artBed Al Rahman, a boy, brings the weight of his family’s hunger when he went to the streets of Gaza to find bread. He had the money to his father, but when he saw the running of people who pushed a site to distribute food in Rafah, he was hungry.
Almost immediately, the site came down to chaos. Gun. Drones. After a flash, shrapnel from a tank tank that is broken by his little body. When I met him in a hospital in Khan Yoenis – where the painkillers, like food, lacking – 13-year-old pain. “I have shrapnel inside my body they can’t get,” he said to me. “I’m in real pain; since 6am I’ve asked for a disease.” As he told the unrest, his father’s composition was broken, and tears flowed into his face. Will he lose his son just because Abed Al Rahman wants his family to eat?
Abed Al Rahman is trying to get food from a new private and militarized distribution on Gaza site. Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is fun help through some southern places guarded by private contractors and Israeli soldiers. At some point of distribution, those who are able to travel forced to travel long, dangerous distance – risk their lives for intense inadequate value of supplies.
In the first week of GHF operations, there is Five events in mass casualties In the neighborhood of distribution sites as desperate civilians were met with gunfire and tank. Kids killed. The UN ad’s chief, Tom Fletcher, said The sites make “hungry a bargaining chip” and “a fig leaf for extra violence and transition”. A system that prevents UN with, in fact, keeps the person away. In fact, the distribution of politeness is unsafe for all involved – last week, GHF said eight of local team members and volunteers killed.
And while it is critical that there is a study of this fatal lack of help for Palestinians, the daily killings and mocking children have become a thought. This is my fifth mission to Gaza since the woods on 7 October, and all the time almost never done to stop the most deadly conflict in the world in recent memory. There is more than 50,000 children reportedly killed or injured in 20 months. Fifty thousand.
In the same morning I met Abed Rahman, I talked to 24-year-old Sheima, was also hospitalized. He also, went to one of GHF distribution sites. Different day, the same story: his family denied the man who helps months. It became hungry for hunger, his father was sick of traveling, Heima reached a site. Again, gunfire. Meal boxes thrown in dirt. “I saw the dead bodies of the earth,” He said to me. “The people who rotate them, just trying to get food.” In the worker, Sheima was disturbed by the wire – his leg and arm opened as he tried to flight. He has no food. “Although I almost died, I will come back,” he said. “I am the firstborn of my family – we need food to live. I want to die full of stomach, not from hunger.”
These raw testimonians have strengthened two critical questions. First, if the UN and International non-Governmental Organizations external organizations outside Gaza Living Rubber, why have a fatal lack of humanitarian help in Gaza? And second, these sites run by private contractors can solve the crisis?
At the first point, after a general disruption of all items to go to Gaza from early March to 19, the UNICEF program is allowed to carry some selected items. Meanwhile, the integrated classification of the security phase phase warned last month That all 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza are facing useless food. Lack of access to clean water is pushed to death level.
In the absence of incessant bombing, restrictions on the subsidies and abandon the civilian population, the risk of hunger is not only possible, but especially for families in Gaza. From the end of the flood until May this year, admissions of malnutrition between children aged under five surged in approximately 150%with a steep climb in extreme cases. This is not a trend – it’s a urgent warning.
And in the second question, did GHF prevent hunger? The fact is, very little help is distributed from very distant distribution points, all among the worries that families traveling to the south are not allowed to return.
It’s not how you avoid hunger. Before collapse of the latest ceasefire, the UN describes an effective delivery system with Gaza. And during the stop, we deliver help from over 400 points of distribution of territory. Access to food, safe water, medicine and skyrocket. Even the UNICEF went to the door-at-door to reach malnourished children.
The UNICEF continues to call for a ceasefire, children’s protection, release hostages and access full help. We know what it takes to be delivered for children in emergencies – it is the same as every crisis and every conflict since World War II. Children need nutritious food in scale, safety, clean water and dignity. Not security operators. Not indiscriminate fire. Unrestricted.
The wheel is not required to restore. We have sent the help of the scale at the stop stop, and we can again. We just have to allow our jobs to do.
Abed Al Rahman died on his wounds on 17 June 2025, after writing this article.
James Elder is the Global Spokesperson in UNICEF
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