In Gaza, where food is now more scarce than hope, the death of baby Sana’a Al-Lahham has laid bare the cruel reality of Israel’s ongoing siege: a deliberate strangulation of life itself. Denied baby formula, medicine, and basic nutrition, infants like Sana’a are not just victims of war, they are casualties of calculated starvation.

This is not an isolated tragedy. Medical teams across the Strip report a relentless stream of children arriving at hospitals, gaunt and unresponsive, their bodies wasting away under the weight of hunger. The few remaining healthcare workers, stripped of resources, are left to watch helplessly as lives slip through their fingers. They are no longer treating diseases, they are fighting a famine manufactured by blockade.

International organisations, including the UN, have sounded alarm after alarm. One in ten children examined by UNRWA shows signs of acute malnutrition, but the numbers barely capture the despair on the ground. As aid convoys are blocked at the borders and bureaucratic hurdles stall even the most basic relief, Gaza’s youngest are perishing not from illness or conflict, but from emptiness.

Mothers are starving too, unable to breastfeed, unable to comfort their babies with even the smallest relief. The silence of international powers, and the complicity of those who continue to support the siege, echoes louder than any bomb.

Sana’a's tiny grave is not just a resting place. It is a monument to a global failure, and a reminder that in Gaza, starvation is not a side effect of war, it is the weapon.