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Mother-of-three tells LBC of starvation ‘hell’ in designated ‘safe zone’ in Gaza

Suha Shaath has been living in a tent in the designated “safe area” of Al-Mawasi for the past two months, after her home was destroyed earlier in the war. Picture: LBC

By Frankie Elliott

A Palestinian mother has told LBC that Gaza is currently a “piece of hell” where residents are dying a “slow death” through hunger.

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Suha Shaath has been living in a tent in the designated “safe area” of Al-Mawasi for the last two months, after her home in Khan Yunis, a city in southern Gaza, was destroyed earlier in the war.

As the humanitarian crisis deepens in the region, the mother-of-three says her family have been living off one meal a day for months, usually consisting of canned vegetables and rice.

“We have witnessed with our own eyes our dreams and years swept away like dust in the wind,” she said.

“The food supply is just canned food – with some pasta, some rice. We have no vegetables or fruit. No fish, poultry or meat. No sugar for cups of tea.

“It is very difficult. We can only take one meal a day and if we have any bread, we have to share it between all the family members.”

Read more: Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy arrives in Italy for Gaza truce talks

Read more: Further 10 people die of malnutrition in Gaza as aid agencies warn of mass starvation

As the humanitarian crisis deepens in the region, the mother-of-three says her family have been living off one meal a day for months, usually consisting of canned vegetables and rice. Picture: LBC

More than 100 International aid organisations and human rights groups have now warned of mass starvation in Gaza, after the Hamas-run health ministry said another two people had died of malnutrition in the last 24 hours.

These latest deaths brought the total number of malnutrition-related fatalities to 113 since October 7, 2023.

The territory’s health ministry also said at least 67 people waiting for UN aid lorries in northern Gaza last Saturday were killed by the Israeli military.

Ms Shaath, who works in Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said she was avoiding using the aid distribution points because of the “risk of being shot by Israeli soldiers”.

She also refuses to let her sons – Ameer (19) and Amad (16) – collect aid due to the “violence” often seen in these areas.

More than 100 International aid organisations and human rights groups have now warned of mass starvation in Gaza. Picture: Getty

“Parents are having to choose whether to feed themselves or their children. Which one would you choose? Either you die from hunger or from the bullets from IDF,” she said.

“I cannot get any food from this delivery point because I am afraid for my sons. They are not suitable for this action. To go and get food you have to be prepared for violence and I don’t want to send my children to that.

“Many youths and men are killed by the fire of whom is working there. Many of the people who reach Nasser complex [hospital] were living at tents at Al-Mawasi who tried to get aid.

“The area [Al-Mawasi] is meant to be safe, but currently nowhere Is no safe currently in Gaza.”

Ms Shaath, who also has a 10-year-old girl called Tolay, has been displaced multiple times with her family since the war began.

She says she has lost 10kg in the last two years and feels there is no escape from “this hell… except through death”.

Ben Kentish questions Israeli MP on civilian deaths in Gaza

She added: “I think all Gazans now have lost their desire. Mixed emotions of pain, horror, sorrow, betrayal and a complete loss of life.

“Nothing can ever make up for what we have endured. Gaza is a piece of hell with no escape – except through death.”

Her words come as BBC News and three other top news agencies expressed their concern for journalists in Gaza, claiming reporters face starvation and “the same dire circumstances as those they are covering”.

Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children and Oxfam also said their colleagues and the people they serve were “wasting away”.

Israel says 150 food trucks were collected by the UN and other agencies inside Gaza on Wednesday.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denied targeting civilians queueing for aid and said it “fired warning shots” on Saturday in northern Gaza to remove “an immediate threat”.

It also disputed the number of reported deaths.

Cogat – a branch of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that deals with logistical coordination between Israel and the Gaza Strip – also announced that 70 food trucks were unloaded at aid crossings that day.

It added that another 800 food trucks were waiting to be picked up, but the UN and other aid organisations blamed the Israeli government for obstructing aid distribution.

The UN humanitarian agency Ocha warned earlier this week that the amount of aid reaching Gaza is “a trickle” compared to what is urgently needed.

Danny Danon, with the Israeli ambassador to the UN, accused Ocha of bias and claimed there was “clear evidence of Hamas affiliations within Ocha’s ranks”.

Israel launched its attacks in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and led to 251 others being taken hostage.

The IDF’s attacks have since killed more than 58,895 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

These figures are quoted by the UN and others as the most reliable source of statistics available on casualties.

