starve

On July 27, the Palestinian Ministry of Education released the results of the secondary education certificate exams, also known as tawjihi. Like every year, families sat together, eyes fixed on phone screens, hearts pounding, everyone hoping to be the first to access the ministry’s website and break the news with a jubilant shout. There were joyful tears and celebrations.

Thousands of students, who had endured months of pressure, sleepless nights and fragile hope, had the exam results in their hands that would determine whether and where they could continue their education.

But thousands of others – those in Gaza – were sitting in their tents and ruined homes in despair. I am one of them. This is the second year I, along with 31,000 other Palestinians born in 2006, was unable to take the tawjihi. For another year, we have been stripped of our right to continue our education and of the hope to build a future beyond the ruins. Now, we are joined by almost 40,000 students born in 2007, who are also stuck in this dreadful limbo.

Last year, when the tawjihi results were announced, I was huddled in front of a crackling fire near a tattered tent, far too small to hold my big dreams. The deep frustration I felt didn’t fade – it settled in my mind and stayed. All I could think about was how all my sacrifices, tears, and relentless effort during a full year of studying under difficult circumstances had been for nothing.

This year, it feels even worse. Not only are my dreams of education crushed, now I struggle to keep myself and my family alive, as Gaza is starving to death.

In these two years, I have watched our education system destroyed, classroom by classroom. My school, Shohada al-Nusierat, once a place of learning and dreams, first became a shelter housing displaced families and then a target for Israeli bombing. My schoolbag – once filled with notebooks and study materials – now carries essential documents and a change of clothes, always packed and ready in case we are forced to flee our home again. The academic calendar, with all its important dates, has been replaced by a grim schedule of air strikes, displacement, and loss of friends and loved ones.

Amid this devastation, the Education Ministry has struggled to keep an educational process going. Wanting to give Gaza’s children and youth hope, it has undertaken various initiatives to try to keep students motivated. Makeshift schools have been organised wherever possible, while some university students have been able to continue their education online.

For us, the tawjihi students, efforts were repeatedly made to set up our exams. Last year, the ministry announced it would conduct the exams in February. I kept studying, despite the harsh reality and the collapse of everything around me, believing this was my chance to move forward.

February passed, and nothing happened. The ministry then announced that the exams would be held in April. But once again, they were postponed due to the unsafe conditions. Then, in June, the ministry scheduled an online exam for July for students born in 2005 who had either failed their tawjihi or missed some of its exams; they were supposed to have done this exam in December 2023. Some 1,500 students were able to take the tests online.

This gave me a bit of hope that my turn would also come, but that quickly faded. The Ministry of Education hasn’t given us any updates on the process, and it feels like we’ve been completely forgotten in the shadow of war and starvation.

Some readers may ask themselves, why amid a genocide are Palestinians so preoccupied with an exam?

You have to understand, tawjihi is a milestone in every Palestinian’s life – a decisive moment that shapes future paths for at least the next five years. It determines whether we can pursue our education in the field we desire and gain admission to top universities.

But beyond academics, tawjihi carries a much deeper cultural and emotional weight. It is not just an educational phase – it is part of our identity, a symbol of perseverance. In a place where the occupation closes nearly every door, education is able to keep a few doors still open.

That’s why we celebrate it like a national holiday; the day tawjihi results are released feels like a third Eid for Palestinians. It gives families hope, brings pride to entire neighbourhoods, and keeps alive the dream of a better future.

Over the many months I waited for the tawjihi, I held on to my dream to study medicine at a prestigious university abroad. I kept applying for scholarships and sending emails to universities across the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe, hoping for special consideration as a student affected by war. I pleaded with university administrators to waive the tawjihi certificate requirement.

But the responses were painfully consistent: “Unfortunately, we cannot consider your application unless you provide your final diploma.”

Today, despair and helplessness are not the only unwanted visitors I have. Hunger is another one. The starvation has destroyed not only my body but also my mental health.

