Ruwaida
Kamal Amer
Mustafa
Al-Darsh, a 35-year-old father of three from Gaza City, spends hours every day
searching for food for his family. Some days, he manages to secure a few canned
goods; other days, his family has to settle for plain rice. “In the north, we
yearn to eat bread with some thyme,” he told +972. He hasn’t been able to find
flour for months.
Displaced Palestinians line up to receive a meal in Khan Yunis, in the
southern Gaza Strip, November 29, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
Since
the start of October, when the Israeli army encircled northern Gaza and began
subjecting it to a campaign of expulsion and extermination, no goods —
including humanitarian supplies — have entered the area. In early November, a
UN panel warned that famine was imminent in the besieged area in the north of
the Strip, where around 75,000 Palestinians were estimated to still remain.
Local organizations have since urged the UN and international bodies to
formally declare a famine. Now, with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
forced to pause aid deliveries through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south,
hunger and malnutrition across the enclave are set to intensify.
As
a father, Al-Darsh usually forgoes his own meals to ensure that his wife and
children eat. “Our bodies are exhausted from the lack of food — we’re unable to
do anything,” he explained. When night falls, he is usually too hungry to
sleep. “Sometimes I feel that I will lose my mind because of what we are living
through,” he added.
More
often than not, Al-Darsh cannot find any food at all, and his children go
without meals for several days at a time. “Every day, I cry because they miss
food,” he said. “They constantly ask me about food, telling me what they want
to eat.”
“In
the north of the Strip, there is a real famine,” Adnan Abu Hasna, an UNRWA
spokesman, told +972. “The situation is very dangerous: there is no food,
potable water, or any supplies. All health facilities have collapsed, and there
are dozens of bodies lying in the streets and under the rubble.” Without
international pressure to surge aid into the Strip, Abu Hasna warned, “famine
will spread in the north and south.”
But
what Al-Darsh described as a “harsh war of starvation” only appears to be
escalating by the day. “They treat us as people who do not deserve to live,
with the continuous bombing, destruction, and starvation,” he lamented. “We
want to die full, not hungry. This is all we hope for.”
‘In
the north and south, we live through the same crisis’
Before
the war, Khaled Al-Attar told +972, it was shameful to speak about hunger. For
the 40-year-old from the northern city of Beit Hanoun, the word still carries
that same sense of shame today, even after living through two months of siege
that has blocked the entry of any food. “We are not used to hunger,” he
explained, “but we are being subjected to it — a great injustice carried out by
an immoral and inhumane occupation, supported by the United States.”
Some
days, Al-Attar tries to control his hunger by consuming salt and water. His
wife was recently bedridden for several days, unable to move from the lack of
food. For most of the past year, he noted, “we relied on legumes and canned
food. Now, there is nothing available; [here] in the north we have not seen
food at all since the beginning of the siege.”
Even
as northern Gaza bears the brunt of Israel’s policy of starvation, Palestinians
throughout Gaza are going hungry. “In the north and the south we are living
through the same crisis: we all have no food in our homes,” Al-Attar said,
based on conversations with his relatives in the south.
According
to the UN, food security conditions are “alarmingly deteriorating” in the
central and southern areas of the Strip — with wheat flour shortages forcing
bakeries to close, and only 16 percent of the population able to receive
reduced monthly food rations. According to Abu Hasna of UNRWA, only 30 to 35
aid trucks are entering Gaza every day, “and this number is not even enough to
serve a residential neighborhood or a single street. How can it be enough for
the 2.3 million citizens of the Gaza Strip?”
The
severe shortages have led to tragic incidents as people desperately search for
food. On Nov. 23, three women were killed after what Palestinian media
described as “security forces” opened fire during a stampede for bread at a
bakery in Deir Al-Balah. A few days later, two children and a 50-year-old woman
were crushed to death outside another overcrowded bakery in the same city.
Osama
Abu Laban, whose 13-year-old daughter Rahaf was one of the victims, warned her
against going to the bakery that day. “I told her not to go; the place was
severely crowded,” he told +972. “Thousands were rushing to obtain bread, and
there was no police to maintain order.” That was the last time Abu Laban saw
his daughter alive. “She entered the crowd of people, and moments later they
brought her out to me as a dead body.”
The
tragedy left Abu Laban and his wife in a state of shock. “We lived through
unbearable circumstances and are still suffering, but no one cares,” he
lamented. “I lost my daughter for a loaf of bread. I don’t know what else is
left for us to endure.”
Salwa
Khreis, a 50-year-old from Beit Lahiya, fled the north last December for what
Israeli authorities promised would be a “humanitarian zone” in Al-Mawasi, near
Khan Younis. “I was afraid that my 10 grandchildren would die of hunger,” she
told +972, “but now I am looking for food to feed them.” Sometimes she
scavenges for edible plants in nearby fields, while her three sons go out each
morning looking for food. “Some of them return with canned food, and some
return with nothing,” she said.
