A young Palestinian boy with blond curly hair stood near a shelter west of Gaza City on Tuesday, his black trousers and sandals flecked with dust.
Video obtained by source showed the child alongside more than a dozen peers at the displacement shelter, carrying Arabic and English slogans to protest Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip. Israeli authorities insist there is no limit on aid that can enter Gaza, but the UN has warned that persistent bombardment and reduced land routes have caused “full-blown famine” in the north.
“Why is it that every time I ask my mother for an apple, she tells me we don’t have it?” one Palestinian child said. “I want marshmallows. I want chips. I want biscuits. I want lollipops. Why do we not have these things?”
Nadia Al-Sayed, a local aid worker at the demonstration, said Palestinian children deserve “the right to eat, and to demand healthy food and clean drink.” “Children have become malnourished,” she added. More than 3,500 children are at risk of starving to death due to food shortages in Gaza, the Government Media Office there reported on Monday.
“The health situation in the entire Gaza Strip, and in the north, is tragic and requires urgent intervention,” Dr. Saeed Al-Salah, a consultant pediatrician and neonatologist, told source. “We demand that efforts be combined to stop this war on children, women and the elderly.”
“We want our rights,” said Iman, another young child. “We hope that the crossings will be opened, the war will end, and life will return as before.”