Most days, we manage to have one meal. We survive mostly on canned beans, dry bread, or rice without any vegetables or protein. Our bodies are weak, our faces pale, and our energy almost nonexistent. The effects go beyond the physical. Hunger fogs the brain, dulls memory and crushes motivation. It becomes nearly impossible to focus, let alone study for a life-changing exam like the tawjihi. How can I prepare for the most important exam of my life when my stomach is empty and my mind clouded by fatigue and worry?

It feels as though my youth has been stolen before my eyes, and I can do nothing but watch. While my peers around the world are building their futures, I remain stuck in a place of overwhelming pain and loss.

As a tawjihi student trapped in a warzone, I urgently call on educational authorities and international institutions to step in and implement immediate solutions to ensure our right to education is not buried under the rubble of war.

We are not asking for much. Giving us a chance to finish our secondary education in Gaza is not just a matter of logistics, but a matter of justice and future survival.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Israel is “engineering chaos and massacres” in the Gaza Strip by continuing to block aid deliveries and opening fire on starving Palestinians seeking desperately needed food supplies, a humanitarian official has warned.

Caroline Willemen, Gaza project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera on Friday that food remains “critically scarce” in the besieged enclave despite the increased entry of aid in recent days.

“There is little indication that sufficient aid will arrive consistently,” Willemen said. “As a result, every day, people risk their lives in a desperate search for food.”

The Gaza Health Ministry said on Friday that three more people, including two children, died of hunger and malnutrition in the previous 24 hours.

That pushed the total number of starvation-related deaths to 162, including 92 children, since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.

More than 80 Palestinians were also killed in Israeli strikes across the Strip on Friday, medical sources told Al Jazeera. Of those, 49 people were killed and more than 270 others were wounded while seeking aid, the sources said.

Condemnation of Israel’s starvation policy in Gaza has grown this week, with a global hunger monitoring system warning on Tuesday that the “worst-case scenario of famine” was unfolding.

While Israel has authorised a series of aid airdrops in recent days, top United Nations officials have denounced the scheme as expensive and dangerous while urging Israel to allow unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza.

“If there is political will to allow airdrops – which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), wrote on X.

“As the people of #Gaza are starving to death, the only way to respond to the famine is to flood Gaza with assistance.”

Olga Cherevko, an official with the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA), also told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza that while there has been a slight increase in aid being allowed in, it is still grossly insufficient.

“The slight increase in what is coming in is not nearly enough to even scratch the surface,” she said. “The needs on the ground are overwhelming.”

‘Deadly incidents a daily reality’

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza continue to risk their lives by seeking aid at notorious sites run by the United States- and Israeli-backed GHF.

Ibrahim Mekki, a Palestinian man from Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, said he waited at least six hours and risked being shot by Israeli forces just to end up with a few bags of pasta.

“It’s a trap, a game,” he told Al Jazeera. “Letting you move a little, then opening fire.”

The UN’s human rights office reported that at least 1,373 aid seekers have been killed in Gaza since May, when the GHF began operating in the enclave.

Of those, 859 people were killed near GHF-run aid sites and 514 were killed while waiting along food convoy routes, the office said. “Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military,” it added.

MSF’s Willemen also recounted a harrowing incident from earlier this week, when Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians attempting to reach aid trucks near the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza.

“People were wounded in the gunfire and in the crush as crowds panicked and ran,” she said.

“These deadly incidents have become a daily reality in Gaza for too long now. The current methods of distribution are engineering chaos and massacres.”

Still, Israel and its top ally, the US, have continued to support GHF despite the killings and growing global criticism of the group’s operations in Gaza.

US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, also visited the enclave on Friday alongside US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to “assess conditions” and engage with GHF.

Witkoff said the trip aimed to help “craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.

The Trump administration announced last month that it approved $30m to support GHF’s operations.

The US provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel annually, as well as diplomatic backing at the UN – assistance that has increased significantly since the start of the war on Gaza.

At least 15 people, including a six-week-old baby, have starved to death in the last 24 hours in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to health officials, who say a wave of hunger that has loomed over the bombarded enclave for months is now finally crashing down.

Six-week-old Yousef’s family could not find baby formula to feed him, said his uncle, Adham al-Safadi.

