if they can find it. Fresh produce is virtually non-existent. A kilo of tomatoes that once cost $1 now sells for up to $30, if you can even find them. Shelves are bare, and the aid that trickles in is a mere drop in an ocean of desperate need.
For newborns and infants, the situation is even more horrifying. Baby formula is almost impossible to find. When it does appear, it’s often expired, or costs more than families can afford. In the absence of formula, mothers are mixing sugar and flour into water just to keep their babies alive. This puts their tiny bodies at enormous risk of illness and long-term damage. But what choice do these parents have?
As a father, I am responsible for my children’s needs, but it’s hard to secure one meal per day for my family. As a humanitarian worker, I am also trying to help local communities and our people in Gaza, delivering what aid is available. But there is nothing much to be given to the people. Whatever is available is a drop in the ocean.
People are no longer afraid of air strikes, they are afraid of starvation. I have spoken to neighbours who say they would rather die quickly in a bombing than suffer this slow, grinding hunger.
Despite the global headlines, despite the footage of skeletal children and mothers crying over the tiny bodies of their babies, the world has failed to stop this devastation.
World leaders offer words. Resolutions are passed and appeals are made. But still, the bombs fall, and the borders stay largely shut and famine deepens.
And yet, this can be stopped.
We are grateful to the Irish people for their support and the recognition of Palestine as a state. But governments must stop waiting for permission to act. We cannot continue to hope that current arrangements will work.
It is time for them to take decisive action: demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire; lift all bureaucratic and administrative restrictions; open all land crossings; reject military-controlled aid distribution models; restore a principled, UN-led humanitarian response and continue to fund impartial humanitarian organisations. States must also pursue concrete measures to end the siege, such as halting the transfer of weapons and ammunition.
The airdrops announced by the Israeli government over the weekend are a totally inadequate response to this crisis, and amount to nothing more than an attempt to whitewash a policy of deliberate starvation. This type of piecemeal arrangement cannot replace the legal and moral obligations by states to protect Palestinian civilians and ensure meaningful access to desperately needed aid.
The lack of action is sickening. What will it take? History will ask what the world did while children in Gaza starved.
I am writing this in the hope that my words will reach those with the power to make this nightmare stop.
The people of Gaza do not need pity. We need action. We need food, medicine, clean water. We need the bombs to stop and the siege to end. We need borders to open to allow for humanitarian aid.
We need the world to finally say “enough”.
Alaa Abu Samara is Gaza emergency response manager for ActionAid Palestine
