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Sebastian Bernburg
The Grotesque Injustice of Everyday Life in the West Bank
On Monday, July 28, Israeli settler Yinon Levi shot and killed Palestinian activist OdAugust 06 2025 – English
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Editor’s Note: This article is based on correspondence from Dr. Izeddin Shahin with the Institute for Palestine Studies throughout June and July of 2025, primarily through voice notes.
The blockade on Gaza has long served as a method of collective punishment. Since October 7, however, hunger itself has been transformed into a strategic instrument of war. Starvation here is not a metaphor. It is an engineered system designed to break bodies and spirits. Food and water are no longer simple necessities. They are frontlines. Every bite is a battle. Every swallow is a defiance of death. Hunger has become a silent bomb, detonating daily in the bellies of children and in the brittle bones of the elderly.
In Gaza's remaining hospitals, where care persists against all odds, the horror of this policy is laid bare. Dr. Izeddin Shahin is not merely a witness. His testimony serves as an indictment of a system that has weaponized absence itself. He does not speak in abstractions or data points. He describes hunger as it lives in the bloodwork of patients, in the exhausted faces of nurses, in the ghostly silence of empty operating rooms. His words are not just medical. They are political. They are urgent.
The Empty Markets and the Illusion of Aid
Over three months have passed since the crossings into Gaza were effectively sealed. The global media was briefly flooded with images of aid trucks entering the Strip, meant to soften the outrage and create an illusion of intervention. But inside Gaza, nothing changed. The markets remain empty. The shelves bare. The people hungrier than ever.
Only a few vegetables grown locally can still be found. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. Zucchini. Eggplants. Peppers. Their presence is not reassuring. It is cruel. A kilogram of tomatoes now costs 40 shekels ($12). Potatoes cost 50 ($14.58). Rice is 80 ($23.50). This is not a case of economic inflation. This is engineered scarcity. Meat, poultry, fish, fruit, even something as basic as a lemon have disappeared completely. What remains is out of reach for almost every family. This is not a food crisis. It is starvation by design.
The Collapse of Food Relief
The World Central Kitchen once provided lifelines to hospital kitchens. It fed both patients and exhausted medical teams. But it has now been silent for weeks*. There are no organizations left to fill the void. Even those willing to donate cannot find anything to purchase. The food has simply vanished. A kilogram of lentils, once considered a last resort staple for the poor, has increased from 2 shekels ($0.50) to 30 ($9). There is no nourishment left. Only survival tactics. Every meal is an act of resistance. Every sip of clean water is a borrowed breath.
The Starved Body
Inside the hospitals, the physical cost of this starvation is brutally visible. Anemia is everywhere. Where once adult patients showed hemoglobin levels around fourteen or fifteen, doctors now routinely see levels of eight or nine. Immune systems have collapsed. Bodies are no longer healing. Children show signs of protein deficiency, swelling in limbs, sunken eyes, skin flaking from bones. These are images more familiar from famine documentaries, not from Gaza's urban neighborhoods.
Surgical decisions are no longer based on injury but on hunger. Wounds that should have healed within days fester for weeks. Intestinal damage that could once be repaired is now simply cut away. Doctors do not have the luxury of hope. “There is no point in stitching tissue that has no protein to rebuild itself,” Shahin explains. He recounts a case where a 70-year-old woman suffered a simple fracture. In any functioning health system, she would have healed. In Gaza, her leg was amputated. A week of malnutrition turned a minor injury into a gangrenous emergency.
Shahin also recalls a colon cancer patient. The man underwent surgery to remove the tumor, but without proteins and vitamins, the wound failed to close. Internal leakage began. Infections followed. The man died within weeks. This is not an isolated case, but a daily pattern. Patients remain in hospitals for weeks, sometimes months, because their bodies are no longer capable of healing. The human body is not weak. It is being deliberately broken.
Medical Teams on the Brink
The doctors and nurses who are tasked with saving lives are themselves collapsing. Hunger has made fainting normal. Shahin, who teaches resuscitation to medical students, says one or two students pass out in nearly every class. “We are used to it,” he notes. “When a student falls unconscious, we just assume they have not eaten for two days. And we move on.” The normalization of collapse is perhaps the most chilling symptom of this crisis.
In operating rooms, surgeons faint mid-procedure. Nurses sit down to catch their breath between tasks. Some members of the medical staff now work with intravenous lines in their arms, infusing themselves with fluids while treating others. Shahin recently checked his own blood pressure and found it was lower than that of the injured patient he was caring for. “This is not a functioning health system,” he says. “This is a battlefield.”
The cost of living has become absurd. A falafel sandwich, once a shekel ($0.30), now costs fifteen ($4.50). Medical workers earn the equivalent of three hundred dollars every two months. That amount cannot even buy food for a week. They come to work without breakfast. They leave without dinner. They live on bread, if they can find it. On water, if they can afford it.