Every day is filled with anxiety and exhaustion. The constant Israeli bombardment, lack of sleep and search for food are overwhelming for Gaza’s displaced population.

“The day revolves around thinking about where to find food for my family,” said Raed al-Athamna, a displaced Palestinian father in Gaza City, who spoke to DW by phone since foreign journalists are not allowed in Gaza.

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“There is nothing to eat. There is no bread, as I cannot afford to buy flour. It is too expensive. Today, we had some lentils for the kids and my mom, but tomorrow, I don’t know.”

Al-Athamna, who previously worked as a driver for foreign journalists in Gaza, said he no longer had the words to describe the situation. “There are Israeli airstrikes and shelling all the time. I’ve seen people fainting in the streets because they haven’t eaten.

Social media is full of videos of people just collapsing.”

DW last spoke with al-Athamna in May, just after the Israeli government first permitted some aid trucks into Gaza after a nearly three-month blockade. At the time, he thought the situation could not get any worse for Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

Two months on, al-Athamna described the situation as “really bad. You cannot find a piece of bread, it is a very difficult situation.

I am here with my grandkids, they are crying, they keep saying: ‘We want a piece of bread.’ And if you cannot give them anything, they don’t understand. This breaks your heart.”

International organizations sound alarm

International health and aid organizations have repeatedly sounded the alarm over conditions and the lack of vital supplies in Gaza during the 21-month conflict.

According to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, almost 88% of Gaza is now under evacuation orders or designated as military zones.

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These areas include most of Gaza’s agricultural land, concentrating the displaced population in increasingly limited space and complicating humanitarian access.

W

orld Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday that a large proportion of Gaza’s population was starving. “I don’t know what you would call it other than mass starvation, it’s man-made and that’s very clear,” he stated.

Ross Smith, emergency director at the World Food Program (WFP), said Monday that Gaza’s hunger crisis “has reached new and astonishing levels of desperation.” He said that “a third of the population are not eating for multiple days in a row, this includes women and children.”

On Thursday, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported that so far in July 48 Palestinians had died from malnutrition, with 59 dying of malnutrition since the start of 2025.

That number is up from 50 in 2024 and four in 2023 when Israel started its war against the Hamas militant group in Gaza following Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Israeli officials have disputed such claims, characterizing them as propaganda.

Food prices surge amid scarcity

Eyad Amin, a father of three young children who has found shelter in Gaza City, is desperate. “Food is unavailable, and when it is available, it’s very expensive,” the 43-year-old told DW.

Amin, a former stationery shop owner, managed to buy some vegetables but at prices most people cannot afford. “Today I bought two potatoes, two tomatoes, and a few green peppers. These simple items cost me 140 shekels [around €36/$42],” he said.

Like most Palestinians in Gaza, Amin has no income but gets assistance from relatives abroad. Those without such support face greater hardship.

Sherine Qamar, a mother of two children in northern Gaza City, relies on support from her parents.

“We practically live without food, and what we eat is just to survive. We have all lost a lot of weight, I personally lost 15 kilograms [33 pounds] in the last four months,” she said.

Medical care presents additional challenges. “When my children get sick due to malnutrition or things like the flu, we cannot find any medicine in hospitals or pharmacies, and we have to wait long hours at international organizations and hospitals to obtain painkillers,” Qamar told DW.

Deliveries fall far short: aid groups

In March, Israeli authorities closed Gaza’s crossing, citing concerns about aid diversion by Hamas. These restrictions were partially lifted in May, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming Israel was acting to prevent a “starvation crisis.”

Aid distribution shifted from established UN mechanisms to the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which distributes pre-packed food boxes from three locations in Israeli-controlled militarized zones.

Currently, an average of 28 aid trucks enter Gaza daily, according to UN figures, which aid organizations have said falls short of population needs.

MedGlobal, a US-based NGO operating nutrition centres in Gaza, reported that “cases of acutely malnourished children have nearly tripled” since the beginning of July.

“There is no more buffer,” John Kahler, MedGlobal co-founder and a pediatrician who worked in Gaza last year, told DW.

“When you get a virus suddenly you have diarrhea, that will push you over the edge because you don’t have any physical reserve left.”

“The terrible thing in Gaza,” he added, “is that everyone knows that food supplies are just 10 kilometres [6.2 miles] away.”

Looting, casualties increase as scarcity worsens

The coordinator of the government activities in the territories (COGAT), Israel’s military body overseeing crossings, told DW that “950 aid trucks are waiting on the Palestinian side” of entry points.

