My nephew asks whether he will eat meat only in heaven. I suffer from the answer Israel’s conflict and the two

When we heard on March 2, all the crossings were closed in Gaza, we thought it wouldn’t last more than two weeks. We really wanted Ramadan, as we can invite our surviving relatives to breakfast and do not worry about the food that we can find to break our fasting.

But it did not turn this way. We spent the holy month to break fast with canned food.

My family, just like most families in Gaza, was not storing food or basics, as no one expected the crossings to be closed again, or starvation – or even war – to return.

In the days after the closure, food and other basic commodities disappeared from the markets, and prices rose. A kilogram of any vegetables jumped to $ 8 or more, drunk $ 22 and child format $ 11. The flour bag previously costs $ 8, rose to $ 50; Within two months, it reached $ 300.

Most people in Gaza cannot bear these prices. As a result, families, including my country, began to reduce the number of meals they eat, limited to breakfast and dinner only, and reducing the part of each person – half a loaf of bread for complete breakfast for dinner. Men, women, the elderly and children were standing in front of bakeries and charitable kitchens for hours, in shame and sadness, only to get a few loaves of bread or a small dish of food. For some families, this will be their only food for today.

All residents of Central Gaza, where I live, on only three bakeries: two in Nuseirat and one in Deir al -Asr.

The crowds in these bakeries were overwhelming, preventing roads and stopping the movement in the area. Every day, there were cases of fainting and suffocation due to pressure and leadership. In the end, only a small number of those who have waited since the morning will get bread.

My father was going to the bakery before sunrise to line up, instead of using the rest of our flour, because we did not know the time when this situation would continue. But he will find the line already long, as dozens slept outside the bakery. He would stay until noon, then sent my brother to take his place in the line. In the end, they did not return without anything.

On March 31, the World Food Program announced the closure of all its bakeries, including the three that we can reach, due to the exhaustion of the flour and the lack of gas needed to operate the ovens. This represents the beginning of real starvation.

Soon after, the charitable kitchens started to close because it ran out of food stock. Dozens of them closed last week alone. People have grown more despair, as many are local groups on Facebook or Telegram to beg for anyone to sell them a bag of flour at a reasonable price.

We live in the “lucky” neighborhood where the kitchen is still working.

My nephew Dana, who is eight -year -old, lined up in front of her every day with her friends, waiting for her role as if she was a game. If you receive one scoop of the food, it is running, and feels very proud of itself. And if her role does not come before the food runs out, she is crying, and complains about the injustice of this world.

One day, during Ramadan, he was a boy, displaced with his family to the Mofiti School near our house, he was so hardly trying to get food that he fell into the hot food bowl that was cooking the charitable cuisine. He suffered from severe burns and later died.

The signs of famine began to be clear everywhere about a month and a half after the crossings were closed. We see them in every aspect of our lives – sleeping on an empty stomach, rapid weight loss, pale faces, and weak bodies. Climbing stairs now takes us twice the voltage.

It has become easier in illness and the most difficult recovery. My nephew, 18 -month -old Mossab and Muhammad, two -year -old, developed a fever and influenza -like symptoms during Ramadan. It took a full month to improve due to lack of food and medicine.

My mother was suffering from severe visual loss due to complications after ophthalmology in late February. It made malnutrition and the lack of eye drops that you needed to restore its condition much worse.

I myself are fine. I donated blood to Al -Wada Hospital in Noussaar just a few days before the border closed, and this seriously affects my physical health. Now, I suffer from severe weakness in my body, weight loss and difficulty concentration. When I went to the doctor, he told me to stop eating canned and eat more fruits and meat. He knew what he was saying was impossible to do, but what could he say?

Perhaps the most difficult part of this position is to explain the famine for young children. My children and my brother cannot stop seeking things that we cannot provide simply. We fight in order to persuade them that we do not punish them by hiding food, but we simply do not possess it.

Five -year -old Khaled continues to request meat every day while looking at food photos on his mother’s phone. He stares in the pictures and asks if his martyr father eats all this in heaven. Then he asks when his own role will come, to join his father and eat with him.

We are struggling to answer. We ask him to be patient and that his patience will be rewarded.

I am unable to see daily scenes of starvation and despair. I ask myself, how can the world remain silent while seeing the bodies of children thin and fragile and the patients die and the injury slowly?

The occupation uses every way to kill us – by bombing, hunger or illness. We have been reduced to begging for a piece of bread. He watches the entire world and pretends that he cannot even give us that.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.