GAZA CITY, Palestine / ISTANBUL

A worsening famine in the Gaza Strip has pushed a Palestinian journalist to go on a deliberate hunger strike in a desperate attempt to draw attention to the ongoing suffering of starving civilians in the Israel-besieged enclave.

“I can’t eat while children are dying of hunger in front of me,” Wadie Abu Saud told Anadolu.

Abu Saud, who lives in northern Gaza, began his strike four days ago after he saw an elderly woman collapsing and dying of starvation before his eyes.

“I saw a woman fall to the ground and die. She was the same age as my mother.”

With his body already weakened by months of war and food shortages, Abu Saud now survives solely on saltwater. He continues reporting, moving through Gaza’s battered streets with an empty stomach and a heavy heart.

Bearing witness to hunger

Since Israel imposed a full closure on Gaza’s border crossings in March, famine-like conditions have worsened dramatically across the enclave.

While humanitarian groups warn of a looming catastrophe, Gaza’s Health Ministry says that at least 111 people, most of them children, have already died of hunger.

Abu Saud, a father of four and correspondent for Yemen TV, is one of the few journalists who remained in northern Gaza when Israeli forces ordered mass evacuations in October 2023.

“I have seen massacres. I have seen displacement, destruction, starvation,” he said. “Now, I’m trying to wake the world up through my own hunger.”

His home was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. He was displaced repeatedly, moving from one shelter to another, trying to keep his family safe.

“Even if I survive, what kind of life is this?” he asked.

Empty stomach

Abu Saud’s voice breaks as he recalls a phone call with his 68-year-old mother.

“She asked me if I could bring her just half a kilo of lentils, or one piece of bread,” he said. “She has diabetes and heart disease. If she doesn’t eat, she could die.”

He couldn’t find either. And he couldn’t look her in the eye.

“This is the pain that crushes men,” he said. “To see your mother starving and be unable to help her.”

For four days, Abu Saud has consumed nothing but salt mixed with water — a method used by hunger strikers to maintain fluid balance.

“I may not have food,” he said, “but I still have my voice. And I will use it.”

His protest is not just personal. It is political, moral, and deeply human. He calls it a campaign of “empty stomachs and dignity.”

“I want the world to see what’s happening here — not through my camera, but through my own body,” he said.

Screams into silence

The journalist said he feels like he and his colleagues have been screaming into a void for the past 22 months — documenting war crimes, pleading for help, demanding justice.

“But it feels like we’re shouting at statues,” he said. “The world has eyes, but it refuses to see. It has ears, but refuses to listen.”

“I may die. But if I do, I will die with a clear conscience,” he added. “I will not betray the children of Gaza.”

Abu Saud says he will continue his hunger strike until “the smallest child in Gaza has something to eat.”

He ends the interview with a message that is both desperate and defiant.

“We don’t ask for much. We just want the right to feed our children. We just want the world to care.”

Israel has killed more than 59,200 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, collapsed the health system, and led to severe food shortages.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.