As crowds gathered at a food distribution point in northern Gaza, six-year-old Ismail Abu Odeh fought his way to the front.

“Give me some,” he called out.

His bowl was filled with lentils, but as he made his way back, it was knocked out of his hands. He returned to his family’s tent crying.

An uncle who had managed to get some food later shared some with Ismail.

The following day, no deliveries of water or food arrived at the displacement camp where he lives, located in a school in Gaza City, and the people gathered there were left with empty bottles and bowls. Ismail cried again.

The BBC has spent the past two days speaking to people across Gaza, as Israel ramps up its military action and continues a more than 10-week total blockade on food, medical supplies and other aid.

There are mounting warnings from the United Nations and others that the enclave is on the brink of famine.

The Israeli government insists there is “no shortage” of food in Gaza and that the “real crisis is Hamas looting and selling aid”.

Government ministers have described the stoppage of aid as a “main pressure lever” to secure victory over Hamas and get all the hostages out. There are still 58 hostages in Gaza, up to 23 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel does not allow international journalists free access to Gaza, so our communication has been over phone calls and WhatsApp messages, and through trusted Palestinian freelancers who live in the territory.

Those who spoke to the BBC described their struggle to find even one meal a day, with food kitchens shutting down because of the shortages and few items in the markets. Items that are still available are at highly inflated prices that they cannot afford, they said.

A man running one of the remaining food kitchens in Gaza said he was operating “day by day” to find food and oil. Another man we spoke to said the kitchen he volunteered at had closed 10 days ago when supplies ran out, describing it as a “disastrous feeling”.

One 23-year-old woman living in north Gaza said “dizziness has become a constant feeling” as well as “general weakness and fatigue from the lack of food and medicine”.

Adham al-Batrawi, 31, who used to live in the affluent city of al-Zahra but is now displaced in central Gaza, said hunger was “one of the most difficult parts of daily life”.

He said people had to get “creative just to survive”, describing through WhatsApp messages how he would over-cook pasta and knead it into a dough before cooking it over a fire to create an imitation of bread – a staple in the Palestinian diet.

“We’ve invented ways to cook and eat that we never imagined we’d need,” he said.

He added that the one meal a day he had been eating recently was “just enough to get us through the day, but it’s far from enough to meet our energy needs”.

Elsewhere in central Gaza, in the city of Deir al-Balah, nurse Rewaa Mohsen said it was a struggle to provide for her two young daughters, aged three and 19 months.

She said she had stockpiled nappies during the ceasefire earlier this year but that these would run out in a month.

Speaking over WhatsApp on Thursday, she said her daughters had grown used to the sounds of bombing that would ring through the apartment. “Sometimes I feel more afraid than them,” she wrote, adding that she would distract her children with colouring books and toys.

The next day, over voice note she said evacuation orders had been issued for her area before an Israeli strike hit a nearby building.

When she returned to her home to “clean the mess”, she found that the doors and windows had been blown off.

“Thank God that I am still alive with my girls,” she said.

When asked if she would stay in the apartment, she responded: “Where else will I go?”

Across Gaza, medics described the impact of the blockade on medical supplies and said they no longer felt safe at work following Israeli strikes targeting hospitals.

Nurse Randa Saied said she was working at the European Hospital in Khan Younis when it was hit in an Israeli strike this week, describing it as a moment of “pure terror and helplessness”.

Israel has long accused Hamas of using hospitals as covert bases and for weapons storage, which the group denies.

The European Hospital is no longer operating, but Randa said staff and patients had moved to the nearby Nasser Hospital.

“Our patients are mothers, sons, daughters and siblings – just like us. We know deep in our hearts that our duty must not end, especially now when they need us the most,” she said.

Staff at Nasser and other hospitals in Gaza told the BBC the blockade meant they were running short on basic supplies like painkillers and gauze, and had to shut down some services.

The US has confirmed that a new system for providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza through private companies is being prepared, with Israeli forces set to secure the centres’ perimeters. The United Nations has criticised the plan, saying it appears to “weaponise” aid.

Back in Gaza City, Ismail’s father said he struggled with no longer being able to provide for his six children.

“My children go to sleep hungry,” he said. “Sometimes I sit and cry like a little kid if I don’t manage to provide food for them.”

Hospitals among targets of Israeli air strikes this week

On a single day this week, two hospitals in Gaza were hit by Israeli strikes, according to hospitals and first responders.

On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes dropped six bombs simultaneously at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, killing 28 people and injuring dozens, the Hamas-run civil defence agency said.

Dr Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon who was working with the Ideals international aid charity in the hospital, told the BBC the explosions had directly hit with “no warning whatsoever”.

The Israeli military said it had conducted a “precise strike” on “Hamas terrorists in a command and control centre” which it claimed was beneath the hospital.

The dead and wounded were transferred to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which had been hit by another strike earlier on Tuesday, killing two people, according to medical sources and eyewitnesses.

In a statement, the Israeli military said Hamas “continues” to use hospitals in Gaza for its activities – a long-standing Israeli allegation which the group denies.

The BBC obtained and analysed video footage of the European Hospital strike and the kind of bombs used.

IT was April 1994. Pakistan’s army chief Gen Waheed Kakar was on an official visit to Washington. Pakistan was under military and economic sanctions imposed by the US on the nuclear issue in 1990. As a result, a wide range of military equipment including 28 F16s that Pakistan had paid for was embargoed.

