Mohamed was born in Gaza and on July 18th was buried in Gaza. Although in this case, the refugee camp bearing that name is located near the Jordanian city of Jerash.
"The martyr child Mohamed Imad Abu Hussein, from the Gaza Strip", reads the humble tombstone crowning the grave, bordered by bricks. Below, to the right, is the date of his death: July 18, 2025.
Gaza, the Jordanian enclave, was established in 1968 to accommodate thousands of Palestinian refugees from that territory who were displaced by the war initiated by Israel in 1967.
Amani Sleiman Abu Hussein's uncles, 29, have never seen their homeland again. For the young Palestinian woman, Mohamed's mother, this is also the first time she can leave an enclave that has served as an isolated ghetto by the Israeli army for almost two decades.
Israeli authorities allowed her to travel to Jordan on July 2, when Mohamed's condition had deteriorated so much that it was almost impossible to recognize him in the photos from those days. Amani shows a snapshot from before the war began where the boy appears chubby and smiling. In the next one, three months before he was evacuated, his arms are just bones with some skin. In the last one, on the day of his arrival in Amman, the five-year-old boy appears unconscious and hooked up to a nasogastric feeding tube.
"Before the war [which began in October 2023], he weighed about 12 kilos. In the end, only five kilos," explains the mother. "I could only give him some bread with tea and lentils. There were months when we only had tree leaf soup," she adds.
Mohamed Imad suffered from a rare mental illness that required medication, which ran out a few months into the Israeli siege, and a diet rich in fruits and vegetables that has become a utopia in that geographic area for a long time.
"When he arrived, we had to admit him directly to the Intensive Care Unit. The lack of food had extremely worsened his condition. I think he suffered from refeeding syndrome [when the body is unable to assimilate new foods] and it was fatal," says Annas Murazad, a pediatrician at Al Khalidi Hospital in Amman.
According to Ghaleb Eltaji Elfaronqi, a director at the same medical center, Mohamed Imad was part of the last group of Palestinian patients evacuated from Gaza who have arrived in Jordan. "Six children came along with their families. All, children and relatives, suffered from malnutrition. Some in a very advanced state," he explains.
Hunger has become the main scourge of the Palestinian population in Gaza despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denying the existence of a famine on July 27. "Israel is being portrayed as if we are implementing a famine campaign in Gaza. What a blatant lie! There is no famine in Gaza", he declared unabashedly at a public event in Jerusalem. His words have been called into question by the images coming from the Strip and the physical condition of the Palestinians evacuated in recent weeks from that besieged territory.
Mohamed Imad's death adds to that of Marah Abu Zuhri, 20, who died last week in Italy after being transferred in critical condition from the Palestinian territory. The young woman suffered from leukemia, which worsened rapidly due to severe malnutrition, as indicated by Italian doctors. Experts consulted at the four hospitals visited in Jordan and Lebanon that have received Palestinian patients agree that all newcomers - patients and relatives - are in the same precarious state caused by food shortages.
Doctors warn that the first fatalities of a very real humanitarian crisis - with deaths due to hunger exceeding 250, according to statistics from the authorities in the Strip - will be precisely the thousands of Palestinians who require urgent evacuation, suffering from chronic diseases or serious injuries caused by the war. A contingent that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates to be close to 15,000, according to figures released at the end of July.
The same organization stated that Tel Aviv has only allowed the transfer of 3% of them to a foreign country, refuting the figures provided by the Israeli state. For example, Jordan has only managed to evacuate about 270 Palestinians from there, says Dr. Fawzi al Hammouri, involved in assisting Gaza for years.
"Children with illnesses are the first ones dying. Those with congenital diseases, respiratory problems, heart conditions. They were already high-risk patients and cannot withstand the lack of food. But if the blockade continues, the little ones who were not sick before will start to die. Hunger kills the weak first. Then the rest.", adds Al Hammouri.
At six years old, Najwa should weigh like any Spanish child, a little over 20 kilos. She arrived weighing six. Her mother, Islam Hajjaj, 35, recalls that at one point she went "a week without eating." The veil barely hides a gaunt, bony face, still far from recovering from the effects of hunger. "I fainted several times," she adds.
The last time was two days before managing to escape from the city of Gaza, the last place she had to go. "I went for water and fell on the street," she recounts.
Next to her, in a neighboring bed at Al Khalidi Hospital, Wafa Kitnani, 25, and mother of Sabah, only two, remembers that she lost 13 kilos during the 17 months of the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. "There were several occasions when I went two days without eating," she points out as her little one wanders around the room. "The price of lentils reached 40 shekels [10 euros] per kilo when before [October 2023], that was the price of a sack [of 25 kilos]," she says.
