The People of Gaza are Walking Skeletons
HAVANA TIMES – One in five children in Gaza City is malnourished as a result of the military offensive and blockade imposed by the Israeli army, and the number of cases is increasing every day, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
“The people in Gaza are neither alive nor dead; they are walking corpses,” Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, wrote on his social media account, relaying the message of a worker on the ground.
He warned that most of the children his teams see are emaciated, weak, and at high risk of dying if they do not receive urgent treatment.
According to reports, more than 100 people, the vast majority of them children, have died of starvation in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that across the Gaza Strip, “more than one million children are suffering the consequences of increasingly severe famine and malnutrition.” Cases of death from malnutrition are increasing daily.
According to OCHA, in the first two weeks of July, nine percent of children examined suffered from acute malnutrition in the Gazan cities of Deir al-Balah, and Khan Yunis, compared to six percent in June and two percent in February.
The prevalence in Gaza City, in the north of the Gaza Strip – whose total area is under 141 Square miles – is even more alarming, reaching 16 percent, compared to four percent in February.
“Those who survive face serious life-altering risks, such as delays in cognitive and physical growth,” warned an OCHA report.
Lazzarini stressed that this “increasingly serious situation affects everyone, including those trying to save lives.”
Even UNRWA’s frontline health workers “survive on one small meal a day, often just lentils, if that.”
“More and more are fainting from hunger while working,” putting the entire humanitarian system at risk, he alerted.
As for families, he warned that “parents are too hungry to care for their children,” and those who arrive at UNRWA clinics lack the energy, food, or means to follow medical advice.
“Families can no longer cope; they are falling apart, unable to survive. Their very existence is threatened,” Philippe Lazzarini emphasized.
In contrast, he noted, UNRWA and other UN agencies have the equivalent of 6,000 truckloads of food and medical supplies waiting in the neighboring countries of Egypt and Jordan for permission to enter the Strip and assist more than two million Gazans, who have endured 21 months of war and deprivation.
For their part, more than 100 international humanitarian aid and human rights organizations – including Caritas, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and Save the Children – issued a statement warning that the population in the Strip, and their workers on the ground, “are being consumed by the spread of mass starvation” in the Palestinian territory.
Nearly a thousand Gazans have died since February after attempting to seek food at the distribution sites set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, established by Israel and the United States. These are currently the only sites Israel has authorized for the delivery of food to the population.
On Sunday, July 27, Israel responded to the general outrage by announcing it would pause fighting for 10 hours in Gaza’s largest population areas, supposedly in order to allow more food aid in.
The week before this pause, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs indicated that there were continued intense bombardments from the air, earth and sea in all of the Gaza strip, as well as new orders for displacement and broadened ground operations.
On July 20, the Israeli army issued a displacement order for areas west of Deir al-Balah and warned the population not to return to areas in northern Gaza that, according to them, are currently active combat zones.
There have also been rocket attacks on Israel by Palestinian armed groups and clashes with Israeli forces.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, between July 16 and 23, 646 Palestinians were killed and 3,438 wounded. Since October 2023, at least 59,219 Palestinians have been killed and 143,045 wounded, according to the same source.
The current conflict erupted after the militant Islamist Hamas, based in Gaza, attacked southern Israel. Some 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken hostage in the operation, to which Israel responded with its brutal military offensive.