"Gaza City remains home to tens of thousands of children. Shoeless children push grandparents in wheelchairs around rubble. Amputee children struggle through the dust. Mothers carry children whose skin is bleeding from rashes. Children shudder at the relentless airstrikes. And children gaze skyward tracking the fire from helicopters and quadcopters.
"The question I am asked everywhere in Gaza City - from women, from the elderly, and from children - is: 'Where can I go that will be safe'?
"And the answer remains the same after almost two years: Nowhere.
"Nowhere is safe in the Gaza strip.
"Yet, today, a further 200,000 civilians have been warned to leave Gaza City, in addition to more than 400,000 people who have been forced to move south. One hospital in Gaza City - the Patient Friendly Hospital where I was yesterday - sees 60 to 80 children each and every day being admitted for malnutrition and other illnesses.
"The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for infants and newborns at Al Helou hospital is overflowing. This hospital was shelled last week.
"The logic imposed on people in Gaza is both brutal and contradictory. The north has been declared hostile ground: those who remain are to be branded as suspects. Let's be clear: the issuance of a general or blanket evacuation order to civilians does not mean that those who remain behind lose their protection as civilians.
"The south-the so-called "safe zones"-are also places of death. Al-Mawasi, now one of the most densely populated places on earth, is grotesquely overcrowded and stripped of the essentials of survival. Eighty-five percent of families live within ten meters of open sewage, animal waste, piles of garbage, stagnant water or rodent infestations. Two-thirds have no access to soap. I spoke with dozens of people in Gaza City who all said the same thing: they have no money to move; no space nor tent to move into, and the south too is dangerous.
"Indeed, the very notion of 'safe zones' in the south is farcical - bombs are dropped from the sky with chilling predictability. Schools designated as temporary shelters are regularly reduced to rubble. Tents pitched in empty lots offer no protection from shrapnel. They are frequently engulfed in fire from air attacks.
"Two days ago, I met children in Nasser hospital who have been paralysed, burnt, or had limbs amputated following direct hits on tents, all at approximately two in the morning. A few days earlier, at Al Aqsa hospital, I met many children who had been shot by quadcopters.
"When the world adjusts and normalizes this level of violence and deprivation, something is profoundly broken. The strength of international law doesn't lie in words on paper, but in the resolve of countries to uphold it.
"Meanwhile, the situation for mothers and newborns has never been worse.
"In Nasser, the hospital corridors are lined with women who have just given birth. In six missions to Gaza, I have never seen it like this. New mothers and vulnerable newborns lying on the floor. Three premature babies share a single oxygen source - each child breathing for twenty minutes, before giving way to the next. A premature baby, Nada, who was in intensive care for 21 days is discharged, and now waits outside laying on the corridor floor with her mother. Nada weighs two kilograms, less than half of what she should weigh.
"Women are having miscarriages on the exhausting trek from the north to the south. Doctors fear winter viruses have arrived early. Reports state that 1,000 babies have been killed in the past two years, and we have no idea how many more have died due to preventable illnesses.
"Meanwhile, frontline workers are doing the impossible. UNICEF and our partners are still supplying Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic-Food (RUTF) for malnourished babies in Gaza City; while across the Gaza strip repairing water lines; delivering cash assistance; providing trauma support, along with lifesaving equipment for babies in hospitals, mental health sessions, and waste collection. But until all restrictions are removed on the entry and delivery of humanitarian aid, the provision of lifesaving aid will continue to be woefully inadequate.
"The media in this press room have been generous enough to listen to UNICEF brief dozens of times since we first bore witness to the carnage in Gaza. In that time, we have reported on a war on children, a famine, and a polio outbreak. Always and only with data and testimonials. And yet somehow, things today are worse than at any of those times. Everyone bares some responsibility for this, but there is only one victim. Yesterday, today, and without meaningful action, tomorrow. Palestinian children."
