PRESSURE is ramping up on the UK Government to take action over Israel’s starvation of Gaza following a harrowing front page by the right-wing Daily Express.
The newspaper’s splash featured an image of a starving one-year old child in Gaza accompanied by the headline “for pity’s sake stop this now”.
A sub-heading detailed how the child Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq was “clinging on to life” and how his suffering “shames us all”.
Callum Hoare, the Express’s head of news, said on social media the paper opted for the “powerful” front page in a call for the “brutal suffering” in Gaza to end.
More than 100 aid organisations have warned of “mass starvation” in the enclave with more than two million people facing shortages of food and other essentials after 21 months of brutal bombardment by Israel.
The UN said on Tuesday that Israeli forces had killed more than 1000 Palestinians trying to get food aid since the US-and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operations in late May – in effect sidelining the existing UN-led system.
A statement from the agencies says they are “witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes”, with aid workers now joining food lines and risking being shot by Israeli forces.
It comes after hundreds of British-Israelis signed a petition two months ago calling on UK Government to not be "complicit in criminal mass starvation".
The significance of the Express calling out Israel’s actions has not been lost on journalists and pro-Palestine campaigners.
Richard Hall, a senior correspondent at The Independent, said on social media: “The Daily Express is a right-wing British newspaper that spends most of its time bashing immigrants.
Our powerful @Daily_Express front page for tomorrow. The brutal suffering in Gaza must end. The shocking image shows Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, one, who weighs the same as three-month old baby due to the humanitarian crisis following the continued blocking of basic aid… pic.twitter.com/ENWMLYhhJt
— Callum Hoare (@CallumHoare_) July 22, 2025
“That it has devoted its front page to the starvation of Gaza is a sign of how dire the situation has become and how impossible it is to ignore.”
Writer and broadcaster Mike Philpott, who used to work for BBC News, added: “I didn’t have the Daily Express down as one of the champions of humanity. But when it runs a front page like this, it’s time to stop pretending that this isn’t genocide.”
However, some have sought to point out it has taken far too long for the newspaper to call out Israel almost two years on since it began bombarding Gaza following the October 7 attacks.
Hamza Yusuf, a British-Palestinian writer and journalist whose work focuses on Palestine, said on Twitter/X: “It’s no doubt a good thing to see this categorical, raw Daily Express front page tomorrow.
“But when it mattered most, it manufactured consent for the very horrors it is now condemning.
“This is cause and effect.”
On Tuesday, Foreign Secretary David Lammy claimed the UK was not sending weapons to Israel which could be used in Gaza despite the continued export of F-35 jets, which have been documented as being used by Israel.
The F-35 programme is an international defence programme which produces and maintains the fighter jets, with the UK contributing components for both assembly lines and an international pool.
Last week Lammy said Israeli plans to build a concentration camp in Gaza would be a “sticking point” in ceasefire negotiations, for which he was severely criticised.
As of July 13, the UN confirmed 875 Palestinians were killed while seeking food, 201 on aid routes and the rest at distribution points. Thousands more have been injured.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have forcibly displaced nearly two million exhausted Palestinians with the most recent mass displacement order issued on July 20, confining Palestinians to less than 12% of Gaza.
The World Food Programme had warned that current conditions make operations untenable.
The statement from aid organisations has been signed by the likes of Save the Children, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Mercy Corps and Christian Aid.
It goes on: “Humanitarian agencies have the capacity and supplies to respond at scale. But, with access denied, we are blocked from reaching those in need, including our own exhausted and starved teams.
“On July 10, the EU and Israel announced steps to scale up aid. But these promises of ‘progress’ ring hollow when there is no real change on the ground. Every day without a sustained flow means more people dying of preventable illnesses. Children starve while waiting for promises that never arrive.
“Piecemeal arrangements and symbolic gestures, like airdrops or flawed aid deals, serve as a smokescreen for inaction. They cannot replace states’ legal and moral obligations to protect Palestinian civilians and ensure meaningful access at scale.
“States can and must save lives before there are none left to save.”
