CrossFireArabia
His birth into this world was meant to be a celebration for his parents and a source of joy for his family, who eagerly awaited the moment they could embrace him and bless their lives with his presence. They hoped to meet all his needs so that he could grow up healthy, like any other child in the world.
When Yahya came into this world, he was born in the disaster-stricken Gaza Strip. His arrival brought a moment of joy amid the surrounding tragedy, but it also marked the start of a relentless struggle to secure his most basic needs under deadly conditions.
Yahya was born in a city subjected to Israeli blockade for over 19 years, a blockade that has further intensified alongside the ongoing genocide since October 2023. Israel has enforced a systematic policy of starvation against the civilian population, allowing only limited quantities of food in rare instances, which are insufficient to meet the desperate needs of the starving population in the Gaza Strip.
Yahya’s mother collided with this deadly reality. Her infant, like many in the city, showed signs of debility from extreme hunger. Weakened by hunger herself, she rushed him to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, as he was suffering from fatigue caused by days of diarrhoea. There, she and his father learned he was severely malnourished, and the doctor said he must be placed under observation in the intensive care unit.
The facts of the matter are that Yahya reached this critical condition after going four days with nothing to eat but anise, which provides no nutritional value for a four-month-old infant. He did not starve by coincidence or due to negligence. Yahya’s parents knocked on every door in the city in search of milk or any nutritional supplements, but found nothing because of the tight Israeli blockade. Israel prevents the entry of even the most basic nutritional necessities for both children and adults, leaving them to starve to death in full view of a world that watches these atrocities unfold and remains silent.
Starvation did not give Yahya much time, and his small, frail body could not endure for long. He died after only four months of a life in which he knew nothing but suffering and pain. What once seemed an unlikely fantasy became a grim reality: Yahya died of starvation.
Describing his child’s body, Yahya’s father asked, “What is my child’s fault that he should die of hunger and the lack of children’s supplies in the Gaza Strip? What is his fault?” He continues, “Look how his body has wasted away; look how his skin has stuck to his bones!”
Yahya’s father carried his child’s body, crying out with a heart heavy with grief, sorrow, and pain: “We call on the entire world, and on anyone with a living conscience, mercy, and humanity, to look into the fate of our children who are dying for lack of milk and food.”
His mother wept bitterly as she recounted, “He hasn’t eaten anything for four days except anise and water because there was no milk or formula available. He was always putting his hand in his mouth because he was so hungry.”
The grieving family gathered around Yahya’s body, which lay colourless on the bed, his bones protruding and skin wrinkled. They wept as their joy turned into bereavement by circumstances too overwhelming to alter or improve.
Yahya was neither the first nor the only child to die in Gaza as a result of Israel’s systematic starvation policy. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, over 110 people, mostly children, have died from starvation and malnutrition.
Since last March, when Israel reimposed severe measures on the Gaza Strip, approximately 90 children have died from starvation, which continues to worsen. Increasing numbers of people of all ages are arriving at hospitals in states of extreme exhaustion and fatigue, with some collapsing from severe hunger and malnutrition.
During Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly stated that the assault is not merely Israel’s war, but a “clash between barbarism and civilisation”that extends beyond the fight against terrorism.
Is it truly a merit of the ‘civilised world’ to starve children and adults to death? Or to enable such starvation by turning a blind eye to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, providing it with every justification to continue? Are the vulnerable, starving-to-death victims in Gaza ‘barbaric’ and therefore deserve to be wiped out?
In the besieged Gaza Strip, approximately 650,000 children are at risk of starvation unless the world acts urgently to halt the genocide, lift the suffocating blockade imposed on civilians, and use all available tools to save what remains after over 21 months of comprehensive and systematic targeting of every aspect of life in the enclave, and the deliberate destruction of society in its entirety.
Death by starvation should never be a common sight in hospital corridors, morgues, or cemeteries. Yet, in Gaza, its chilling spectre now looms constantly over everyone as famine deepens and the blockade, which Israel has tightened since 2 March, continues.
Since late May, Israel, with US support, has imposed a sham aid mechanism that, once put into operation, has proven to be a new killing ground and a death trap. A US-backed foundation places limited food boxes for thousands of starving people in dangerous military zones, while the Israeli army kills them in cold blood as they approach. More than a thousand starving people have since been killed, unprovoked and without any reason or even a pretence of justification.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip no longer have any means of escape from the conditions that have converged to destroy and erase them. With empty stomachs and frail bodies, they stand alone against a vast military arsenal designed for warfare against massive armies, not defenceless civilians, while no one is intervening to end this slaughter.
