On my first day in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, my colleague Hawa's mother [nombre ficticio] suffered a stroke. With no ambulance available, her mother was taken to a partially operational hospital. She died two days later. “The sadness of this war killed her,” Hawa later told me. I arrived in Gaza with Save the Children, as part of a convoy of pediatricians, surgeons and aid workers to support children affected by the growing humanitarian catastrophe. Nothing could prepare us for what we would witness.
Of course, our Palestinian colleagues, like Hawa, have long tirelessly served their communities, even in the midst of personal tragedies. Most of our staff have been forcibly displaced, many have lost close family members and all have been affected by the war. Sameh Ewida, a former member of the Gaza office, was killed along with his entire family in an Israeli airstrike in December.
The brutal war in the Strip has killed more than 33,000 people, including at least 13,900 minors, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Israeli airstrikes have killed doctors, nurses, teachers and aid workers. All at a time when the needs have never been greater.
The scenes I witnessed in Rafah in early April will stay with me forever. The small city, which was home to 275,000 people before the war, now has a population of approximately 1.5 million people, mostly women and children.
Drones fly overhead constantly, their incessant drone a grim reminder of the threat to the little ones. As the hum approaches, an explosion shakes the streets, usually a few miles away.
I was forced to eat the food that the rats left behind […]. Going out looking for food was simply too dangerous
The sheer number of children wandering around the city was overwhelming, almost apocalyptic. They were barefoot, visibly malnourished and often alone. In February, At least 17,000 minors in Gaza were alone or separated from their families, according to Unicef. That number is likely much higher now. Doctors were even forced to coin a heartbreaking new term to identify them in the hospital: injured child with no surviving family.
Diseases and infections are also spreading rapidly. But with limited time and resources, health professionals are rarely able to give formal diagnoses. In a mobile hospital I saw children with rashes, many of them with vomiting and bloody diarrhea. “We are seeing scabies, lice and hepatitis,” a doctor told me. Beyond the disease, it is impossible to ignore injuries with a major impact on lives: “We treated a pregnant woman with a gunshot wound to the stomach,” another doctor shared.
I met a boy, no older than 12, who was pushing his younger brother in a wheelchair. The little boy was visibly dirty, was wearing torn clothes and was missing a leg: one of the more than 1,000 children who have lost one or both legs since the start of the war, according to Unicef data from December. They weren't going anywhere, the oldest explained, because the schools have been destroyed or closed since October.
A boy no older than 12 was pushing his younger brother in a wheelchair. The little boy was visibly dirty, was wearing torn clothes and was missing a leg.
Children in Gaza spend their days trying to stay alive, protecting themselves from bombardments or searching for food and water. A group of them, while playing with an old plastic bag, asked for food or “even a soccer ball” to pass the time. They face a grim reality of malnutrition, disease and despair, if not death. Everything is too dangerous to get food.
“So many people have died that we don't even have the chance to cry,” laments my colleague Zainab [nombre ficticio]. Last week, her husband arrived in Rafah after being trapped in the north of the Strip. Her 70-year-old father, who suffers from Alzheimer's and cancer, could not be evacuated and so she stayed. “I was forced to eat the food that the rats left,” she says. “Going out to look for food was simply too dangerous,” she adds. She narrowly escaped the deadly attack that killed more than 100 people desperately trying to collect flour. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed and 1,300 injured by Israeli strikes while trying to get food, medicine and other vital aid for their families.
Getting aid into and around Gaza is extremely difficult, with restrictions in place at all times. Historically, any aid coming in must be authorized by Israel, which rejects items that supposedly have “dual use” potential, civil or military.
There is no excuse for the scandalously inadequate levels of aid in Gaza. It is urgent that much more help arrives much faster
In recent weeks, we have seen entire trucks turned away under this rule for carrying items as small as a package of dates or a pair of scissors. Even when aid does reach the Strip, difficulties persist: there are fuel shortages, and the risks have intensified and security guarantees are insufficient for the humanitarian workers responsible for its delivery.
There is no excuse for the scandalously inadequate levels of aid in Gaza. It is urgent that much more help arrives much faster and, above all, we need an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Before October 7, around 80% of the population of the Gaza Strip depended on humanitarian assistance. Now, the need is greater than ever. Without a ceasefire and full and unrestricted access to aid, children will continue to suffer.
According to Save the Children, nearly 26,000 minors—or just over 2% of Gaza's child population—have been killed or injured in Gaza in six months of war. The death of these children is a consequence of the world's failure to protect them. The international community must urgently step up its efforts: time has run out.
The only thing that will save families in Gaza now is a definitive ceasefire. The UN Security Council demanded a temporary ceasefire, but the window for its implementation – the Muslim fasting period of Ramadan – has passed without progress. More children have paid the cost of that inaction with their lives. A ceasefire must be implemented now and maintained definitively because, quite simply, there is no alternative.
Israel's continued use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas has devastating effects on children. All countries must immediately cease arms trade with parties to the conflict. Anything less than that is not only a failure, but a betrayal of humanity.
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