OCTOBER 7 marks two years since a daring Hamas raid, which sparked Israel’s most brutal campaign against Palestinians in recent memory. Over the past couple of years, any support that Israel may have had in its campaign against Palestinians has all but evaporated, with the dire humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave shaking all but the most heartless to their core. The plight of Gaza’s bleeding and hungry masses has prompted many Western nations, including Britain, France and Canada, to recognise Palestinian statehood. But with access to aid remaining squarely under the thumb of Tel Aviv, war-ravaged Palestinians must fight to survive, with each passing day, each scant meal an expression of resistance against a Goliath-like oppressor. This is the story of half a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip — all of whom have been stripped of food, water, shelter, dignity and a future — that started on Oct 7, 2023.

What do the people of Gaza get to eat?

Meals in Gaza are no longer about nutrition or flavour; most families survive on one meal a day.

As per the recent Integrated Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, at least 1 in 5 households in the enclave are facing an extreme shortage in their consumption of food, roughly 1 in 3 children or more are acutely malnourished, and at least 2 in every 10,000 people are dying daily because of outright starvation or the combination of malnutrition and disease.

“Imagine that 99 per cent of people here have not eaten a meal containing meat or eggs in over a year or six months,” Khalil Abu Shama, a human rights defender in Gaza, told Dawn.com. His family is very much a part of this percentage.

Shama’s son, Mohammed, especially requires the nutrients that have eluded the enclave during the 24-month-long war. He fractured his right leg during the Israeli bombing of the beachfront Al-Baqa cafe in Gaza City on June 30.

“He needs nutrients, like meat and eggs, to recover and walk again,” the father said. “But we struggle to provide him with even basic food. The available food consists mainly of canned goods such as fava and kidney beans, peas, some bread, cheese, and a very limited amount of vegetables,” he rued.

The IPC further reported that in the Gaza governorate, 15pc of households said they have resorted to scavenging through bins for food, adding that at certain points over the past 23 months, people were forced to eat leaves to survive, or scraps that even rats wouldn’t want to eat.

“Breakfast is often a cup of water and, if you are lucky, a piece of stale bread,” recalls Dr Wesam Amir, a Palestinian medic.

“The main meal of the day is usually a thin rice soup made with lots of water and a handful of grains. On other days, it is plain rice with a pinch of salt.” A dish like eggplant stew, he continued, has become a luxury — unseen in months.

Even if aid trucks do manage to cross the rigidly guarded Gaza border, what they carry is rarely ever sufficient to meet the needs of Palestinians. “The goods that come through the crossing are very limited,” said Nour Abu Shammala, a human rights activist and writer in the enclave. “For example, meat of any kind is not allowed in. The reliance remains on canned foods, legumes and cheese.”

What happens to the body when it is starving?

By definition, starvation is suffering or death caused by the lack of food. It occurs over three stages: the first starts as early as a skipped meal, the second comes with a prolonged period of fasting when the body relies on stored fats for energy, and the third and fatal stage is when these fat reserves are depleted. The body consequently turns to bones and muscles for energy.

According to Dr Fyeza Jehan, professor and chairperson of the Department of Paediatrics & Child Health at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, chronic starvation is like the body cannibalising itself.

Without access to food, the stomach contracts, leading to severe hunger pangs that occur as the body utilises all of its glycogen stores — the stored form of glucose, primarily located in the liver and skeletal muscles. In adults, the process can last 48 hours, while in children, it is accelerated and can last up to a day.

After two to three days without food, the hunger vanishes, leaving the body behind in what is called the survival mode, and as it happens, the body goes frigid. “It feels like there is no life left in you,” Dr Fyeza said. In a child, this can manifest as a boy or a girl with dull eyes who doesn’t play or talk anymore. For toddlers or infants, their cries dim or just stop altogether.

When weeks pass the same way, these effects worsen in the form of lost weight, thin skin, shrinking muscles, hallucinations and a weak immune system in adults. In these circumstances, even a common cold can lead to severe infections.

In children, prolonged starvation eats up all the fat and protein in their bodies, leaving them with oedema — swelling caused by excess fluid trapped in the body’s tissues, often affecting the legs, ankles, and feet. Physically, the child loses all colour. At this stage, any infection can cause death.