The humanitarian collapse facing Gaza has multiplied the suffering of the Palestinians. We are not yet witnessing the images seen in Africa, with thousands of human skeletons consumed by hunger or children with swollen bellies due to lack of proteins. But all organizations and NGOs operating in Gaza insist that their analyses do not deceive.
The latest report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs counted 13,000 new admissions of children with acute malnutrition last July.
The MSF clinic in the Gaza capital has seen a quadrupling of such cases since May 18.
"The malnutrition rate among children under five has quadrupled in two months, reaching 16.5%, indicating a sharp deterioration in nutrition and a marked increase in the risk of death from hunger and malnutrition," stated the World Food Program in a recent report.
Tel Aviv banned the entry of any aid in March and only partially relaxed this decision in May. Eleven weeks of an absolute embargo devastated the already failing health of a population already suffering from shortages since the first months of the Israeli onslaught.
The director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, Amjad al-Shawa, estimated a few days ago that, although Israel has allowed limited aid into the Strip, land and air shipments of food only cover "between 10 and 12% of the enormous needs." "There are 300,000 children who require food supplements, but the aid is only sufficient for 10%" of that number, he added.
Palestinians who have been able to leave Gaza in recent weeks denounce not only the deprivation of food but also the crimes they say they witnessed during the distribution of Israeli-sponsored aid alongside the paramilitary GHF association.
"I saw death before my eyes," exclaims Akram Abu Aqar, who arrived in Jordan on July 11. He entered the medical facility weighing 57 kilos. He had reached 88 on the scale before October 2023. "I went to one of those [humanitarian aid delivery] points on June 15. You have to go at 3:00 in the morning. An Israeli soldier got out of a jeep and just shot at the people. He killed four. He got back in the vehicle and left. It's as if they were hunting us. We had to carry out the dead and wounded on carts pulled by donkeys," he mentions.
The food shortage has triggered miscarriages, premature babies, diabetic crises, and—simply put—multiplied the number of infections caused by the inability to heal the wounds suffered by Palestinians.
"My colleagues tell me they've never seen so many cases of bones that don't solidify. There's no calcium in the body," says British doctor Gassan Abu Sittah, whose foundation is trying to get another 30 children out of Gaza.
This assessment is echoed by Mohamed Ziara, a 38-year-old Palestinian surgeon who has settled in Lebanon. The doctor confirms that as early as March of last year—the last time he practiced in Gaza—"100% of my patients had wound-healing problems. There are no proteins to generate skin or cells. Now, hospitals no longer provide any food. How can a wounded person heal like that?" he says.
"I lost 16 kilos in the seven months I spent in Gaza, and at that time the situation wasn't as disastrous as it is now. My daily meal for weeks was juice and three dates. The famine didn't happen overnight. It was planned down to the last detail," he recalls.
Mohamed Ziara, Gassan Abu Sittah, and the nutrition expert, Jordanian doctor Basem Abu Baker, are among the group of specialists who warn that the siege imposed by Israel is leaving an irreversible mark on the physical development of future generations.
Abu Baker explains this at the Islamic Hospital in Amman, in the presence of Manar Abu Adra's children: Rajaf, eight, and Ragal, three. "They have clear signs of stunted growth. They are very short, well below the normal average. The normal Gazan diet was never splendid, but now, if they're lucky, they only eat pasta or rice," he notes.
The youngest of the family, a 14-month-old girl, never made it to Jordan. She was killed by a stray bullet that shattered her head. Manar recalls that at that moment she was nothing more than "bones." "I couldn't breastfeed her. I had no milk. And I couldn't find formula anywhere."
"All the children we've treated have iron and vitamin B-12 deficiencies. They're acquired by eating meat, but who has meat these days in Gaza?" asks Al Hammouri.
Sitting in his office at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, Abu Sittah recalls how the use of hunger has been a constant in the history of colonial projects. "It was used by England in Ireland, France in Algeria, and now Israel in Palestine," he reasons. "It's part of a deliberate Israeli strategy, and for the next Palestinian generation, it's already too late. They will never be able to recover from the damage they have suffered," he concludes.
The Gaza refugee camp in Jerash is one of the poorest enclaves in the Jordanian kingdom. A labyrinth of shacks with tin roofs, they share one passion: they stay connected day and night to Al Jazeera radio to follow the developments of the terrible siege suffered by the strip from which most of them originate.
"My eyes hurt from crying so much," observes Amani Sleiman's grandmother, Hamda, an elderly woman born in Rafah, in southern Gaza, in 1948. For Amani, Mohamed's death doesn't end her ordeal. She was able to leave Gaza with another of her children, but her husband and her last child, Masal, six months old, remained behind. "If I go back, we'll all die of hunger, and if I stay, they'll be the ones who die of hunger. I'm caught between two fires," she says.