For years, Palestinian prisoners have waged hunger strikes inside Israeli jails, choosing to risk their lives to reclaim basic rights. These "battles of empty stomachs" were a form of deliberate, disciplined resistance, painful, powerful, and voluntary. Led by figures like Khader Adnan, whose 86-day fast ended in death and defiance, such protests stood as a symbol of human dignity confronting brute force. But today, Gaza itself has become a prison. And hunger is no longer chosen.

Across the devastated Strip, over two million Palestinians, children, the elderly, the sick, are being starved in silence. This is no protest. It is a policy. Gaza’s people are not striking for rights; they are clinging to life amid a blockade designed to erase their existence.

While prisoners once fasted to expose injustice, today’s Gazans are denied even the choice to resist. Infants scream in hunger, not knowing what protest means. Hospitals collapse. Aid is blocked. This is not a tactic of war. It is the war.

Yet even in this manufactured famine, the spirit of resistance endures. The same resilience that once fuelled hunger strikes behind bars now beats in the hearts of a besieged people. Gaza’s battle is no longer for concessions, it is for survival. And no regime, however cruel, can extinguish a people’s will to live. Empty stomachs may suffer, but they do not surrender.