The UN organization stated that ninety percent of Gaza’s population, which amounts to 2.3 million people, remains without food for a duration of 24 hours, and half of the population is at risk of severe famine.
Translation and editing of the Al-Khabar Al-Yemeni:
The New York Times published a report highlighting a glimpse of the humanitarian suffering experienced by the residents of the Gaza Strip due to the blockade imposed by the Israeli enemy. The report showcased the unparalleled suffering on Earth endured by the residents of the Strip while the world watches.
Residents of Gaza confirmed that the most they can hope for these days, she said in a recent telephone interview, is a can of peas, some cheese and an energy bar distributed as a family’s rations by the UN once a week in Rafah, according to the report.
The newspaper quoted a woman named Wala’a Zaiter, 37 years old, with children ranging from 9 months to 13 years old, saying, “It’s a daily struggle.” “You feel pressure and desperation, and you can’t provide anything.”
The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is one of the worst ever witnessed. He added that the region seems to meet at least the initial criteria for famine, with twenty percent of the population facing severe food shortages, according to Aref Hussein, the chief economist of the WFP.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency that aids Palestinians, said he recently saw desperately hungry Gazans stop the organization’s aid trucks in Rafah, raid their food supplies, and devour them on the spot.
“I witnessed this firsthand,” he told a news conference in Geneva two days after visiting Rafah at the southern end of Gaza. “Everywhere you go, you find people hungry, desperate, and terrified.”
Omar Shakir, a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, stated, “For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare.”
He added, “World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population.”
Azmi Keshawi, an analyst for the research organization International Crisis Group, said that even if Israel says it does not view its war as one against Gaza’s population, it is civilians who are paying the heaviest price.
“Our daily nightmare is to go hunt for food,” said Mr. Keshawi, who fled his home in Gaza City in the north and now lives in a tent on a sidewalk in Rafah with his children. One of his children was injured by an Israeli airstrike, he said.
“You cannot find flour,” he said. “You cannot find yeast to make bread. You cannot find any kind of food—tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, eggplant, lemon, orange juice.”
He added that when food items are found for sale, the prices increase significantly. In Rafah, a sack of flour that might have cost $13 before the war now sells for $138 to $165.
Thousands of displaced people who fled to Rafah, one of the few so-called safe zones in Gaza today, now struggle to pay for a can of tuna, which once cost less than 30 cents and is now more than $1.50, or a can of corned beef, which once cost about $1.40 but is now more than $5.50.
Keshawi stated, “These people left home with no money.” “Surviving becomes a challenge.”
Tahrir Muqat, 46, said she had fled her home in Gaza City and now lived with four relatives, including a baby, in a school in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. There is virtually no regular running water, and on the rare occasions when it does turn on, people stockpile it in the toilet bowl and drink from that.
She waits in line for hours each day to get two packs of feta cheese and three crackers from aid workers at a shelter. Then she and her relatives go from door to door, begging for leftover food in ruined houses crammed with displaced people.
Ms. Muqat said, “Most of the time we get a ‘Nothing!’ with insulting comments like ‘Go back to Gaza City! Everything has become too expensive since you arrived!”
She had once seen children eating rotten tomatoes that they had found in the street, she said.
Last month, she said, an airstrike hit nearby while they were begging. Her daughter, Nasayem, in her mid-twenties, was injured by shrapnel in her leg, arm, chest, and back. There is scant medicine to treat her, and there is no heat in their shelter to cut the winter chill. And the injury has made her more exhausted and listless. But Nasayem is focused on protecting her baby, her mother said.
She added, “When it is cold, it hurts her more,” Ms. Muqat said of her daughter last week. “She fell asleep early today and said she would go out tomorrow morning to look for food for her baby.” “She has to.”
