Israel's imposed mass starvation on Gaza is withering people away

In a dimly lit hallway of a battered field hospital in central Gaza, Abu Fadi sits slouched against a wall, his body barely able to hold itself upright. At 60 years old, he appears older, with sunken cheeks, vacant eyes, and a frame that is little more than skin stretched tight over bones.

"I didn't ask for much, just bread for the children. But even that became impossible," he murmured.

Abu Fadi's story is not unique in Gaza. Once a farmer from a small village in Beit Lahia town in the northern Gaza Strip, he was displaced months ago when Israeli airstrikes flattened his neighbourhood.

He carried what little he could to central Gaza, clinging to hope that hunger would be temporary. But over the weeks, the pangs in his stomach sharpened into something darker: dizziness, weight loss, confusion.

He has shed more than 40 kilograms. Eventually, when he could barely walk, his neighbours helped him reach Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp. What he found there wasn't relief. It was a mirror.

The hungry doctor

Mahmoud Saidam, a doctor at al-Awda hospital who greeted Abu Fadi, is in his early 30s. He appears healthy at first glance until he stands. His posture is stooped, his eyes are ringed with exhaustion, and his hands tremble when he tries to grip a pen.

"You're about to faint, but so am I. I haven't eaten in two days, just some tea and a biscuit," he told Abu Fadi gently.

Saidam volunteers at Al-Awda, one of the few remaining partially operational hospitals in the central Gaza Strip.

His own home in Nuseirat was destroyed in an airstrike, and he now sleeps in a tent near the hospital compound. He has not received a salary in months. Like nearly all medical professionals in Gaza, he stays out of moral duty.

"But duty doesn't feed you," he says. "When your body gives out, there’s nothing left to give."

To steady his shaking hands during examinations, he now leans against walls or tables. "I can't inject an intravenous solution without support," he says. "My muscles are too weak."

Mohammed Odwan, a journalist who arrived at Al-Awda to report on Gaza's growing hunger crisis, was documenting these scenes when he realised he had become a part of the story.

"I asked Abu Fadi how he was feeling. He looked at me, then asked if I had anything to eat," Owan recalled to The New Arab.

Odwan hesitated. "I didn't have anything. I hadn't eaten since the day before. My own children are crying in our tent every night, and I have no way to feed them," he told Abu Fadi.

That moment, a doctor too weak to heal, a patient too frail to survive, and a journalist too hungry to write, felt like a snapshot of something much larger: the collapse of Gaza's human infrastructure. Not just buildings and roads, but people, bodies, and dignity.

The three men, Abu Fadi, the doctor and the journalist, are among 2.3 million Palestinians now facing famine-like conditions in Gaza.

Once a densely populated territory known for its resilience and culture, Gaza is now gripped by mass starvation. Families that once shared bread now fight over scraps. Children that once played in alleyways now lie on makeshift mats, their limbs limp from malnutrition.

Toll of starvation

Doctors across Gaza report a growing list of medical symptoms tied to starvation: severe wasting, muscle atrophy, weakened immune systems, hair loss, and dangerously low blood sugar levels.

According to local doctors, children are particularly vulnerable. Some suffer from swollen limbs and faces, a sign of protein deficiency. Others enter states of delirium or lose consciousness entirely.

Pregnant women report fainting regularly. In shelters, hundreds of cases of collapse have been recorded, mostly among women and children, due to a lack of food, clean water, and basic medical care.

The health ministry in Gaza announced on Tuesday that at least 101 people, including 80 children, have died from starvation since March.

"We are seeing children with brittle bones […] They can't walk or cry any more. The sound of hunger has become silence," Mohammed Abu Selmeia, the director of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told TNA.

Hunger is no longer an emergency. It is the new status quo.

Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza on 2 March, following the breakdown of the first phase of the fragile ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

Since then, all border crossings have been closed or severely restricted, preventing the entry of food, medicine, and fuel.

International aid organisations, once Gaza's only lifeline, are unable to deliver supplies. Even the controversial US-run humanitarian zones have become scenes of death and despair.

According to the health ministry in Gaza, Israeli forces killed over 1,020 Palestinians while they were attempting to collect aid in these "zones" over the past four months.

"People are dying with ration cards in their hands […] the people are told to go to aid points, but when they do, they get bombed," Odwan said.

He said that he witnessed two children—ages five and eight—digging through hospital garbage for food. Their mother had sent them in hope.

He added that it was a catastrophic situation and "I cannot stand more tragedies around me."

So, he wrote later in his notebook: "We are beyond danger. This isn't survival. This is the death of humanity. Gaza is not dying from bombs alone; it is dying from hunger. And what's worse than hunger is the theft of dignity. To search for food in the rubbish, to beg for bread with your children crying beside you, that is the ultimate collapse."

He stopped writing. "There's nothing left to report. The story now lives in every empty stomach, every unanswered cry," he lamented.

International indifference

On Monday, the Agence France-Presse Journalists Syndicate (SDJ) issued a rare and urgent warning. Reporters working with the agency in Gaza, it said, are themselves starving.

"We have lost journalists in wars," the statement read. "We have seen them injured, kidnapped, and killed. But never before have we faced the risk of watching our colleagues die from starvation."

This statement came after reports that multiple media workers in Gaza have been hospitalised for malnutrition, with at least two collapsing during field assignments.

In many neighbourhoods, flour is now more expensive than gold. A single kilogram of wheat flour [if found] can sell for over $50, more than many families make in a month.

"There are no vegetables, no meat, no milk, even stale bread is a luxury now," Areej Emad, a mother of three in Deir al-Balah, told TNA.

"No one is spared. Not the elderly, not the children, not even the journalists," the 39-year-old mother of four said.

"We don't just want aid. We want the siege lifted. We want to live with dignity. We want to eat and be human again. That's all," the woman added.