Against this backdrop, the nuclear issue dominated most of Gen Kakar’s meetings. In one meeting with top US military and State Department officials, which I also attended as Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, our American interlocuters offered to release all our equipment including the planes if Pakistan agreed to freeze its nuclear programme and allow a one-time inspection to verify a cap on enrichment. Gen Kakar listened patiently and then politely told his hosts: “Gentlemen, I come in friendship but we in the East do not measure our relationship in planes and tanks. You can keep our F16s and our money. Our national security is non-negotiable.”

I recall this meeting as one example of how resolutely and uncompromisingly Pakistan maintained its position on an issue vital to its security. Had it not done so and caved into international pressure it would not have acquired the nuclear capability which is and has been the guarantor of the country’s security. There has been no all-out war between Pakistan and India since both neighbours became nuclear powers, despite regular crises, skirmishes and military confrontations.

The latest crisis has again thrown this into sharp relief. True, India has acted on its doctrine of limited war under the nuclear threshold, to try to push the boundaries and enlarge space for this in every successive crisis. It has also become the first nuclear power to attack another nuclear state by missiles and air strikes. It has sought to create a ‘new normal’ by launching kinetic actions in mainland Pakistan whenever there is a terror attack in occupied Kashmir, for which it holds Pakistan responsible without evidence.

Pakistan’s strategic capability remains the guarantor of its security against a full-scale war.

In the latest crisis, India used all the instruments of modern, hybrid warfare — ballistic missile strikes, drones, disinformation, psy-ops and weaponising water to undermine deterrence. But Pakistan’s conventional capabilities deterred India from provoking an even larger conflict. Pakistan’s counteractions (initially downing Indian fighter aircraft) imposed heavy costs on India for its aggression. Retaliating to the second round of unprovoked Indian attacks, including on its air bases, Pakistan launched a military operation involving air strikes, missiles and armed drones against Indian military bases and infrastructure in and much beyond Kashmir. A ceasefire followed soon after brokered by Washington and announced by President Donald Trump.

Pakistan’s military response was designed to re-establish deterrence while blunting the aims of limited war and thwarting India’s effort to seek space for conventional war under the nuclear overhang. India’s reckless actions escalated the crisis to a dangerous level and drove it into uncharted territory — almost to the edge of all-out war. But its military brinkmanship had to stop well short of Pakistan’s known nuclear red lines. Thus, were it not for the nuclear factor, a full-scale war could have broken out.

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The story of Pakistan’s pursuit of a nuclear capability is worth recalling to remind ourselves of the formidable challenges that were faced — and overcome — to acquire it. Confronted with an implacable adversary Pakistan initially pursued a strategy of external balancing by forging military alliances with the West to counter India and its hegemonic ambitions.

But the lesson of the country’s defeat and dismemberment in 1971 was that it could only depend on itself for its security. India’s nuclear explosion in 1974 was a turning point. It convinced Pakistan of the imperative to acquire nuclear weapons. Western countries, however, sought to punish Pakistan for India’s explosion by adopting discriminatory policies and denying it technology.

Pakistan faced innumerable obstacles in its nuclear journey. It braved Western embargoes, sanctions and censure, US opposition and unrelenting international pressure to stay the course. It took the country 25 years of arduous effort to build a strategic capability and even longer to transform that into an operational deterrent with an effective delivery system. That objective could not have been achieved if successive civilian and military governments had not all pursued this regardless of costs but confident that a firm national consensus backed the effort.

The book Eating Grass by Feroz Khan, published some years ago, describes the fascinating interplay between geostrategic shifts, key political and scientific figures and evolution of strategic beliefs, which shaped Pakistan’s nuclear decisions. It is a riveting insider account of the country’s quest for a nuclear capability and the challenges it encountered. Its title is inspired by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s much-cited remark that if India built the bomb, “we will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own”.

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Khan explains how Pakistan mastered the nuclear fuel cycle despite heavy odds. He credits this not to a few individuals but to the collective determination of hundreds of people in the civil-military establishment. However, what ultimately determined nuclear success was the cadre of scientists and engineers whose talent was tapped in the country’s early years and who were motivated by the resolve not to let India’s strategic advances go unanswered.

A book that focuses on a different aspect of Pakistan’s nuclear journey is The Security Imperative: Pakistan’s Nuclear Deterrence and Diplomacy by Zamir Akram, an outstanding diplomat. Nuclear diplomacy played a critical role in the country’s efforts to develop a strategic capability which Akram chronicles with illuminating insights. A key theme of his book is how Pakistan’s diplomacy navigated through the discriminatory landscape erected by the West, while advancing its nuclear and missile programmes.

As a diplomat I witnessed first-hand the international pressure mounted on the country. Pakistan was asked to unilaterally sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, agree to inspection of its nuclear facilities, sign up to negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty in the UN’s Conference on Disarmament and curb its missile development. Pakistan said no to all of the above to protect its security interests.

Because of such decisions and the exceptional efforts of those who built Pakistan’s strategic capability its security is assured against a full-fledged war by India. Similar commitment is needed to deal with internal challenges, especially to build a strong, self-reliant economy so that the country is not vulnerable to external pressure.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2025