I left Gaza in April after receiving a scholarship to study in Ireland. I’d delayed leaving for over a year, resistant to the idea of abandoning my family and my country. But I finally decided to go after facing symptoms of acute malnutrition and, as a journalist, continued Israeli threats to my safety. Until then, I’d lived in Deir al-Balah, a city in the center of the besieged territory. Those days still haunt me. To be starved in Gaza is to gradually lose both weight and dignity. Imposed hunger not only results in skeletal babies, fatigued bodies, and death, but humiliation and a pervasive sense of helplessness as well. 

Starvation is not just an abstract idea; it is a kind of hell, and in Gaza it was enacted by design. From the beginning of the genocide, Israeli ministers spoke of their intent to cut off aid and food, and many families struggled to find a single meal a day. Back in early December of 2023, my family and I resorted to eating meat intended for cats. We cooked it with tears in our eyes. Between then and my departure, most of our meals consisted of canned food and decaying vegetables. Meat, fish, and fruit were fantasies. On many nights, my brothers and I would stand in front of our fridge in the blind hope of somehow finding a single cucumber to eat. Instead, we’d see bleak and desolate shelves and sit down disappointed, talking about what it would be like to have some white cheese and bread. 

Every morning, my family and I would discuss our dreams. Mine were often nightmares about being murdered, but I also had visions of eating — sitting around a loaded table with my loved ones. My sisters and their children, waking up and going to sleep hungry, would spend their days scrolling through photos of food as a distraction. From the conversations on social media, it seemed that many others across Gaza did the same. The preoccupation that found its way into conversation after conversation — with family, friends, and neighbors — was the vision of a full plate of food.

In the weeks prior to my evacuation, Israel announced escalated restrictions, and food and supplies grew even more sparse. The situation turned utterly unbearable for everyone, especially kids. My young neighbors took to drawing their favorite meals in the sand. Other children scavenged among scraps of garbage, finding morsels to eat or firewood to sell. I recall the frail body of ten-year-old Mohammed, whose mother was killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza early in the genocide, and who sold his school books to help his family survive. He worked day in and day out, covered in sun spots from the scorching daytime rays. At night he’d shake from the cold in his flimsy tent. 

The starvation in the Gaza Strip only intensified in the months leading up to the recent ceasefire. Talking to my family has left me guilty and heartbroken: my three-year-old niece sobbed for an egg every time I called her, my brothers told me their stomachs ached from the contaminated drinking water, and my six-year-old nephew said he wished he were a monkey so he could “get bananas.” My dad’s words echoed with unimaginable sorrow after every arduous bread-fetching trek. 

In Ireland, I have felt like a zombie. The memories haven’t faded from my mind; they hurt whenever I drink clean water or eat a bit of food with my medicine. My mind barely functions. My heart survives on hope. I can’t stop thinking about my family. Seeing people go on with their lives as if nothing is happening rubs salt in my wounds. How can we live, eat, or enjoy while two million people have been caged, tortured, bombed, starved, and killed? 

On October 10, when the ceasefire deal went into effect, the people of Gaza were jubilant as Israel finally allowed food into the territory. Looking at photos of makeshift tables, finally bearing delicious food, I felt the joy and relief of gratification after two years of deprivation and desperation. But as delightful as the images have been, Israel has already violated the ceasefire. Less than a week after it was announced, Israel reduced the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza to (officially) half of the six hundred per day that had been agreed upon. Since then, the amount of aid allowed in has continued to fluctuate. 

In 2021, when Israeli security forces attacked praying Palestinians outside Al-Aqsa Mosque mere hours after a ceasefire had gone into effect, professor Refaat Alareer — who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in December 2023 — posted, “What usually happens in occupied Palestine is that Palestinians cease, and Israel fires.” Palestinians fear not only more fire, but that Israel will continue to use hunger as a weapon. Gaza may be starved of food, but a world that has allowed and enabled this famine is starved of humanity.