In the Gaza Strip surrounded by Israel, the livelihood and the bottle of water have become a difficult dream, as Palestinian children sleep on fold and come under extreme hunger, which transformed their innocent bodies into skeletons whose images spread in the media did not stop pushing Israel to lift the siege and introduce aid.
With her skinny body, and her pale face, who was absent from childhood features, the Palestinian Mai Abu Arar (7 years) is lying on a bed at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, after it was exhausted by the continuous Israeli starvation coinciding with the war of genocide launched by Tel Aviv in the Strip for nearly two years.
The Israeli blockade left the child only prominent bones and intermittent screams on the hospital bed, turning her innocent smile and thick hair into a distant memory, and made her childhood a captive of illness and deprivation.
On August 22, 2025, the Global Integrated Classification Integrated Classification of Food Security announced a state of famine in Gaza City, and expected it to extend to the provinces of Deir Al -Balah (central) and Khan Yunis.
The Integrated Food Security Classification “IBC” is an international initiative to analyze the conditions of food security and nutrition, which includes 21 prominent organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Program, the United Nations Children’s Organizations (UNICEF), Global Health, Oxfam, and saved children.
The Israeli siege applied to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip caused an unprecedented famine, which killed 422 people, including 147 children, despite the sentences of wholesale to end the siege, open the crossings, and enter the aid immediately.
It was a rose
Mai was before the start of the Israeli genocide as a child full of life, in a bright face, thick hair and an innocent smile. Her mother, Nadia Abu Arar, who described her as a rose, and as she showed her image on her mobile phone to Anatolia.
But with the Israeli siege and preventing the entry of food and medicine to Gaza, Mai suffered severe malnutrition, her hair fell and her weight fell from 22 kilograms to only 12 kilograms, before losing the ability to walk after her skinny body was unable to carry her.
Mai’s suffering was not limited to hunger, but rather extended to repeated displacement. After treating her at Al -Rantisi for Children’s Hospital in Gaza City, her family was forced to displace the Nasser Hospital as a result of the Israeli military operations that narrowed the screws on the city.
The Israeli army has continued to escalate on Gaza City, since last August, in an operation called Gideon 2, which included blowing houses using car bombs, artillery shelling, random shooting, forced displacement, and a wild incursion.
While the Israeli government approved on August 8, a plan put forward by its President Benjamin Netanyahu to gradually occupy the Gaza Strip, starting with Gaza City, which is inhabited by about a million Palestinians, most of them displaced.
The child’s mother says that her daughter was not suffering from any diseases before the Israeli genocide, but the closure of Tel Aviv crossings and the prevention of food and medicine to enter her health.
She added: She weighed 20 kilograms before the extermination, and it was like a rose, but now it has reached only 12 kilograms due to malnutrition.
The mother explained that the situation of her daughter is getting worse day by day, with the continued lack of food and medicine, pointing out that the family lives on the food of charities and water, and sometimes milk packages if available.
She added: When there is no assistance, we do not find what we eat and sleep hungry.
She expressed her fear of the death of her daughter, wishing her treatment outside Gaza in light of the collapse of the health system, the closure of the Palestinian side from the Rafah crossing by the Israeli army, which has controlled it since May 2024, and preventing patients and wounded to leave for treatment.
The collapse of the health system
In turn, Ahed Khalaf, a pediatrician at Nasser Hospital, confirmed that Mai suffers from malnutrition due to the Israeli siege.
The doctor supervising Mai added to Anatolia that she suffers from swelling of the feet, a lack of protein in the blood, loss of ability to move due to muscle atrophy and the absence of fatty layers under the skin, in addition to ulcers and hair loss.
He stated that the medical team was forced to give it an alternative treatment because the necessary basic medicine was not available due to the Israeli siege and the lack of supplies, stressing that malnutrition increases its deterioration.
He pointed out that Gaza is free of vegetables and fruits, which are basic needs for children to build their bodies.
The doctor considered the case of Mai embodies the reality of the collapse in the health system in the Gaza Strip as a result of the extermination and the Israeli siege.
Since the start of the genocide on October 7, 2023, Israel has deliberately targeted the health sector, as it bombed, destroyed or removed 38 hospitals, 96 health care centers, and 197 ambulances, according to the latest data of the government media office in Gaza.
This targeting, which coincided with a siege that stressed its procedures on the second of last March, preventing the entry of medical, relief and food aid to the sector, except in very scarce quantities, doubled the deterioration in the health sector and the suffering of patients.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which left 65,549 martyrs and 167 thousand and 518 wounded, most of them children and women, and one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.