The body claimed that Israel does not restrict humanitarian aid to Gaza, but did acknowledge “significant challenges in collecting trucks on the Gaza side.”

The UN has repeatedly said the backlog at the crossing was due to multiple difficulties, among them the coordination with the Israeli military. Trucks cannot move without their authorization, to ensure they can travel relatively safely from the crossing to the warehouse and distribution centres without coming under fire from the Israeli military.

Due to supply scarcity, looting has increased. On Sunday, a WFP convoy came under fire, resulting in casualties among people waiting for aid. In recent weeks, at least 875 people have been killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid at one of the distribution points by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation or while waiting for UN trucks carrying supplies, according to the UN.

“I only went one time to get aid. But I don’t go anymore.

If you are hit or injured, no one helps you. You will just die there. There is nothing in the hospitals to help you either,” said al-Athamna from Gaza City.

He added that the broader situation has become impossible. “You either die being bombed, or you die not having food. They keep talking to politicians about a ceasefire, but nothing happens, and things only get worse. What are we supposed to do?”

A leading global authority on famine on Monday accused Israel of orchestrating a carefully planned campaign of mass starvation in the Gaza Strip, remarks that came amid a steadily rising death toll from malnutrition caused by the 654-day U.S.-backed Israeli siege and obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.

“I’ve been working on this topic for more than four decades, and there is no case since World War II of starvation that is being so minutely designed and controlled,” Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Al Jazeera.

“This is preventable starvation. It is entirely man-made,” de Waal added. “And every stage of this has been predicted, and at every stage action could have been taken—by Israel, by the international authorities, [the] international community, those who back Israel—to prevent what is happening now… Those steps have simply not been taken.”

The Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures have been deemed accurate by Israeli military officials and a likely undercount by multiple peer-reviewed studies—said Tuesday that 15 more Palestinians, including four children, died from malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of starvation deaths in the coastal enclave to at least 101, including 80 children, since October 2023. The ministry said that 21 Gaza children have starved to death over the past three days alone.

When combined with lack of medicine, malnutrition has claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives in Gaza, according to officials there.

“I am so hungry,” Ruwaida Amer, a 30-year-old Gaza woman, wrote for +972 Magazine Monday. “We are starving. My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid. Gaza’s children are dying in front of our eyes, and we are powerless to help them.”

Another Gaza woman, Amina Badir, told Amer while clutching her starving 3-year-old: “Tell me how to save my daughter Rahaf from death. For a week she’s eaten nothing but a single spoon of lentils each day.”

“She’s suffering from malnutrition. There’s no treatment, no milk at the hospital,” Badir added. “They’ve taken away her right to live. I see death in her eyes.”

Gaza medical officials say 17,000 children are severely malnourished in the strip. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, also known as the IPC scale, 85% of Gaza’s people are in Phase 5, defined as such “an extreme deprivation of food” that “starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident.”

The “complete siege” imposed on Gaza immediately following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel has fueled widespread starvation and disease, and has been condemned as a war crime. The International Criminal Court last year ordered the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged murder and forced starvation of Gazans. The International Court of Justice is also weighing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa.

Amid intense international pressure, Israel partially lifted its siege of Gaza in May. However, de Waal and others say the move is wholly inadequate to prevent the famine taking hold in the strip.

“The partial lifting was not to bring in the kind of humanitarian program that we have been familiar with as humanitarians over the decades,” de Waal told Al Jazeera Monday. “It was to bring in a type of rationed program that is simply an arm of the Israeli military.”

Israel has also come under intense criticism for its method of delivering aid in Gaza via the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose distribution points have been the sites of near-daily massacres. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers and troops say they were ordered to shoot and shell desperate aid-seekers at GHF distribution centers. Officials said at least 10 aid-seekers were killed on Tuesday alone.

“The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible.”

“As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near [United Nations] and other humanitarian organizations’ aid convoys,” U.N. human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told Agence France-Presse.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said Tuesday that “the killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible,” adding that the “IDF must stop killing people at distribution points.”

Overall, at least 59,029 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since October 2023, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 142,000 others have been wounded, and at least 14,000 more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings.

Other international humanitarian experts also weighed in on the growing Gaza famine, with Michael Fakhri, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, telling Al Jazeera Monday that the “man-made” starvation in the strip “is a war crime.”

“Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians and has been killing civilians who have been seeking aid,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is the most horrific stage of Israel’s 20-month starvation campaign.”