Hospitals on the Edge of Collapse
The healthcare system in Gaza is no longer overwhelmed. It is actively disintegrating. Hospitals have been pushed beyond the limits of function. They operate without adequate supplies, personnel, or electricity. Essential equipment is broken. Shelves that once held antibiotics, painkillers, surgical tools, and IV fluids now stand empty. There are no replacements on the way. Doctors are forced into impossible choices. Who receives the final dose of morphine. Who is given the last bag of saline. Who waits for oxygen that may never arrive.
The lack of hospital beds has turned corridors into wards. Patients lie on cold floors. Mothers cradle malnourished children next to trauma victims awaiting surgery. Wounded men moan beside the elderly, all of them hungry, many of them dying. And yet people still arrive, hoping against hope that the hospital will save them. “We have no space,” Shahin says, “but they keep coming. Because outside the hospital, there is only danger. There is no food. No help. No mercy.”
The hospitals themselves are no longer safe. Since the bombing of Al-Ma'madani (Al-Ahli Arab Baptist) Hospital, there are no red lines left. Shahin describes how, during a single morning shift, his hospital was struck by drones three times. “We ran,” he says. “We ducked. Then we returned to work.” The idea of the hospital as a sanctuary has died. What remains is only determination.
The Moral Burden
Starvation has created a cruel paradox for Gaza's doctors. They must treat everyone, even those responsible for the collapse. Looters. Armed civilians. People who attack aid convoys or break into hospital stores. They arrive wounded and begging for help. And the doctors help them. Not because they are forgiven. But because medicine does not have the privilege of revenge.
Shahin recounts performing surgery on a man who had stolen medical supplies from another hospital. The man had helped dismantle the system that was now trying to save him. “I looked at him,” Shahin said, “and I had to remind myself that ethics come first. That even if this man contributed to the hunger we suffer, I must still treat his wounds.”
The moral injury runs deep. Every moment spent on such a case is time stolen from a child. From a mother. From a newborn. From someone who had no hand in this devastation. This is the psychological toll the siege does not measure. It is not only bodies that are broken. It is consciences.
A War on Dignity
The crisis in Gaza is not the result of a natural disaster or poor governance. It is not famine in the abstract sense. It is famine as policy. Starvation here is not accidental. It is deliberate. By turning food into a tool of control and hunger into a method of war, Israel is conducting a slow, systematic form of execution.
What is happening is not a breakdown of services. It is the success of a strategy. The deliberate collapse of life. Children are not starving because food is scarce. They are starving because the borders are closed. Because aid is blocked. Because food convoys are targeted. This is not about war. This is about erasure.
Gaza is not starving. Gaza is being starved. And the world is watching.
The Doctor Who Refused to Look Away
Dr. Izeddin Shahin does not write reports. He writes warnings. His testimony is not administrative. It is urgent. It is filled with the details that break through political jargon and reach human truth. He is a man who teaches CPR while his students faint from hunger. He conducts surgeries with his own IV line in place. He fights collapse every hour, not only in his patients but in himself.
Shahin insists on naming the violence clearly. This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is colonial aggression by other means. His words are a form of resistance. When bombs fall and governments remain silent, doctors like Shahin speak. He is not neutral. He is not calm. He is documenting an extermination.
To normalize this suffering is to be complicit in it. That is the message Shahin carries. That is the warning he issues to the world. In a place where dying quietly is the only option left, Shahin is choosing to shout.
A Plea to the World: Do Not Look Away
There is still time. Barely. But there is. The people of Gaza are not asking for miracles. They are asking for food. For medicine. For safe passage. For the bare minimum required to live. But above all, they are asking to be seen. They are asking the world to admit that this is not a tragedy. It is a crime.
Dr. Shahin ends his account with a call. A call for public pressure. For outrage. For action. “The hunger is growing every hour,” he warns. “The aid trucks are a trick. A lie for the cameras. Meanwhile, we are dying.”
The time for watching has passed. Every moment of silence is another child's ribs showing through their skin. Another patient lost on an operating table without supplies. Another body in the rubble. The world must act. Not tomorrow. Not when it is too late. Now.
Because this is not famine. This is a weapon. And it must be disarmed.
* Editor’s note: This is based on correspondence from June 2025. On May 7, 2025, World Central Kitchen (WCK) reported that it had run out of ingredients and would no longer be able to provide food aid. On June 21, 2025, WCK recieved limited supplies and was able to reopen kitchens at a “reduced scale.” A month later, on July 20, ingredients ran out and further supplies were blocked from entering. As per the latest WCK report from July 25, 2025, extremely limited supplies have been allowed in and cooking continues on a day to day basis.
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