Every day, mothers in Gaza send desperate messages to Oxfam begging for even a scrap of food to feed their children. Aid workers describe these pleas as heartbreaking, and growing in urgency as famine looms over the besieged enclave.

Oxfam reports that this is no accident, but part of a calculated policy by Israeli authorities: a siege designed to starve civilians. Even aid teams and medical personnel in Gaza are not spared. With water and sanitation infrastructure in ruins, disease is spreading rapidly . Parents have resorted to feeding infants water in lieu of milk or formula, while older children waste away from malnutrition .

Agricultural lands have been destroyed and survivors have been displaced repeatedly, leaving most Gazans without homes and sheltering in uninhabitable tents. The few aid convoys that arrive rarely reach the people who need them most. Many deaths occur not from bombs, but from hunger and dehydration: recent reports cite hundreds dying daily from starvation-related causes, including dozens of children.

Eyewitness accounts from displacement camps describe a terrifying scramble at distribution points overseen by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by Israeli and US authorities. Palestinians tell of gunfire, chaos, and dozens of civilians shot, sometimes fatally, while trying to reach food. Many describe it as a “death journey”.

Oxfam and more than 240 NGOs have condemned the shift from UN‑led relief to a militarised aid distribution model, calling it a form of collective punishment that deliberately endangers the most vulnerable. They insist only a full humanitarian corridor, coordinated by trusted agencies and free from military interference, can prevent widespread famine.

As the world watches, Gaza’s mothers continue to raise their voices, advocating not just for food, but for dignity, basic human rights, and an end to suffering imposed by siege and starvation.