As months pass without adequate food, a starving adult may still be able to survive. But they are merely a shadow of their real selves; all that remains are bones and skin. Eventually, the heart and liver begin to fail, and the body’s tissues break down. Death is not far away.

Children, on the other hand, rarely ever reach this stage. Their fragile bodies rapidly deteriorate, becoming susceptible to diarrhoea, pneumonia and sepsis. At three weeks, the process of starvation reaches its catastrophic phase, where children get lesions on their eyes and go blind, their hair falls out, and their organs shut down.

How Israel starves Gaza?

After Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, Israel placed restrictions on everything entering the enclave through crossings controlled by its military. “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,” a senior adviser said back then.

Henceforth, Israel began to carefully calculate the amount of food Gaza precisely needs, allowing just that into the enclave. According to files released by the defence ministry two years later, the food calculation had applied the average daily requirement of 2,279 calories per person. An average adult needs 2,500kcal a day.

Even before October 2023, 1.2 million of Gaza’s 2.2 million population was estimated to be facing acute food insecurity, and over 80pc were reliant on humanitarian aid, the Human Rights Watch noted in a report.

Today, Cogat, the Israeli agency that controls aid shipments to Gaza, is doing exactly that. The agency’s records show that 352,536 tonnes of aid were allowed into the enclave between March and September, which is insufficient to meet the starving territory’s needs. As per the World Food Programme, Gaza needs more than 62,000 metric tonnes of food every month to cover basic humanitarian needs for its population.

Even if every bag of flour or can of beans were handed out equitably, starvation and hunger in Gaza were inevitable.

In March and April, after Israel resumed attacks on Gaza following the ceasefire violation, the enclave was under a total siege, with no food allowed to enter. By May, Netanyahu succumbed to growing international pressure and allowed only a trickle of aid to enter the Strip, which didn’t prevent but delayed the famine.

Between May and July, a meagre 116,030 tonnes of aid entered Gaza; one-third of the required food never reached the territory. By August, a famine was officially declared. And all of this happened as hundreds of trucks, carrying humanitarian aid sufficient to feed Gaza for three months, waited a few kilometres from the Strip, awaiting Israeli approvals.

“Just outside Gaza, in warehouses — and even within the territory itself — tonnes of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organisations blocked from accessing or delivering them,” said Rachael Cummings of Save the Children.

Like a hawk eyeing its prey, Israel has tightly gripped onto the aid entering Gaza ever since the beginning of the war. A recent analysis of food availability, conducted by the IPC, showed that from October 2023 to December 2024, there was a considerable caloric deficit in the enclave, as only 1,640kcals per person were available every day. By May 2025, this number fell to just 1,400 calories or “67pc of what a human body needs to survive”.

“Before the war, Gaza was receiving about 500 aid trucks daily,” Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson of the Palestine Red Crescent, told Dawn.com. “But the trucks entering the enclave now are in mere dozens, which does not even scratch the surface of its needs.”

“It is a drop in the ocean.”

The GHF trap

Dr Sami Alastal, a writer and political analyst based in Gaza, has lost 20 kilos since October 7, 2023. “We do not have any food, and if it is available, it is in very small quantities,” he rued. Yet, he refuses to visit the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution centres.

“It is a scam,” he said. “It is a killing and torture squad disguised as a humanitarian organisation.”

Dr Sami’s sentiments were echoed by a majority of Palestinians Dawn.com spoke to, who despite the catastrophic levels of starvation and hunger in the enclave refuse to visit the GHF-run stations. They see the distribution process as “humiliating to our humanity and dignity”.

The journey begins hours before the aid site is set to open, often in early morning hours. The aid seekers are only allowed to bring their vehicles up to a certain point, which is at least 1.5km (a 12-20 minute walk) from the centre, and then cover the remaining distance on foot. This means that once — and if — they manage to secure sacks or boxes of aid, it must be carried back on foot. As the crowd keeps getting bigger, everyone is glued to their spots — unflinching for fear of losing out — waiting for the go-ahead signal, usually the buzz of drones.

As soon as the signal rings through the now flattened Gaza, the walk begins, and, with that, the fear of death fills the air.

A detailed version of this report can be accessed on Dawn.com

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2025