Starvation is not a looming threat; it is a brutal, daily reality. Children cry themselves to sleep on an empty stomach. Parents break under the weight of helplessness, watching their sons and daughters grow thinner, weaker. Bread, once a basic staple, has become a luxury. Vegetables, milk, eggs have become unimaginable for most families. Hunger has overtaken war as the cruelest weapon.

In recent weeks, thousands of Palestinians have been killed or injured risking their lives to try to find food. My cousin, Yousef Ala’atal, just 14 years old, was among them. Hunger pushed him to seek food from an aid distribution site managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). He came back not only empty-handed, but with a bullet in his head, blood soaking his body, and lasting damage from the injury. Yousef asked his mother with a pain that a child’s heart cannot endure: “Am I going to stay like this?” After that question, silence overtook their family.

Children are the primary victims in this deliberate campaign of starvation; young ones can’t understand what it means that there is no food. Breaking their parents’ hearts with their hunger, older ones try to go to the GHF, which we refer to in Gaza as “death traps.” Many are killed, while others return injured, heartbroken, or sometimes find themselves detained.