Gaza is being strangled. With UN warehouses now emptied of food, fuel, and medicine, the besieged enclave has entered a phase of starvation that international agencies can no longer cushion or conceal. For over five weeks, the Israeli blockade has prevented even the most basic humanitarian aid from reaching over two million Palestinians, leaving families to endure hunger, illness, and fear in the ruins of their homes.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have all confirmed the total collapse of their supply chains inside the Strip. What remains is desperation. A WFP official admitted that food security in Gaza is now “almost non-existent”, while UNRWA has warned that its flour supplies will run out within days. According to senior UN sources, Gaza is no longer on the edge of famine — it is already there.

This crisis is not the result of a natural disaster. It is the product of man-made restrictions, enforced by Israel and largely overlooked by a silent international community. The blockade, tightened in tandem with ongoing military assaults since mid-March, has devastated infrastructure, wiped out neighbourhoods, and forced hundreds of thousands into starvation. The majority of the dead are women and children — their lives cut short not only by bombs, but by the slow, brutal siege that chokes the Strip.

Palestinians in Gaza are not asking for miracles — they are asking for food, for medicine, for fuel to keep hospitals running. They are asking for life. Yet the world watches as trucks of aid wait at sealed borders, and as the calls of human rights advocates go unanswered. Without immediate international pressure to open Gaza’s crossings and deliver aid, this man-made famine will become one of the darkest chapters in modern history.

Still, amidst hunger and grief, the people of Gaza show a resilience the world does not deserve. But even the strongest cannot survive on hope alone.