None
of Khreis’ sons are able to find any work, and with the exorbitant rise in food
costs, what remains of dry goods or fresh vegetables has become too expensive
for them to afford. “Bags of flour are very scarce, and if I find a 25-kilo bag
it costs $60,” she explained. “A kilo of tomatoes costs $20, a kilo of
eggplants goes for $10. Where can I find money to buy this?”
As
a diabetic, Khreis now suffers from daily attacks due to the lack of food. Most
nights, her grandchildren are unable to sleep, crying from the pangs of hunger.
“I lie to them and tell them that tomorrow, we will eat a lot of food. But then
tomorrow comes, and I don’t know what to feed them. Sometimes I feel that my
heart will stop from this sadness.”
Other
Gazans who spoke to +972 described similar shortages of food across the Strip.
“We are experiencing a real famine in southern Gaza,” said 23-year-old Reem
Al-Ghazal from Gaza City, who is currently displaced in Al-Mawasi. ”We don’t
have flour; one bag costs about $100 dollars. We rely on bread with a little
thyme and canned food, which have also become unavailable. What is the purpose
of starving us in this way?” Her relatives in the north, she added, have not
eaten “in many days.”
Louay
Saqr, a 38-year-old residing in Deir Al-Balah after being displaced from Gaza
City, described similar hardships. “We adults may be more tolerant of this
suffering, but we have children and elderly people,” he said. “My mother fell
ill due to malnutrition and was forced to go to the hospital and stay there for
a whole week. I call my friends in Khan Younis or Al-Mawasi to ask them if they
have food for sale in the markets, but their situation is as difficult as
ours.”
Protecting
the looters
On
Nov. 16, a 109-truck aid convoy passed through the Kerem Shalom crossing,
transporting food into southern Gaza — only for 98 of the trucks to be
violently looted by armed men inside the Strip, injuring the drivers and
causing extensive damage. The incident, although unusual in its scale,
exemplified how the breakdown of security inside Gaza has deepened the food
crisis: of the meager amount of aid that enters the Gaza, up to 30 percent is
looted and stolen, mostly by organized criminal gangs.
The
UN has claimed that these armed groups operate in areas under Israeli military
control, and “may be benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or
“protection” by Israeli forces. A group of 29 major international NGOs,
including Save the Children, Oxfam, and the Norwegian Refugee Council, accused
the Israeli army of encouraging the looting of humanitarian aid by attacking
the Palestinian police forces that are trying to combat it, or standing by as
gangs loot trucks and extort their drivers.
Palestinian
political analyst Muhammad Shehada believes that Israel is supporting these
criminal organizations as part of an effort to find an alternative to Hamas,
the Palestinian Authority, and UNRWA to control Gaza. The looting and breakdown
of order inside the Strip, he argued, also serves a political interest for
Israel. “The army has found a justification for preventing the entry of trucks,
saying that they are allowed to enter but that Palestinians steal and loot
them,” he told +972.
Jihad
Islim, secretary-general of the Private Transport Association in Gaza, also
holds Israel responsible for these thefts. “If Israel wanted to protect this
aid, it could have done so, but it aims to spread chaos and instability in the
Gaza Strip,” he argued. “These gangs have already shot and killed nine
drivers.”
Islim
estimated the value of the stolen goods from the trucks at millions of dollars,
warning that this phenomenon will exacerbate the already extreme hunger across
Gaza. Because of the widespread looting, much of the aid no longer reaches
those who need it most in northern Gaza, and instead ends up in markets where
boxes labeled “assistance provided by the United Nations” are sold at up to 700
percent of their original price.
The
looting is most systematic between the Kerem Shalom crossing and the southern
city of Rafah, an area of Gaza the gangs effectively control. But it also
occurs along Salah Al-Din Street, the Strip’s main north-south corridor.
Mohammed, a 45-year-old Palestinian truck driver, spoke to +972 about the
experience of delivering aid during the war, which he described as the “most
difficult and dangerous” period of his 20-year career.
At
the beginning of the war, he noted, the Israeli army posed the main threat to
aid trucks, often targeting those heading north. “We were risking our lives,
but the humanitarian motive inside us was pushing us to continue delivering aid
to our people,” he said. For the past four months, however, drivers fear being
exposed to theft by different gangs that operate along Salah Al-Din Street.
“It
starts in eastern Rafah, then the Miraj area [in northern Rafah], and sometimes
near the European Hospital [in Khan Younis]; then there is the Bani Suheila
roundabout, and the entrance to Deir Al-Balah: these are the areas most crowded
with theft gangs,” Mohammed explained.
