Like all parents, 34-year-old Ahmed Draimli and his wife, Waid, held onto hope that their firstborn son, Zain, would grow up healthy, strong, and full of life. But last September, shortly after he was born in Gaza City’s Al-Sahaba Medical Complex, doctors found that Zain had a bacterial infection in his blood. They said it was likely caused by a weakened immune system — the result of malnutrition during Waid’s pregnancy.

“Throughout the pregnancy, I did my best to buy whatever food I could: eggs, potatoes, anything healthy. But it wasn’t just expensive; many times, there was simply no food in the shops at all,” Draimli told +972. “Waid lost a lot of hair during her pregnancy, and her bones hurt terribly.”

Waid also suffered from prolonged exposure to woodfire smoke used for cooking, and the ever-present dust and debris from nearby Israeli bombardments, as they sheltered in their home in the Al-Daraj area of eastern Gaza City. “They struck our neighborhood three times,” Draimli explained.

For the first months of his life, Zain’s health remained fragile. Waid struggled to breastfeed due to her own poor nutrition, and infant formula was scarce. The baby cried constantly: he was in pain, often burning with fever. Soon after his birth, Draimli recalled, “he stayed in the [Patient Friend’s Benevolent Society] hospital for 17 days, fed through an IV drip. The doctors discharged him eventually, but his fever kept returning.”

They brought him back repeatedly to the hospital in central Gaza City. Sometimes, doctors said he was stable and just needed proper nutrition. Other times, they suspected a more serious condition, but couldn’t confirm without an MRI scan — and the only machine had been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. In the end, doctors determined Zain needed an urgent medical referral abroad, an impossible request with all borders sealed.

In late March, Zain’s condition started to deteriorate. By July 17, his body began to shut down. Waid rushed him to the hospital, and doctors placed him on a ventilator.

“We thought it was like all the other times,” Draimli explained. “But just minutes later, he died. Waid called me, and I collapsed. When I reached the hospital, she was still lying on the floor, clutching his body.”

At least 122 people, including more than 83 children, have died of starvation in Gaza since Israel’s war began in October 2023, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health — 54 of them since Monday alone. Now, more than 100 international aid organizations have warned that Gaza is facing “mass starvation,” with the UN reporting that one in every five children in Gaza City is malnourished, as cases continue to rise every day.

Despite the limited entry of humanitarian aid trucks since late May, ongoing Israeli attacks on civilians seeking aid at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites — combined with the obstruction of humanitarian organizations trying to deliver life-saving assistance — have continued to drive up the death toll and left the majority of the population without access to food.

“Famine is intensifying and spreading throughout the Gaza Strip, coinciding with the Israeli occupation’s complete closure of all crossings for 145 days,” the Gaza Government Media Office wrote yesterday in an urgent statement. “We call on all countries of the world, without exception, to immediately break the blockade, permanently open the crossings, and allow the entry of baby formula and aid to more than 2.4 million people trapped in the Gaza Strip.”

Like so many in Gaza, Zain died from a combination of preventable complications, all exacerbated by a lack of food and medical supplies. “He was everything to me and my wife. He was the light of our house,” Draimli said. “I hope no child on this earth dies the way my son did.”

‘Everything hurts from hunger’

Starting on July 19, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets of Gaza — men and women, young and old — to protest the world’s silence in the face of Israel’s mass starvation campaign. Among them was Wissal Marouf, 34, who has been displaced along with nine family members, including her husband and young daughter, to a cramped, 16-square-meter tent inside Al-Yarmouk stadium in central Gaza City.

“Two months ago, when a kilo of flour cost NIS 40, we could afford to buy two pieces of bread for each of us, for a total of 18 per day,” Marouf told +972. “Now, if we can even find flour, it costs NIS 200.”

“Sometimes, I can only afford 100 grams, just enough to make a single piece of bread for my 6-year-old daughter, Mira,” she added. “She cries most of the day and often asks if I can make more, not knowing her father and I have been giving her our shares. There’s simply nothing left.”

In May, following a series of bombings that struck their neighborhood in Beit Lahiya — killing 10 of their neighbors — Marouf’s husband, Ali, sustained a severe leg injury while fleeing from a tent pitched atop the rubble of their destroyed home. With him now unable to walk, the daily burden of survival has fallen entirely on Marouf: collecting firewood, fetching water, and searching for food. She walks for hours each day in hopes of finding a charity distribution point, but most days she returns empty-handed.

Her husband’s modest salary of NIS 1,200 ($360) per month has now been rendered meaningless, as food prices in Gaza have skyrocketed to unimaginable levels. A kilo of flour now costs NIS 200 ($60), rice NIS 180 ($54), lentils NIS 100 ($30), local tomatoes NIS 80 ($23), and cucumbers NIS 70 ($21).

Even accessing their money is a challenge: to withdraw cash, they rely on middlemen who charge a 45 percent cut, leaving the family with just NIS 660 after withdrawing NIS 1,200. At current prices, it’s barely enough to last a week.

“We haven’t eaten since July 17. We can’t afford anything in the markets; some relatives gave me a few lentils, and I split them up over days and gave them to my daughter,” Marouf said. “Mira keeps asking for a cucumber or a tomato. But even if I could buy one, how could I let her eat it in front of the other kids in the tent?”

