The drama of the boy who put a face to hunger as a weapon of war in Gaza

Yazan Kafarneh was unaware of all this five months ago. He was fighting his own battle against cerebral palsy. His parents assure that he gradually improved. He received medical attention in one of the hospitals in the north of the Strip, which today is just a pile of rubble. An aircraft bomb fell ahead. A physiotherapist treated him at home, paid for by humanitarian NGOs operating in Gaza. Yazan couldn't walk. However, he had learned to swim.

But in the end the water dried up. The first Israeli bombers after the Hamas attack on October 7 forced the family to leave their home in Beit Hanoun. Gone are the bath sleeves. The drugs. Food. His father, a 31-year-old taxi driver, carried him south after a disjointed and hesitant march. The family moved from town to town, from one shelter to another, in search of a safe place that only lasted a few hours because the war was on their heels. As they progressed, the risks increased for the little one. Each shelter was more unsanitary than the last, more dangerous for his low immunity. And if Yazan looked over his father's shoulders he saw the fire and explosions always behind him. And so with the course set towards Rafah.

Rafah is a kind of terminal station for the living and those who are going to die. The tombstone that covers “an open-air cemetery”, as the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, calls Gaza in light of the figures provided by the UN, the most grim that have been known for years. According to them, one million Palestinians directly suffer from severe malnutrition, 530,000 are threatened by a higher degree of famine and there is a childhood condemned to perish from hunger in this territory that is going down the drain.

international complaint

The high representative of the EU and the UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, have highlighted the true seriousness of this situation, since they have not only denounced it for its nature as a humanitarian catastrophe but also for its political use. in an armed conflict. Hunger is a kalashnikov. The two organizations are aware that, beyond controls and tactics to prevent supplies from falling into the hands of Hamas, Israel knows that civilians are even destroying the leaves of the trees in search of something to put in their mouths. Also heal those who die malnourished. And the United Nations has reminded Israel that using hunger as a weapon represents a “war crime.”

In a harsh document addressed to the prime minister, the UN tells the Government that, “as an occupying force”, its obligation is to “ensure the provision of food and medicine to the population.” However, “the extent of Israel's continued restrictions on aid entry into Gaza, coupled with the way it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war,” Türk concludes. It is the first time that the United Nations has warned Netanyahu's Executive of the possible commission of crimes worse than other violations of international law that can occur in cases of war, which are already serious in themselves. Secretary of State Antony Blinken states, for his part, that this is the first time that “a population as a whole” has been classified as at risk of serious food insecurity, especially in such a short period of time. The US believes that, without a solution to the lack of food and a reconstruction of the fields and wells destroyed by the war, the immediate future of Gaza will be more hellish than that of Somali, where hunger claimed a total of 44,000 lives.

Behind the border, the UN accuses, there are hundreds of trucks supplied with food. Only a few kilometers separate them from the pediatric department of the hospital where Yazan died staring into the abyss. How he understood death, how he understood that no one gave him food while he wasted away in front of everyone, is something that tortures those who saw him dry up and die. Diaa Al-Shaer, a patient at the clinic, says that in recent weeks she has admitted an “unprecedented” number of children with bones marked in their skin. “They all come in search of food.” And then they gradually become extinct like Yazan. Hunger doesn't trigger. Hunger kills slowly.

If anyone wants to know when Yazan died, it was weeks before he expired. He was missing the little things that kept him tied to life. The eggs and bananas he ate before the war as part of a nutritious diet that his father made every morning. Or the dairy supplement that Halima, his caregiver, searched diligently without success during his last days. All of this was part of the care that the doctors had prescribed to keep his health strong and which fell into tatters with the war, as goods became scarce. In the end almost everything was reduced to flour, infusions and water. And a bacteria. That of pneumonia. Dr. Jabr al-Shaer treated him in his agony. He said malnutrition had weakened Yazan's immune system. He died touching his mother with fleshless fingers to perceive anything.

In December, 90% of the children of the Strip were nourished by a maximum of two food groups. Unicef ​​denounced it as a warning of the arrival of the devil. Now they eat what they can, Misery wrapped in misery. The most common and basic diet is cereal, be it bread (less so) or animal feed, and milk if luck is on your side that day. Shaima, 8 years old, knows what it's like to go alone with a casserole to the food line. She also knows the feeling of being crushed between a bunch of children who, like her, carry her plates.

Sometimes she returns empty-handed and that day neither she nor her mother nor her younger sister eat. Shaima may end up like a growing number of children leaving home and heading south alone in search of food. Volker Türk, the UN agent, says that the roads are increasingly frequented by little wandering ghosts. A child recently arrived at a hospital in Rafah who “had not eaten for three days,” recalls the doctor who treated him.

Six-year-old Fadi may not even remember the taste of the food. Before the war started she weighed thirty kilos and now she weighs no more than twelve. He is admitted to a hospital in northern Gaza that is every parent's worst nightmare. Most of the child victims of malnutrition recorded by the UN have died there.

Fadi's case is similar to Yazan's. He suffers from cystic fibrosis. There are no medications to treat him anymore. Before the war she also ate a diet high in protein and other nutrients. She loved chicken and fruit. Her family lived in Gaza City. When the Israeli soldiers arrived, they fled. They went from one place to another. Four times. They finally landed in Beit Lahai. And for two months they have not moved from the hospital where Fadi is dying. «She used to eat well. She had a stuffed face. “He didn't look like a sick child,” her mother explains to the Reuters agency.

Fadi embodies what the US Secretary of State considers an “urgency and an imperative”: the delivery of humanitarian aid without wasting a second. Fadi already has the skin of hunger. He doesn't grow. He remains in a state of lethargy, lacking strength and spirit. His body will shut down as he runs out of energy and will end up consuming himself.

“We need more help, we need it to be maintained and we need it to be a priority if we want to effectively address people's needs,” said Antony Blinken, who this week is studying with Egypt and Saudi Arabia how to convince Israel and Hamas to sign a ceasefire. fire. Meanwhile, in Washington, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has just admitted that he has thought about asking for the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu when he understands that “he has lost his way” and that his main fear is that Israel, with its allies and the large international organizations estranged, ends up becoming a “pariah state”