Opinion: To be killed by an air strike is easier than watching your children starve

Middle East Eye

a day ago

Amid a man-made famine, starving Palestinian families face the unthinkable: children and the elderly begging for bread, parents praying for death and a world watching in silence, says Ahmed Aziz.
Each morning that dawns over the Gaza Strip brings nothing but more hunger, more collapse and a deepening sense of despair.
For more than three months, over two million people have endured an unprecedented catastrophe - a true famine in every sense of the word - amid a merciless war, an unrelenting siege and an unforgivable international silence.
Famine in Gaza has become a daily reality. It is no longer merely a sensation of deprivation; it manifests in the sight of people collapsing in the streets from sheer exhaustion.
Children, women, the elderly - no one is spared. We have witnessed, with our own eyes, bodies slumping on the pavement and lives lost outside the ruins of bakeries or at aid distribution points that never deliver.
The price of a kilogram of flour has surpassed $30, while a kilogram of sugar now costs over $130. Most foods are either entirely unavailable or so scarce as to seem imaginary.
The tragedy is not just in the prices, but in the absence of essential goods. People are not simply refusing to buy; there is nothing left to buy.
The mother of 14-year-old Palestinian Abdul Jawad al-Ghalban, who died of starvation, mourns beside his shrouded body at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on 22 July 2025 (AFP)