Malnutrition has taken a toll on Marouf as well. “My back, my bones, my arms — everything hurts from hunger,” she said. “I go to bed hungry and exhausted.” On July 12, she collapsed in the street. Barely able to walk, she made her way to the nearby Red Crescent Hospital near Al-Saraya.

“I was crying, leaning against the walls to keep moving,” she recalled. Doctors administered an IV drip and diagnosed her with severe malnutrition, as well as a colon condition likely caused by overconsumption of lentils, and a bacterial stomach infection.

Living in the tent, she said, brings a constant sense of fear and helplessness — both from the constant airstrikes, and the hunger. “I’ve been arguing with my husband every day. We’re on the verge of divorce; we’re breaking down under the weight of this suffering.”

Now desperate to feed her daughter, Marouf is considering heading to one of the so-called “aid distribution centers” run by the GHF. Since opening four such sites in southern and central Gaza in late May, at least 1,026 Palestinians have been killed while trying to access food. Most of them were shot by Israeli soldiers or foreign security guards stationed near the centers.

“I wish people outside Gaza could truly feel our starvation. Maybe then they would do everything they can to help. If food doesn’t reach us, and if it’s not distributed to every family in the coming days, we will all die of hunger.”

‘Death has more dignity than this life’

In Gaza, almost no one is spared from the direct or indirect consequences of hunger. Yet it is the most vulnerable — children and the elderly, whose bodies are least able to endure long periods without nourishment — who face the greatest risk.

Abdullah Abu Jalilah, 82, a Nakba refugee originally from the village of Huj on the other side of today’s Gaza-Israel fence, now lives in a makeshift tent in the Al-Saraya neighborhood of central Gaza City. He shares the cramped shelter with his wife, and 12 of his children and grandchildren; his two homes in Jabalia refugee camp were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in October 2024.

After Israel shattered the ceasefire with Hamas in March and imposed a full two-month closure on humanitarian aid and food entering Gaza, Abu Jalilah and his family survived on a single daily meal provided by local charity groups. But most charitable kitchens have run out of supplies, and those still operating can only prepare modest offerings: thin soup or small portions of lentils, often shared between dozens of people.

“On Tuesday, there was a charity distribution in the camp,” Abu Jalilah recalled. “The soup was spilling over people because of the pushing and shoving. I only got a single portion — just some watery broth. But I gave it to a 10-year-old boy who was crying because he hadn’t received anything.

“I never imagined I would experience this level of hunger, sickness, and fatigue in my life,” he added. “Words can’t describe this humiliation. Death has more dignity than this life.”

A Palestinian Authority employee until his retirement 20 years ago, Abu Jalilah used to live off his monthly pension. But with food prices soaring and middlemen charging high fees just to access cash, what little income remains is nearly worthless. “We need at least $100 a day just to get half a piece of bread and a few lentils,” he said. “I usually give up my share so my grandchildren can eat. They cry all day from hunger until they fall asleep in despair.”

As he spoke, not only were his own grandchildren weeping nearby — the sounds of wailing children echoed from tents all around. In Gaza today, the cries of hungry children have become an ordinary part of daily life.

Abu Jalilah said the hunger has left him weak and lightheaded. “I can’t walk like I used to. I feel dizzy almost all the time. For more than 70 years, I ate fruit every day and drank tea with sugar. Now, it’s been weeks since even a gram of sugar passed my lips.

“Israel is using deprivation and starvation as a weapon against innocent people in Gaza,” he continued. “What crime did we commit to deserve this? If they don’t open the crossings and let food in, we will all die soon.”

‘Israel wants us to starve to death’ 

Sara Marouf, 53, is suffering from extreme hunger, exhaustion, and hypoglycemia. She lives in a makeshift tent with her four sons and their families on Omar Al-Mukhtar Street in central Gaza City, after Israeli airstrikes destroyed their home in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, in December 2024.

Like many displaced families, they’ve been forced to evacuate repeatedly due to Israeli evacuation orders. But for most of the war, Marouf says, their most urgent and relentless struggle has been to secure their next meal.

“I feel dizzy most of the time,” she told +972. “I fainted twice last week. My children carried me to a nearby health clinic. The doctors said my blood sugar had dropped dangerously low because I wasn’t eating enough.”

Before the war, her sons worked as farmers and livestock traders. But during the Israeli military’s incursion into northern Gaza, their land was razed, their crops destroyed, and all their goats either killed or died from starvation.

“I used to distribute vegetables to neighbors and relatives,” Sara said, recalling the time before the war. “I even gave money to people in need. Now, I beg strangers for anything — a piece of food, or just a few shekels to buy something to eat.”

Her 20-year-old son Bilal, a father of three, has ventured three times with friends to the area near the Netzarim corridor in hopes of intercepting aid from humanitarian trucks.

“One time, he managed to grab a 25-kilo bag of flour from a truck,” Sara recalled. “But bandits stopped him and threatened to stab him if he didn’t hand it over. So he gave it to them.

“I’ve stopped him from going back. It’s too dangerous — with Israeli soldiers shooting people, and local armed gangs preying on those trying to survive,” she said.

“Israel wants to starve us to death in Gaza,” she added, her voice steady but weary. “We are not Hamas. Why should our children die of hunger?”