In a newly published report, Starving a Generation: Israel’s Famine Campaign Targeting Palestinian Children in Gaza, Defence for Children International–Palestine (DCIP), in collaboration with Doctors Against Genocide, asserts that Israeli authorities have deliberately weaponised starvation as a tool of genocide.
The report documents 33 cases of child starvation in Gaza between October 2023 and May 2025, of which nine, ranging in age from one week to ten years, resulted in death.
The youngest Abdul Aziz Abdurrahman Saleem was born in Kamal Adwan hospital, and died a week later.
The report cites Dr Abu Hassam Safiya, the hospital director and a Palestinian paediatrician, now detained by Israeli forces, who stated that the hospital was receiving between 70 and 100 malnourished children each day.
“It couldn’t be clearer: Israel intends to starve Palestinians as a way of removing and destroying them,” said Kathryn Ravey, one of the authors and an advocacy officer at DCIP.
Among the dead is three-year-old Mila Abdulnabi, who died at Kamal Adwan Hospital on the evening of 2 March 2024.
Mila had developed severe potassium and magnesium deficiencies after Israeli forces cut off food access in northern Gaza, according to the report. In her final days, she was placed on a respirator where her mother, an ICU nurse at the hospital, found her covered in a shroud, according to the report.
“I went to work that day and my colleagues closed the door to stop me from coming in. But when I got in, I found my daughter dead," said her mother, recalling the devastating moment that drove her to walk away from her work as a nurse.
“My daughter died in front of my eyes and I could not save her,” she said.
Since early 2024, child starvation in Gaza has been a deliberate tactic in Israel’s campaign against Palestinians, with infants and chronically ill children most at risk. The report states that international inaction has enabled this crisis, with lasting effects for generations to come.
What makes these children particularly vulnerable?
While nearly every child in Gaza is experiencing some degree of hunger, those who die from starvation are often caught at the intersection of multiple, compounding vulnerabilities.
Infants and toddlers are particularly at risk. With immune systems still developing and higher nutritional needs, they are more physiologically vulnerable to malnutrition.
Many of those who died were too young to be weaned, but their mothers could not produce breast milk.
One such case is that of three-month-old Anwar Al-Khudari, cited in the DCIP report.
“There was no formula milk due to the army’s siege,” his mother told researchers. “And there was no milk in my breasts due to the lack of nutrition and the prevention of the entry of aid.”
Anwar cried through the nights from hunger. “His temperature rose and he started having convulsions as a result of that,” his mother recalled. “He passed away four days later.”
Others had chronic illnesses or rare genetic disorders that required specialised nutrition or consistent medical care that was no longer available under siege.
In one case, ten-month-old Ali Abu Azra, who had Sanjad-Sakati syndrome, lost two kilogrammes and continued to deteriorate despite being admitted for treatment.
Financial status is also a determining factor in a reality where a bag of flour can cost $500 and a single bottle of cooking oil sells for $40, according to firsthand accounts.
“For poorer families, even that single meal was not guaranteed,” writes Rasha Abou Jalal, a Gaza resident who has been displaced 11 times since Israel’s 20-month-long war.
“And those with enough money to afford the very high prices have also not been spared because most items in the market are sold out.”
According to the DCIP report, many of the children who died of starvation came from families that had also lost their main breadwinner in Israeli airstrikes, leaving them unable to secure even smuggled or overpriced food.
Aid is always beyond reach
When the family’s breadwinners do risk the journey to collect aid from the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, they embark on perilous missions in which survival is far from guaranteed.
Distribution points are guarded by armed private contractors, reportedly staffed by former US intelligence and military personnel. Hundreds of Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israeli forces while attempting to reach these sites.
Even those who make it out alive face danger on the return. Armed gangs often lie in wait along the roads, seizing food parcels to resell at exorbitant prices.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US-registered organisation working under Israeli oversight, began operating on May 26, 2025, after a months-long blockade that pushed Palestinians to the edge of famine.
Its distribution hubs have been described by a UN official as “death traps” for desperate civilians, while critics warn the system is designed to push people south in a move rights groups say amounts to forced displacement.
On June 23, fifteen human rights and humanitarian organisations issued a joint letter to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and its affiliated firms, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, demanding that they cease operations in Gaza or face legal consequences for breaching international law.
“It is immoral and inhuman when those committing the genocide take responsibility to feed those whom they have starved,” said Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and one of the letter’s signatories.
On 13 March, a World Health Organization report revealed that 57 Palestinian children had died from malnutrition in the first eleven days following the start of the Israeli aid blockade on March 2, averaging more than five child deaths per day.
While no updated figures have been officially released since then, human rights groups warn that the true number of starvation-related child deaths is likely far higher than reported. The collapse of health services, they say, has made comprehensive documentation impossible.
