Dying for a sack of flour or a box of milk: the other war caused in Gaza

In the Gaza StripPalestinian territory of 365 km2 at war since the attack Hamas On October 7, nothing enters or leaves without Israel’s permission: shipments of food, gasoline or medicine can take weeks, and if they do manage to enter, desperate Gazans or attacks make their distribution extremely difficult.

Alaa Matar, 34, is originally from northern Gaza and needs diapers and milk for his young children every day. He still remembers today when they tried to attack him, with weapons and a knife, in order to steal a sack of flour; a situation that is repeated with increasing frequency in a Gaza on the brink of famine.

“I was about to lose my life over a sack of flour,” laments Matar, who was wounded in the hand and says that his son was also attacked. “Losing your life for a piece of bread dipped in blood, literally“Adds who assures that the high prices of basic products on the black market force him to beg.

In Gaza, one of the most overpopulated places on the planet, a kilo of potatoes can now cost more than 40 euros and a kilo of tomatoes more than 25.

Five closed accesses to Gaza

This situation of growing shortages and violence among Gazans is the result, humanitarian organizations say, of Israel’s failure to open five of the seven land crossings into Gaza, but also of its multiple attacks against distribution points, police and community groups. Hamas in charge of escorting aid convoys.

In the last four days alone, around eight Hamas officials and police have been killed in Israeli bombings, according to Palestinian sources, several of them in direct attacks on their home or car; in which children or other members of their families also died.

Is about “an attempt to sow chaos, security disorder and an administrative vacuum in the Gaza Strip,” The Hamas Government of Gaza warned yesterday in a statement.

According to a UN-backed food insecurity report, 210,000 people are already suffering from famine in the north of the Strip, a condition that could spread to the rest of the enclave before July.

Furthermore, more than a million Gazans, half the population, face a lack “catastrophic” of food, according to the same report, and in the north, one in three children under two years of age suffers from acute malnutrition, which has already caused the death of at least 25 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Momen Hassan, a 23-year-old father, repeats like others that the aid that arrives by air, in parachutes dropped by Jordan, France, the Emirates or the United States, among others, is totally insufficient and only causes people to fight or crowd together in houses of those who were touched by something.

“A few days ago help fell near my neighbors and people started shooting at each other”says Hassan. “So what? “One dies trying to get food or a carton of milk,” criticism. One day he got a sack of flour, but he was assaulted with “a gun to the head” and he had to leave it, he says.

More than 500 trucks daily pre-war

Before the war, about 500 trucks a day with essential products entered Gaza. Now, that figure does not even reach half, denounce Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Oxfam, due to Israeli checks “arbitrary” that delay their access on average about 20 days, or prohibit them for carrying products that Israel classifies as “dual purpose”, military and civilian, such as purifying pills or sleeping bags.

“The international community should review all options on the table – including suspending military aid – to force Israel to comply. The use of hunger as a weapon of war has no place in today’s world.”denounced the NGO Refugees International.

A famine that is already hitting the north: six trucks with flour arrived in Jabalia alone on Sunday – the first in four months – and another six in Gaza City, where Israel has repeatedly attacked aid distribution points such as the Kuwait roundabout, causing several hundred deaths since the end of February.

Those 12 trucks were distributed thanks to family clan leaders and Hamas security personnel. But something like this is difficult to repeat again for fear of attacks and because these clans, as they expressed in a statement, do not want to become an alternative or “political system” that perpetuates post-war Israeli control.

Om Mohamed Al Hamarna, a 63-year-old grandmother, confesses that while help has not arrived they have already eaten the unthinkable: from feed to corn, including mallow or barley plants for the animals. She does not believe that air deliveries or the maritime corridor will solve “the catastrophe” they are experiencing and calls the US hypocritical.

“Yeah USA He is capable of putting a thousand soldiers in us to build a safe corridor and feed us, well, he will also be able to stop the war”he protests.

“We don’t want food!” This Gazan cries out, longing for peace.

It may interest you