“What we’re seeing now is the most horrific stage of Israels starvation campaign… Israel has been using aid as a way to bait civilians & has been killing civilians who have been seeking aid…”Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food

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— Saul Staniforth (@saulstaniforth.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 11:10 PM

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told Reuters Tuesday that “our last tent, our last food parcel, our last relief items have been distributed. There is nothing left.”

“Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting in warehouses or in Egypt or elsewhere, and costing our Western European donors a lot of money, but they are blocked from coming in,” he explained. “That’s why we are so angry. Because our job is to help.”

“Israel is not yielding,” Egeland added. “They just want to paralyze our work.”

As more and more Palestinians, mostly children, starve to death due to Israel’s 657-day obliteration and siege of Gaza, reliably pro-Israel U.S. corporate media outlets in recent days have centered the starvation crisis—which began in October 2023—while critics have decried passive language and anti-Palestinian tropes used in some reporting.

The Washington Post published at least two articles on the subject in as many days, including an Associated Press story by Wafaa Shurafa, Sarah El Deeb, and Lee Keath titled “Dozens of Kids and Adults in Gaza Have Starved to Death in July as Hunger Surges” and an internal piece by Louisa Loveluck, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Siham Shamalakh, Miriam Berger, and Abbie Cheeseman with the headline “Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza as Deaths Rise From Hunger.” The authors of the latter article noted that “Israel has severely limited the amount of food entering Gaza, where society is on the brink of collapse.”

The New York Times on Friday published a morning newsletter article by Lauren Jackson titled “The Starvation Spreading in Gaza,” which stressed that “hunger in Gaza is not new” amid an Israeli blockade that has choked the strip “for nearly two decades.” Jackson’s piece followed a Thursday front-page story by Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner, and Abu Bakr Bashir, with images by Palestinian photographer Saher Alghorra, headlined “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation.”

Palestinian peace activist Ihab Hassan, who heads the Agora Initiative’s Human Rights for Gaza project, said on the social media site X, “Starvation in Gaza made it to the front page of The New York Times—a horror so vast, it could no longer be ignored.”

Carnegie Middle East Center senior editor Michael Young wrote on X, “Don’t underestimate that a mainstream media outlet in the U.S. is finally stating the obvious, that Gazans are dying of starvation.”

“But it’s not as if they’re just dying, for no reason; they are being denied adequate amounts of food by Israel, therefore are being killed,” Young added. “Nonetheless, that the NYT presents the story in so blunt a way, under a heartbreaking photograph, must qualify as a turning point of sorts given how reluctant U.S. media outlets are to say anything bad about Israel.”

Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C. and frequent media critic, offered a more accurate headline for the Times story—”ISRAEL IS STARVING PALESTINIANS TO DEATH.”

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting’s Counterspin blog took aim at the Post’s “Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza” headline, noting that “it’s actual human beings stalking Gaza, who could right now choose to act differently.”

Still, there have recently been remarkable discussions about Gaza in U.S. corporate media outlets that would have been all but unimaginable during past Israeli attacks on Palestine.

CNN’s “NewsNight” with Abby Phillip on Thursday aired a panel discussion titled, “Why Is the U.S. Silent About the Starvation in Gaza?” The segment featured journalist Peter Beinart, who highighted the International Criminal Court’s issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation, U.S. support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the Israeli government’s ban on foreign journalists entering the strip.

“To say the United States is silent, it’s much worse than that,” Beinart said. “We are profoundly complicit and deeply responsible. It is our weapons that enforce this starvation. It is our diplomatic efforts that prevent international justice from being done.”

“The blood is on our hands!” he stressed.

The CNN segment also featured a video clip of United Nations World Food Program Director Cindy McCain, whose warnings of a looming starvation emergency in Gaza began in October 2023.

Asked by Phillip if the images of starving Gazans making headlines around the world marked “an inflection point,” Beinart replied, “Why did it take this long?”

Meanwhile, Israel’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz, ran an editorial Thursday titled “Israel Is Starving Gaza.”

“Gaza is starving, and Israel is responsible,” the Haaretz editors wrote. “According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 111 people have died from malnutrition since the war began, most of them children. Alarmingly, 43 of those deaths occurred just in the past week.”

“The famine that has been created is another facet of Israel’s cruel inhumanity towards the people of Gaza,” the editors added. “It constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity and is a clear violation of the orders issued a year and a half ago by the International Court of Justice in The Hague.”

Bombings, starvation and repeated displacement have pushed Gaza’s society to the brink, analysts say.

