In a makeshift tent on a Gazan beach, 3-month-old Muntaha's grandmother grinds up chickpeas into the tiniest granules she can to form a paste to feed the infant, knowing it will cause her to cry in pain, in a desperate race to keep the baby from starving.

"If the baby could speak, she would scream at us, asking what we are putting into her stomach," her aunt Abir Hamouda said.

Muntaha grimaced and squirmed as her grandmother fed her the paste with a syringe.