“You can’t get milk anywhere, and if you do find any, it’s $100 for a tub,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Three other children were among the 15 people who died from starvation on Tuesday, including 13-year-old Abdulhamid al-Ghalban, who died in a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, at least 101 people, including 80 children, have died from hunger and malnutrition since Israel launched its assault on Gaza in October 2023. Most of the deaths have come in the last few weeks.

Gaza has seen its food stocks run out since Israel cut off all supplies to the territory in March. Israel then partially lifted the blockade in May, allowing a trickle of aid supplies to enter the territory and be distributed by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), largely bypassing the United Nations.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since May while trying to get aid, mostly near the GHF distribution sites, according to the UN rights office.

The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, Phillipe Lazzarini, said the aid distribution scheme was a “sadistic death trap”.

“The so called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a licence to kill,” Lazzarini said on Tuesday on X.

Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid, without providing evidence of widespread diversion, and blames UN agencies for failing to deliver food it has allowed in.

The GHF has rejected what it said were “false and exaggerated statistics” from the UN.

‘Horror show’

Lazzarini also warned that the UN agency’s staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty in Gaza due to hunger and exhaustion.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the situation for the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza facing bombardment, malnutrition and starvation a “horror show”, with “a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times.

“We are seeing the last gasp of a humanitarian system built on humanitarian principles,” Guterres told the UN Security Council. “That system is being denied the conditions to function.”

Speaking to reporters, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, said malnourished Palestinians were arriving at Gaza’s remaining functioning hospitals “every moment”, and warned that there could be “alarming numbers” of deaths due to starvation.

“Hospitals are already overwhelmed by the number of casualties from gunfire. They can’t provide much more help for hunger-related symptoms because of food and medicine shortages,” said Khalil al-Daqran, the spokesperson for Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Deqran said some 600,000 people were suffering from malnutrition, including at least 60,000 pregnant women. Symptoms among those going hungry include dehydration and anaemia, he said.

While Gaza has widespread shortages of goods due to the Israeli restrictions, baby formula, in particular, is in critically short supply, according to aid groups, doctors and residents.

In a statement, Hamas said it was time to “break the restrictions” and allow for more aid to enter Gaza, adding that it was surprised by the “silence” of Arab and Islamic countries in light of the “systematic genocide and criminal starvation” in the enclave.

Deadly attacks continue

Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 81 other Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza on Tuesday, including 31 people who were seeking aid.

Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defence, said Israeli strikes on the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.

In Gaza City, an Israeli attack on a building housing displaced Palestinians killed 15 people, including six children, according to a source at al-Shifa Hospital.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Israeli air strikes hit residential clusters in the eastern part of the city, particularly the Zeitoun neighbourhood. A “group of people” was hit, he said.

The attacks come a day after Israeli tanks pushed into southern and eastern parts of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza for the first time since the deadly assault began.

According to Mahmoud, “many Palestinians are unable to go back to their homes as they are in the firing line of heavy artillery”, despite claims by the Israeli army that it has concluded its assault in Deir el-Balah.

“Quadcopters and surveillance drones also hover over the area, creating an atmosphere of intimidation and fear,” Mahmoud said.

The Civil Defence agency’s Bassal said two people were killed in Deir el-Balah on Tuesday.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the area, which, until the Israeli offensive this week, had been considered the only relatively safe area in the tiny Strip.

Some 30,000 were living in displacement camps.

OCHA said that nearly 88 percent of the entire Gaza Strip was now either under evacuation threats or within Israeli militarised zones, forcing the population into an ever-shrinking space.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, meanwhile, accused Israeli troops of entering its staff residence and forcing women and children to evacuate, as they handcuffed, stripped and interrogated male staff at gunpoint.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 60,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to health officials.

Gaza’s health ministry says 18 people have starved to death in the last 72-hours, including four children. Experts say the famine is predictable and planned. This is how some people are trying to stay alive.

Two babies died of starvation in Gaza due to Israel’s continuing blockade of vital aid. The deaths come as the US approved $30 million in funding for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get food from its aid centres.

On World Hunger Day, Palestinians continue to starve in Gaza, a day after a chaotic rush on an Israeli- and US-backed distribution point delivering the first aid since Israel’s March blockade. Some Israelis oppose even this minimal relief. Here’s what they’ve been saying.