Rahaf Ayad, a 12-year-old girl from the Al-Shuja’iya neighborhood in Gaza City, is being starved by Israeli occupation forces as part of the ongoing siege and genocidal campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. She suffers from severe malnutrition and multiple undiagnosed illnesses. Her rapidly deteriorating health reflects the broader humanitarian catastrophe and systematic starvation that Israel, under the leadership of the hard-right government of wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, is inflicting on Gaza، with the support and cover of the US-Trump government.
For over two months now, the Gaza enclave has been under a total and suffocating siege. Following more than a year of continuous genocide, Israeli occupation forces have imposed a complete blockade, preventing access to food, clean water, medicine, and essential humanitarian aid. This deliberate policy of starvation has led to widespread malnutrition, untreated medical conditions, and increasing death rates, especially among children.
The Israeli occupation has systematically targeted Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, repeatedly and deliberately bombing hospitals and preventing the entry of medical supplies. The deliberate collapse of the health system has left families like Rahaf’s without access to any form of treatment or basic necessities for survival.
Across Gaza, scenes of Palestinian children lining up with empty cooking pots at makeshift relief kitchens, sometimes set up in abandoned police stations turned into shelters, highlight the gravity of the humanitarian crisis. Displaced and starving, these children are the faces of Israel’s war of starvation and thirstation.
Today, over two million Palestinians are at risk of dying from hunger, dehydration, and collapsing living conditions. Many are losing consciousness in the streets due to extreme hunger and exhaustion. The starvation is not incidental; it is a weapon of war used by the Israeli occupation to annihilate an entire population of the Gaza enclave
