“We are starving”: bread becomes a distant dream for the Palestinians in Gaza Israeli conflict news

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Hani Abu Rizk is walking in the streets of Gaza City, with two broacies, observed on his stomach while the rope cuts his clothes, which are suspended from the weight he lost.

The 31-year-old is desperately looking for food to feed his mother and seven siblings with compressed bricks against his stomach-an ancient technique he never imagined.

“He was hungerHe says, “His voice is hollow with fatigue.

He adds, “Even the star as a word is no less than what we feel.”

It adjusts the rope around its waist, and it is a gesture that has become routine like breathing.

“I went back to what people did in ancient times, and tie stones around my stomach to try to calm my hunger. This is not just a war. It is a deliberate famine.”

Gaza’s pulses faded

Before October 7, 2023, and the beginning of the Israel war on Gaza, the food was the pulses of daily life in Gaza.

The days were built in Gaza around joint meals – breakfast meals from bacteria and sparkling olive oil, lunch from Maqlooba and Musakhan that filled the homes with warmth, the evenings they spend around rice trays, soft meat and seasonal salads that sparkle herbs from the gardens.

Abu Rizk remembers those days with the pain of someone who grieves the dead.

The unmarried man used to love food and gather with family and friends. He talks about comfortable dining rooms, where the holidays cooked at home, such as art, are filled with evenings and marinated drinks that remain on tongues and in memory.

“Now, we buy sugar and salt from a gram,” he says, his hands indicate the empty market stalls that overflow with products.

“Tomatoes or option luxury – a dream. Gaza is more expensive than global capitals, and we have nothing.”

More than 22 months of war, The amount of food In Gaza, it has been greatly reduced. The pocket was besieged under The full mercy of IsraelWhich reduced access to everything from flour to gas.

But since March 2, the humanitarian and necessary human elements have decreased to the lowest scary level. Israel has prevented all foods from March to May, and it has only allowed a minimum aid delivery, which has led to a widespread international condemnation.

Watch children suffer

According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, at least 159 Palestinians – 90 of whom were children and infants – died due to malnutrition and dehydration during the war starting on Thursday.

The World Food Program warns of a “complete famine” spread through the pocket while UNICEF states that one out of three children under the age of five in northern Gaza suffers from severe malnutrition.

Farda Hassan, a former nurse and a mother of three Gabalia Refugee camp, is known as signs of malnutrition.

“I studied them,” Al -Jazeera told the shelter of her family displaced in Gaza Gas. “Now I see them in my children.”

Her younger child, a two -year -old, wakes up every morning crying for food, and asking about the unaware bread.

“We celebrated all the birth of my children with nice parties (before the war) – except for … Hassan. I have turned several months ago, and I could not even give him an appropriate meal,” she says.

She adds that Ferras, who is 10 years old, shows clear signs of severe malnutrition that is painfully recognized.

Before the war, her house was immersed in life around meals. “We used to eat three or four times a day.”

“Lunch was a time for gathering. Winter evenings were full of lentil soup. We spent the afternoon in the spring preparing vine leaves stuffed with such care.

“Now we … sleep hungry.”

“There is no flour, no bread, nothing to fill our stomachs,” she says, carrying good while his little body trembles.

“We have not had a baking bite for more than two weeks. It cost a kilo of flour 150 shekels ($ 40), and we cannot bear it.”

Hassan was six months old when the bombing began. Now, at the age of two years, he only carries a little similarity with a healthy child.

The United Nations has repeatedly warned that the siege of Israel and its restrictions on humanitarian aid creates human -making conditions.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, only a part Of the 600 trucks of the foods and supplies required in Gaza daily, under normal circumstances, through which it comes. Setting a system of classification of integrated food security in Northern Gaza in stage 5: disaster/famine.

Amid the lack of security, the decline in the humanitarian aid allowed to enter Gaza to gangs and looting, and prevent people in need from reaching rare supplies.

Moreover, hundreds of desperate aid students were shot by Israeli soldiers while trying to obtain humanitarian assistance provided by the US -backed GHF since May.

Abandonment as a distant memory

Hola Muhammad, 32, leaks from the three -year -old Qawsi in a large shelter in a relative in Rimal, who is alive in Gaza City, because she describes how you should see him crying in hunger every morning, and his little voice that breaks him.

“There is no flour, no sugar, no milk,” she says, her arms wrapped with protection around the child, who knew war only for most of his life.

“We bake lentils like dough and cook regular pasta to fill our stomachs. But hunger is stronger.”

This is a devastating matter for a person who grew up in the rich culture of Gaza for hospitality and generosity, and it was a comfortable life in the Tuwah neighborhood.

Before she and her husband forced her to flee from the West with Qusai, every milestone called for nice New Year holidays, gatherings on Mother’s Day, and birthday parties for her husband, her father, and Qusai.

“Many of our memories have been created about common meals,” she says.

“My son asks for food and I just hold him,” continued, her voice is cracking. “Famine is spreading like cancer – slowly, silently, without mercy. Children are lost in front of our eyes. We cannot do anything.”

This piece was published in cooperation with egab.