Provided they're well-hydrated, an adult human can go some weeks before complications arising from malnutrition take their lives. Our ancestors were persistence hunters who went for big game, and alternated between "starvation mode" and gorging themselves on big kills.
The same is not true of human children, whose condition can rapidly deteriorate without access to nutritious food - hence the high infant mortality rate in preagricultural societies.
Israel is deliberately starving 290,000 kids.