Through its unrelenting war on Gaza, Israel has killed over 59,000 Palestinians, injured 143,000 others, and pushed hundreds of thousands into forced starvation caused by its blockade on the enclave and its militarised distribution system.

More than 100 Palestinians have starved to death as a result in recent weeks, 80 of them children.

Whatever its ultimate intention, according to analysts, Israel has pushed the people of Gaza to the breaking point.

“Israeli policy has left Gaza uninhabitable,” said Derek Summerfield, a United Kingdom-based psychiatrist who has written on the effects of war and atrocity.

“It’s destroyed the idea of a society and every institution that might serve it, from universities to hospitals to mosques. It’s become a sociocidal war,” he added, describing a conflict intended to destroy a society’s entire structures and sense of identity. “People have been left with nothing, and are feeling they can’t go on.”

The constant spectre of death and the complete devastation of Gaza have driven many Palestinians there to desperation. Some are trying to leave – even temporarily – due to the horrors they have experienced and in a conflict that may continue for months or years to come.

Others continue to cling to their homes in defiance of escalating Israeli aggression.

Famine in Gaza

The mass starvation that aid agencies have warned about has become a reality for Palestinians in Gaza, as aid workers and journalists join the ranks of the hungry and the malnourished.

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On Wednesday, more than 100 aid agencies issued an open letter urging the Israeli government to work with the United Nations and allow aid into Gaza.

Al Jazeera has called for action to protect all journalists trapped in Gaza, many of whom are no longer able to report due to their own acute hunger and deteriorating health. AFP agency made a similar call.

“Famine isn’t just physical, it’s mental,” said Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, who has written extensively on famine.

“It dehumanises and degrades the sufferer … It’s the experience of – and then the memory of – having searched through garbage for food and everything you have done to survive.”

“You need to remember, starvation is an act, and as often as not a criminal one,” he continued.

“It’s also one that takes time. It’s not like dropping a bomb… Starvation can take 60 to 80 days. Semi-starvation, such as we’re seeing in Gaza, can take longer.

“Israel has had ample and stark warnings that its actions are leading to mass starvation. This should surprise no one.”

“This isn’t just about starving kids. It’s about dismantling a society and reducing its people to desperate, starving victims,” de Waal added. “It also encourages the abuser to think of the sufferer as dehumanised, so it becomes self-justifying.”

A strategy of annihilation

Through its 21-month war, Israel’s leaders have repeatedly claimed their war on Gaza was to “defeat Hamas” and rescue the captives held in the territory.

However, with every new offensive, its critics around the world have accused it of either turning a blind eye to the humanitarian consequences of its actions or actively seeking to punish Palestinians and force starvation upon them.

“I don’t know if you can call this a strategy,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House.

“I don’t know how much is planned, how much is tactical, cynical, opportunistic or just incompetence. It all depends where you look.”

Mekelberg broke down the factions competing for final say in Israeli policy, from the messianic ambitions of ultranationalist government ministers, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who would like to see the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank expelled, to a security establishment that Mekelberg described as divided over whether it should continue or end the war.

“Lastly, you have the cynical and the opportunistic,” he continued, “which is essentially Benjamin Netanyahu and his adherents. To them, this is all about politics and surviving for another day,” Mekelberg said of the prime minister, who is on trial on multiple corruption charges.

The legacy of destruction

The consequences of Israel’s actions in Gaza will last generations, analysts said.

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Those who survive Israel’s current war will carry its scars, as will their descendants, while those who leave are unlikely to be allowed to return.

“Israel has adopted a formula in the last few weeks where it is making conditions in Gaza intolerable and unable to support human life,” said Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya.

“If it can reduce life to such a level and at the same time increase the level of chaos and anarchy [across Gaza], the thinking is that people will leave.”

Once they have been forced from their homeland, either through the conditions that Israel has imposed, or via the one-way entrance into what Israeli government ministers call a “humanitarian city”, while many critics call it a concentration camp, it intends to construct along the border with Egypt, they won’t be allowed back, Rabbani said.

Hardly a day has gone by since Israel’s assault upon Gaza began in October 2023 that its war has not dominated headlines.

In recent weeks, as starvation and the extent of the near-total destruction that Israel has visited upon the enclave have grown, so too has the disquiet among the international community.

However, in the face of the protests, and with ceasefire negotiations supposedly ongoing, Israel’s war has shown few signs of slowing.

That has left Gaza’s population, in the words of Summerfield, left to “wander Gaza; starving, alone and hunted”.