“We are starving”: the agony of children in Gaza and the denlectrition that evokes the extermination camps (strong images)

The voice of despair rises from Gaza Stripcrossing the boundaries, with a unique cry: “We are Starving“.

Here you die, and you die of hunger. For days, more than three quarters of the population of the strip has nothing to eat, neither drinking water nor access to medical care. The stocks are over. Even those hidden in the months passed by Hamas are now reduced to crumbs.

And requests for help are not listening. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu He confirmed the total blockade of humanitarian aid, subordinating it at the beginning of a new military offensive. The operation, “The wagons of Gedeone“, Which for now remains a threat suspended over time, basically provides for three steps: the military escalation in the strip, the permanent presence of Israeli forces and the forced displacement of the population.

Meanwhile, as the journalist said Hassan Isdodi“We die of hardship. But perhaps this is the goal: to reduce the population again, so that then to deport us it will be easier”.

The total siege: two months without help

According to data from the United Nations Office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA), from 7 October 2023 there are more than 168,000 victims, over 51,000 dead and almost 117,000 injured. Between March 18 and April 22, 1,691 Palestinians were killed. A third were children, a fifth women.

From March 2, the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial goods to Gaza is totally blocked. Today, here the denutrition is no longer a risk but a daily reality. They confirm the beyond 66,000 children who are starvingas well as 92% of infants and pregnant women who do not have access to adequate diet. Community canteens, where only one meal per day is expected for hours, are the only one of salvation for those who have survived the attacks and forced displacements.

“I don’t want my son to die of hunger,” said a centered parent ad Amnesty. But today also wanting survival is a luxury.

To this is added the problem of thirst. According to the United Nations, 91% of Gaza families pay in conditions of water insecurity. The estimated loss of water, due to the damage to the distribution network, is wandering. The impacts on public health are devastating. The civilians are forced to ration this primary asset, renouncing personal hygiene and thus putting their health at risk to survive.

A silent, but systematic crime

Second Ahmed Moorresearcher at the Foundation for Peace in the Middle East, “Israel is hungry Gaza. It is an economic, silent and brutal way to kill”. A strategy that leaves no visible traces like bombs, but slowly destroys. And definitively.

“Hunger is a slow and painful death,” he explained to Guadian Nancy Zuckerfrom the Duke University. After consuming fats, the body begins to affect the muscles and vital organs. “The heart itself is consumed,” he added. An image all too real for a Gaza that no longer has forces or beats.

Yet the internal silence silence prevails. Also the attack on Freedom Flotilla – a civil mission led by activists and figures such as Greta Thunberg To bring food to Gaza – it was ignored. On May 1st, their boat was affected and put out of use by drones. No official reaction.

Not a side effect, but a plan

Hunger in Gaza is not a side effect of the war but a deliberate strategy. The International Criminal Courtwho issued arrest mandates for Netanyahu and the former defense minister Yoav Gallantheld responsible for the use of hunger as a method of war.

The words of the director of Amnesty International, Erika Guevara RosasThey weigh like boulders: “Israel has transformed Gaza into a hell of death and destruction, without stopping and without mercy”.

And while the Israeli army prepares a new invasion and new deportations to the devastated South of the Striscia, the rest of the world remains to look at.

Meanwhile, Mohamed MustafaPalestinian Prime Minister, said the Gaza Striscia area of ​​famineinviting the entire United Nations system to treat Gaza as such and to immediately activate its mechanisms, asking the international community to implement the United Nations resolutions that prohibit the use of hunger as a weapon of war.