The
armed men normally start by shooting at the trucks’ wheels, or at the drivers
directly. “We try as much as possible to speed up to pass these gangs,”
Mohammed said, “but their numbers are large. The heavy shooting could cost us
our lives. [In October,] a colleague of mine was wounded by this gunfire, and
another colleague left the truck when his wheels exploded.”
Saeed
Daqqa, a 32-year-old Palestinian from Al-Fukhari, east of Salah Al-Din Street
near Khan Younis, told +972 that he hears gunfire whenever aid trucks enter the
area. “We know that this is gunfire from the gangs who control Salah Al-Din
Street. We all feel upset about this: we need aid, and when it is stolen, we
[can only] find it in the market at very high prices.”
On
Nov. 18, Gaza’s Interior Ministry announced that 20 gang members had been
killed in a heavy exchange of gunfire with the police. “The police announced an
operation to pursue the thieves who steal the trucks,” Daqqa said. “This may be
the beginning of hope for us to stop the famine that is pervading the south.”
In
response to allegations that the Israeli army is turning a blind eye to looting
of aid convoys by armed gangs, a spokesperson claimed that the army “takes all
operationally feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians, including aid
convoys and workers,” adding that it was “facilitating and easing the entry of
humanitarian aid into the northern Gaza Strip, both through the Erez Crossing
and by enabling aid convoys from the south to the north.”
Sharon
Zhang
December
3, 2024
In
just the first week since a ceasefire commenced in Lebanon, Israeli forces have
already broken the agreement and launched dozens of attacks, reports from
humanitarian organizations find.
A
local man salvages items from the rubble opposite a building destroyed
by an Israeli airstrike on a street that goes through the middle of
Dahieh on November 29, 2024, in Beirut, Lebanon. Ed Ram / For The Washington Post via Getty Images
CNN’s
Clarissa Ward reported on Monday, citing a UN peacekeeping source, that Israel
has committed an estimated 100 violations of the ceasefire agreement that went
into effect last Tuesday. UN peacekeepers are stationed in south Lebanon to
monitor military activity there, as part of an agreement sprung out of Israel’s
previous occupations of the region.
Other
estimates have also found that Israel has continuously violated the agreement,
which specifies that Israeli and Hezbollah forces must not carry out offensive
attacks. Lebanese officials have counted 62 violations so far, including at
least 10 just on Sunday.
A
count by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that Israel had already committed
18 violations by the second day of the ceasefire. In one attack on Friday, the
group said, Israeli soldiers fired on Lebanese people during a funeral
procession that had gotten the necessary permits from UN and Lebanese military
officials.
Additionally,
Israeli tanks have been advancing deeper into areas they hadn’t gone into prior
to the ceasefire, Euro-Med Monitor said. This is in spite of the ceasefire deal
specifying that Israeli forces must withdraw from their positions in Lebanon.
“Israel’s
ongoing violations of the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon represent a serious
breach of its legal obligations, including international norms and laws,” the
rights group said. “This unlawful use of force undermines the sovereignty of
the Lebanese state.”
According
to CNN, Israel has claimed that it is merely “enforcing” the ceasefire, despite
Israeli forces killing over a dozen people in Lebanon in airstrikes that
Lebanese officials have said are blatant violations of the deal.
On
Monday, Hezbollah carried out a retaliatory attack on an Israeli military
position after Israeli forces killed two people in airstrikes. Israeli forces
then carried out a series of attacks that killed nine people, according to
Lebanese officials. Western U.S. news outlets have reported this incident as an
“exchange” of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, though Hezbollah has
claimed only one attack since the agreement began.
Meanwhile,
Israel began committing seeming violations of the ceasefire immediately after
it began. Just hours after it commenced, Israeli forces targeted and wounded
two journalists in a southern border town in Lebanon, while, around the same
time, Israeli forces reportedly shot at two civilian vehicles in south Lebanon.
Analysts
say the deal has not entirely collapsed, though Israel has already threatened
to resume its deadly offensive in Lebanon if it does. In the past 14 months,
Israeli forces have killed over 3,600 people in Lebanon, including over 200
children just since September.
The
U.S. appears to be providing cover for Israel as it commits these reported
violations, with spokespeople saying that the ceasefire has been successful
despite the findings of UN and Lebanese officials.
Further,
according to Israeli media, the Biden administration had secretly negotiated a
side deal with Israel agreeing to share intelligence about Hezbollah with
Israeli forces amid the ceasefire. The side deal gives Israel a wide range to
carry out attacks with U.S. backing, with the deal “recognizing Israeli freedom
of action on Lebanese soil, in the event of any attempt to strengthen Hezbollah
or another hostile entity there,” per Haaretz.
No comments:
Post a Comment