GAZA, (PIC)
The Israeli genocidal war on Gaza continues on its 174th day, with all its brutality and oppression, offering the world a rich meal of oppression during its break fasting and suhoor, stained with the blood of children and women, and horrifying scenes of the war of starvation that has been etched into the frail bodies of Gaza’s children. Meanwhile, the Arab and Islamic world continues to stand idly by, despite all the resolutions that hold them accountable for the necessity of breaking the siege of starvation imposed on Gaza by force, especially after the new orders issued by the International Court of Justice regarding the entry of aid to Gaza, and before that, the UN Security Council’s decision to cease fire in Gaza.
“You cannot defeat Hamas, so you kill women and children.” With these words, a grieving Palestinian mother cries out to the world after witnessing her baby being killed in a treacherous Israeli airstrike. Her plea is directed at a world that stands by, watching the children of Gaza being exterminated in a genocide or an oppressive war of starvation.
And the grieving mother continues, with tears in her eyes, saying, “They’re killing children and women!” She then goes on to mentions the names of her daughters and their ages, young girls in the prime of their lives, and sends a message to the whole world, saying, “Allah will hold you accountable. History will curse you. Every day, we face a massacre.”
What preceded is one scene among thousands of repeated scenes that occur daily in an ongoing genocide that has been happening for more than six months. The majority of its victims are children who are gradually departing either through bombing and killing or through starvation, illness, and siege. Meanwhile, the unjust world stands in its best condition to offer a diagnostic description: “Gaza suffers from famine, The famine monster strikes millions in Gaza, The use of starvation as a weapon amounts to a war crime,” and thousands of other headlines that outwardly show sympathy with the people of Gaza but inwardly signify helplessness, betrayal, or collusion.
Medical sources announced on Thursday the death of a Palestinian child in the northern part of the Gaza Strip due to famine and the lack of available treatment resulting from the Israeli blockade.
The sources confirmed that a child died as a result of malnutrition, dehydration, and a shortage of medical supplies at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip. The sources did not disclose any further details about the deceased child.
And thus, the number of hunger victims in the Gaza Strip rises to 30 citizens, the majority of whom are children. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Thursday that approximately 1.7 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, half of whom are children, do not have sufficient access to water, food, fuel, and medicine.
The organization added in a post on its “X” platform account that the children of Gaza need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
The child Al-Najjar is a model of the tragedy of children in Gaza. With these words, the Palestinian Na’im Al-Najjar described his six-year-old son, Muhammad, who was full of movement and life before the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
But Muhammad’s movement came to a permanent halt on Thursday after he died as a result of malnutrition in hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, as the Israeli occupation forces obstructed the arrival of food aid, according to Anadolu Agency.
With grief, the heartbroken father looks at his child’s body lying on one of the beds at Kamal Adwan Hospital, staring at his innocent face and witnessing the suffering that malnutrition has left on his emaciated body.
The child’s body shows a sharp decline in weight, with the spine and feet bones clearly protruding, bearing witness to the brutality of hunger that gnaws at the souls of Palestinians in Gaza.
A short journey full of horrors. Mohammad’s journey with life was not long, but it was full of tragedies and horrors. During his short years, he lived a childhood deprived of its simplest rights, as he came into life under the suffocating siege imposed by Israel on Gaza since 2006.
Despite his young age, he experienced the horrors of four Israeli wars on the Strip in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023.
And this latest war, which has been continuing for six months, was the last thing he saw in this world, as hunger intensified due to the Israeli occupation army’s prevention of food aid, causing his death and leaving the world that received him under siege and bid farewell to him with hunger.
Through his mobile phone, the father, Na’im, 45, looks at pictures of his child playing and laughing, recalling those happy days he spent with him, while his eyes sparkle with tears of pain and separation.
Those pictures, which once documented the most beautiful moments, are now nothing but memories that evoke pain and sorrow after their owner disappeared forever.
Al-Najjar says to the Anadolu correspondent, “My child died due to the siege and lack of food in the northern Gaza Strip.”
He describes his son, Muhammad, as a “blooming flower” in the past, but today he is a “lifeless body on the bed with his bones protruding.”
And he adds, “What is happening in the Gaza Strip is a disgrace to Muslims,” asking with astonishment, “What did this child do to die of hunger?”
Al-Najjar also laments that “the child’s bones have become prominent due to hunger and malnutrition that we are experiencing in the northern Gaza Strip.”
On Thursday, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that 1.1 million people are experiencing severe food insecurity in the Gaza Strip, where Israel prevents the entry of aid.
The office affirmed in a post on the “X” platform that “there is no alternative to the distribution of food aid through land routes to be sufficient to save lives, especially in the northern areas of the Strip.”
It added, “But the barriers -imposed by Israel- are still in place, and time is running out.”
On March 16, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) stated that one-third of children under two years old in the northern Gaza Strip suffer from severe malnutrition, warning in a statement that “famine looms on the horizon.”
As a result of the war and Israeli restrictions that contradict international law, the residents of the Gaza Strip, especially Gaza and the northern governorates, are already trapped in the clutches of famine, amid a severe shortage of essential life supplies, especially with the presence of approximately two million displaced people.
