Yahya al-Masri is a Palestinian writer and linguist in Gaza.
Starvation is a slow death. But in Gaza, it is not just empty stomachs, but the conditions that come with them that compound Palestinian suffering today. Those starving must also endure displacement, confinement, bombardment, chaos and disease in a place that we once called home, but that now feels like a dystopian, post-apocalyptic wasteland brutalized by an Israel-induced famine.
The United Nations once operated about 400 food distribution sites across Gaza, which also struggled to meet the Strip's needs. Now, the so-called Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by Israel and the United States, runs only four. Aid is nowhere near enough to sustain the population, whether through the GHF, airdrops or the few trucks that make it through the border crossings and are safely facilitated for movement by Israeli officials once in Gaza.
As U.N.-backed food security experts warn, "The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza." The United Nations reports that over 2,000 starving Palestinians have been killed while seeking food—killings indisputably the result of Israeli military assaults on aid seekers. Local health authorities confirm that over 270 have died from hunger since Oct. 7, 2023. Most of the victims are children, as half of Gaza's population is under the age of 18.
This brutal scenario existed before the Aug. 22 U.N. confirmation of famine in Gaza. Humanitarians described it as the first officially declared famine in the Middle East, caused not by drought or natural disaster but by systematic obstruction of aid and destruction of civilian life. United Nations relief chief Tom Fletcher called it "a famine within a few hundred meters of food in a fertile land," underscoring the bitter reality that starvation here is manmade. More than half a million people are already in catastrophic hunger, with children bearing the heaviest toll.
Who set these people against each other? Who designed these fatal hunger games? If this is not the social re-engineering of a people who have always stood hand in hand against injustice, then what is it?
- Yahya Al Masri
As my family still has some lentils, we have avoided what my father calls the GHF's "humiliating death-trap sites." As he says, "Going there means accepting the formula: death in exchange for a gum."
Secretly, I decided to go anyway.
I carried a backpack with a single bottle of water and made my way to one of the sites. From a mile away, I witnessed the unspeakable; horrors unseen in the most terrifying of movies: the expressionless faces of the dying, with bodies pressed against each other amid waves of desperation. The scene was visible from far off, yet I could not take another step forward. The crowd was packed.
At the sites, I have not seen aid. Rather, I have experienced indiscriminate shooting. I saw bodies lying on the ground, with no one able to rescue them. People were forced to step over them out of fear that they would be next. I watched the hungry turn against each other—fighting and looting—because survival has become a brutal contest. I could not help the most vulnerable—children, women, the elderly and the disabled—who suffer the most but lack the strength to secure aid in this deadly competition for survival.
I turned away, but the images stayed with me.
Who set these people against each other? Who designed these fatal hunger games? If this is not the social re-engineering of a people who have always stood hand in hand against injustice, then what is it?
Yes, we hear the planes during airdrop missions. But in Al Mawasi, where my family and I have been displaced, nothing falls from the sky. This area, constituting only 25% of the Gaza Strip, is dense with tents—thousands of families crammed into every available space. It is fatal to drop aid here.
But what does that mean? Have I lost my right to eat? Should we go to active war zones—the other 75% of Gaza's territory—to collect food, knowing that such a journey is an invitation to die?
I write from within this cruel reality. I am starved, displaced, confined, traumatized and terrorized by relentless bombardment. I live in chaos so thick that I am afraid to walk alone. I cannot imagine a graver suffering. I cannot imagine the world tolerating such a reality if it were happening anywhere else.
- Yahya Al Masri
Hunger in the Strip is not silent; it has a face, a smell and a sound. It is the groaning of empty stomachs in the night. It is the tremor in an old man's hand as he breaks a stale piece of bread into four inadequate morsels for his grandchildren. It is the hoarse voice of my aunt's son, Bilal, who called us days ago to ask if we could lend him a bag of flour.
We did not have a single grain of wheat to share.
Later, we called his father to check on Bilal. His father told us that Bilal's feet had been crushed under an aid truck in a desperate attempt to get flour. The family rushed him to Al Shifa Hospital, but the doctors said they had no bone cement to replace what was lost.
Bilal is a 30-year-old married father. His hunger drove him to the aid site. Now, that desperation leaves him maimed for life.
My nephew Adam is just over a year old. When I went to check on him, I was horrified to see his ribs cutting through his skin. Just months ago, he was well-fed. In desperation, I searched everywhere for nutritional supplements but found none. All I could manage to do was to buy him a few sweet potatoes.
The liquidity crisis in Gaza magnifies starvation. With banks shuttered, ATMs silent and border crossings closed, physical currency has all but vanished. In other times, if a family had nothing to eat but some cash in hand, they could still find a way to stay alive.
Now, even that option is no longer available.
Most Palestinians once relied on worn, damaged Israeli shekel bills to make essential purchases in the very few makeshift markets that remained, but today, those bills are useless. There is simply no money moving. Without cash, even the few goods available become unreachable, and hunger deepens. Starvation is no longer only about the absence of food, but the deliberate removal of the means to obtain it.
I write from within this cruel reality. I am starved, displaced, confined, traumatized and terrorized by relentless bombardment. I live in chaos so thick that I am afraid to walk alone. I cannot imagine a graver suffering. I cannot imagine the world tolerating such a reality if it were happening anywhere else.
Starvation is more than the absence of food. It is the humiliation of fighting for crumbs at the expense of a neighbor, let alone family. It is the choice between risking death at a distribution site and certain death from hunger at home. It is hearing planes overhead and knowing the food will never reach you.
Stripping away the numbers, the politics and the headlines, a simple truth remains: We are people—we need to eat. We are parents who want to feed our children. We are human beings who should not have to die for bread.
We demand dignity. We demand protection. We demand action.
