In Gaza, hunger is no longer a looming threat—it is a reality etched into the bones of its children. With limbs as thin as reeds and bodies too frail to hold, more than a million children now face life-threatening malnutrition amid a blockade that has turned food into a weapon of war.

Since 2 March, the Israeli occupation has sealed Gaza’s crossings, cutting off vital humanitarian aid, food, fuel, and medicine to the besieged enclave. As the genocide drags into its seventeenth month, the entire population—2.4 million people—are pushed deeper into starvation. Children, women, the sick, and the elderly are the hardest hit.

Seven-year-old Mai lies motionless in a hospital bed, her body starved of protein, her feet swollen from deficiency. “She used to play, she used to eat,” her mother says. “Now she can’t stand, can’t even lift her head.” Across Gaza, hospitals are flooded with children like Mai, whose diets have been reduced to scraps of rice, lentils, or a single tomato—if anything at all.

Three-year-old Elyas has grown weaker since food stopped reaching Deir al-Balah. Six-year-old Farah, barely 7kg in weight, vomits every bite she eats. Her mother’s voice trembles as she describes her child being mocked for her visible ribs: “She already has a hernia and has been through multiple surgeries. What more can a child endure?”

Doctors warn that hundreds of children now suffer from severe malnutrition. “If the siege continues, more will die,” says Dr. Jamil Suleiman of Al-Rantisi Hospital. His wards overflow with cases of anaemia, mineral deficiency, and stunted development—symptoms of a man-made famine.

According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, over a million children in Gaza are now acutely malnourished. Meanwhile, the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s farms and food infrastructure has wiped out local production, deepening the crisis.

In Gaza, starvation is not a consequence of war—it is a policy. And its smallest victims are wasting away in silence.