A dirty and disheveled boy, who is not even 10 years old, picks up handfuls of pasta and beans mixed with dirt, dust and plastic remains, in a field near Gaza City, after the passage of one of the planes launched food on the Strip.
There are packages that reach the ground whole and others that explode upon contact with the ground and their contents end up scattered.
Concentrated and oblivious to the commotion around him, the little boy quickly puts the loot in his ragged backpack from school, where he has not been able to go for five months, and runs to the place where his family is taking refuge.
Several videos recorded by local journalists have been showing this type of images for days, a clear reflection of misery and hunger, of the improbable tasks that children are assuming and of the risks they take every day to be able to eat.
“They are emaciated, thin, scared and very tired.
And they are dying of hunger, dehydration and diseases such as diarrhea,” James Elder, spokesperson for Unicef, who is currently in Gaza, summarizes in a telephone interview with this newspaper.
It is not the first time he has entered the Strip since October, when the Israeli bombings began, but the physical destruction and deterioration in the living conditions of the people, especially children, that he is experiencing these days have left him “overwhelmed by a terrible feeling of loss.”
“I have been working at the UN for 20 years and I have not seen such a level of destruction anywhere.
"The depth of the horror experienced in Gaza surpasses our ability to describe it," says the spokesperson.
“These days I have seen the tears of exhausted and desperate mothers, who grab your hand and tell you that they have no way of giving food to their children.
You end up crying with them,” he adds.
And above all, the spokesperson emphasizes, there is the helplessness of the little ones.
“When a boy or girl realizes that their parents can no longer protect them from bombs and hunger, something very deep breaks inside them.
That is what is happening in the families of Gaza and you can read it in the eyes of the children,” describes Elder, from Rafah, in the south of this Palestinian territory, to which foreign journalists are not allowed to enter.
Unicef believes that all Gaza households are skipping meals daily and that adults are reducing their rations so that children can eat.
In the north of the Strip, acute malnutrition has doubled in a month and now affects one in three children under two years of age.
In Rafah, where the little humanitarian aid that Gaza receives enters, this percentage drops to 10%, according to data from this UN agency, which estimates that at least 23 boys and girls in Gaza due to malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks .
Figures from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, controlled by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, raise this tragic toll to more than 30 children.
Talking about famine, now or in a few weeks, may make sense from a political point of view, but for the children of Gaza it makes no difference.
James Elder, UNICEF
“In the north of the Strip, the scenes are heartbreaking.
In the hospital that we were able to visit on Thursday, Kamal Adwan, there are very serious cases of malnourished children who we do not really know if they will still be there tomorrow.
Mothers and grandmothers do not leave his side and do not stop crying.
Incubators are full of babies and mothers are giving birth prematurely due to the stress of war.
“It's maddening,” she quotes.
According to the latest UN figures, only 12 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are partially functioning.
Hundreds of trucks
Last Monday, the latest Integrated Phase Classification (ICF, in Spanish, IPC, in English), an independent and globally recognized tool that measures food security and nutrition and in which several UN organizations participate, including Unicef warned that 50% of Gaza's 2.2 million inhabitants face an extreme lack of access to food.
The analysis concluded that famine in the north of the territory is “imminent” and will arrive between now and May if nothing changes, although there is data that indicates that it could already be occurring.
“Talking about famine, now or in a few weeks, may make sense from a political point of view, but for the children of Gaza it makes no difference.
Here people are dying of hunger, children are dying of hunger, and this is due to decisions of those in power,” Elder denounces.
The unmistakable background noise of Israeli drones does not disappear at any point in the interview.
“It's like this day and night.
It is also torture for children, who know that those drones can kill them at any moment,” she says.
The experienced spokesperson, who has just recently been to Sudan, devastated by conflict, and where around 40% of the population, that is, 19 million people, is already facing acute hunger, refuses to compare tragedies.
But he insists that Gaza is an unprecedented case.
“In terms of the percentage of the population that goes hungry and the short period of time in which this has happened, it is something never seen since the ICF studies began 20 years ago.
Furthermore, in this case, hundreds of trucks full of food, medicine and basic necessities are 10 kilometers from where I am now,” on the other side of the border, on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, he emphasizes.
“Hundreds of trucks.
I saw them a few days ago with my own eyes.
“This gives another aspect to this crisis,” she insists.
"In Gaza, humanity's saddest records of darkness are being broken: percentage of the population suffering from hunger, number of bombings, magnitude of the devastation of infrastructure, number of people who have lost a loved one..." he adds.
Gaza residents, including several children, at a free food distribution in Jabalia, in the north of the Strip, on March 19, 2024. Mahmoud Issa (REUTERS)
According to CIF analysis, everyone in Gaza is hungry right now.
This week, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, accused Israel of being responsible for a “famine” in Gaza and of using it as a “weapon of war.”
Israel launched a military offensive against the Strip after the attack by Hamas militiamen, which de facto governs Gaza, who on October 7 killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, after infiltrating Israeli territory, according to official figures.
The military response against Gaza has caused more than 31,000 deaths, most of them women and children, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
If children have not reached that phase of acute malnutrition in which their organs deteriorate, in two or three weeks a lot of what is happening to them now can be erased.
Ana Islas Ramos, FAO
Aftermath for life
Half of the population of the Strip is minors.
These children do not have access to nutritional supplements or, in many cases, basic medical care.
Ana Islas Ramos, nutrition expert at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), who also participates in the classification of food insecurity published this week, explains that when an adult is in a situation of starvation, When they have nothing to eat, they can survive for about 70 days, but children are more vulnerable because they are in full growth, and “they reach phases of serious malnutrition much earlier.”
“It depends on their previous reserves, but in two or three weeks they already reach serious malnutrition,” she calculates, in an interview with this newspaper.
Before October, two-thirds of Gaza's population received humanitarian aid to eat, in the form of food or subsidies.
Acute child malnutrition in this territory subjected to an Israeli blockade since 2007 did not reach 1%.
“When there begins to be no food, fat reserves begin to be used, which can last more or less a month, then protein reserves are used, and then we begin to eat our own body.
That is severe acute malnutrition.
Children become lethargic, the brain does not develop because there is not enough energy and those consequences can last forever,” she details.
According to the latest UN figures, only 12 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are partially functioning.
Since the start of the war, 300,000 cases of respiratory infections and 200,000 cases of life-threatening acute diarrhea have been recorded.
Since the start of the war, there have been 300,000 cases of respiratory infections and 200,000 cases of acute diarrhea, potentially fatal if they reach a body weakened by hunger, according to figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
"It is a vicious circle.
Children desperately eat whatever they find, whether or not it is healthy, whether or not their hands are clean.
Because they are weak, their immune system is low and they get sick.
These diarrheas cause even more severe dehydration and malnutrition,” explains Islas.
If there is a ceasefire tonight in Gaza, the physical recovery of these children can be rapid, thanks to supplements that can be administered to them if humanitarian aid enters without limits and health care services are restored in the Strip.
“If children have not reached that phase of acute malnutrition in which their organs deteriorate, in two or three weeks much of what is happening to them now can be erased,” says Islas.
“Babies are more concerned, because at two or three months of age, weeks without proper nutrition is a long time for them.”
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