Gaza extermination: What is your last thought when you’re starving to death?

On Sunday alone, at least 18 Palestinians died of hunger in Gaza, as Israel continues to enforce a systematic starvation policy on the territory’s two million residents.

I have been haunted by the thought: what goes through someone’s mind as they take their final breaths because of starvation?

Every time I try to distract myself, a notification pops up on my screen with another name, another death by starvation, pulling me back into this relentless loop. What did they think of at the very end?

I have an idea of what runs through a person’s mind as they are about to be killed in an air strike. Most people in Gaza do. We have had those thoughts so often that they are embedded in our nervous system; they will never fully leave, even decades after this genocide ends.

I also understand the type of thoughts that consume people dying due to the lack of medical care. I lived that moment with someone very close to me. I looked into their eyes as they took their final breaths. I could almost hear their thoughts.

But starvation is different. I picture someone lying on a bed, dying in total silence – a silence so powerful it can kill bones, muscles, flesh and blood. A silence stronger than the 125,000 tonnes of explosives that have been dropped on Gaza over the past 21 months. A silence that keeps borders sealed and food blocked from entry.

What do they feel, knowing that they have survived thousands of air strikes, artillery shells, field executions, epidemics and the collapse of the health system, only to die because they could not get the bare minimum calories a human needs to stay alive?

Do they feel betrayed by humanity?

Recalling a last meal

Or do they just think about food, craving it? Do they picture themselves around a large table, surrounded by family, steam rising from hot pots, laughter in the air, the clinking of spoons and forks on glass plates?

Does their failing mind try to recall the last meal they had? Does it start tricking them into smelling a favourite dish?

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Perhaps food is the last thing they think of in that moment. Maybe, for the first time in months, they feel full – not in their stomach, but in their soul. Perhaps there is a sense of completion; they can no longer lose parts of themselves, pieces of their dignity, as they queue for a hot meal or run through a hail of bullets among starving crowds near an aid distribution site. 

Maybe they finally understand it was never worth it; that the world did not deserve their desperate attempts to stay alive and be a part of it. That, for the first time in their lives, they have been set free from occupation, as the nations of the world remain occupied.

These are Gaza’s taxi stories now, snapshots of an entire population quietly wasting away

I have always believed that taxis are a reflection of what is happening in a society. You get in, and you’re immediately immersed in conversations about soaring prices, the unbearable heat, and the inevitable political analysis from drivers and passengers, which always outlasts the journey.

Back when I still had my car, before the fuel crisis, I used to miss those raw, unfiltered connections. Every now and then, I would leave my car parked and take a taxi, just to experience it again.

Last week, on my way to work, I got into a taxi where a young woman was holding a newborn baby. Under the scorching sun and in the suffocating heat, I looked at the infant sleeping on his mother’s lap, and said: “Poor baby, he looks hot.”

“He’s just sleepy,” she replied. “He hasn’t slept all night.”

I asked why. “He never gets enough from breastfeeding,” she said. “I’m taking him to the doctor.”

Going to bed hungry

She went on to explain that her one-month-old baby was suffering from severe malnutrition. He had previously weighed around 3.8 kilogrammes, but instead of gaining weight, he’d now fallen to 3.3 kg. Her breast milk, she told me, no longer carries enough nutrients – because she herself is malnourished, and she can’t find baby formula anywhere.

A few weeks earlier, I shared a taxi with a woman and her daughter. The little girl, curious and playful, kept touching my bag and glancing up at me for a reaction. I smiled and played along for a while before turning to her mother and saying: “God bless her. How old is she?”

“Five,” the woman replied. I smiled again, then turned to look out the window, thinking: that’s not the hand of a five-year-old. Her hand was far too small and thin, even for a three-year-old.

I have genuinely lost count of how many mothers I have met on my way to work, heading to hospitals with their children, fragile, sunken-eyed, starving.

These are Gaza’s taxi stories now, snapshots of an entire population quietly wasting away.

But it is not just the taxis. It is the pharmacies with empty shelves, the hospitals with no supplies, the markets without food, and the homes where children go to bed hungry night after night.

What happens in Gaza’s taxis is just one window into a society being starved in every aspect of life.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.