The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, after three years of ongoing war, paints a tragic picture, forcing Palestinians to sell everything they own just to survive. They live in tents that offer no protection from the summer heat or the winter cold, and famine is ravaging children and the sick due to the Israeli occupation’s closure of crossings and its prevention of food and medicine from entering the Strip.
According to a report broadcast on Al Jazeera Mubasher, displaced people across the Gaza Strip are living in increasingly dire conditions. Life has become a daily struggle for sustenance, while memories and precious possessions crumble under the weight of need.
In the scrap market in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip, one displaced person explained that people are selling their belongings because some need vegetables, food, and clothes for their children, while others are selling their food aid rations to cover other needs not included in the assistance.
He pointed out that the current situation is completely different from the past, when people kept things to remember their loved ones. Today, however, memories are worthless in the face of hunger. In the same vein, a displaced woman whose home was bombed three times explains that she sold everything: her clothes, her husband’s and daughters’ clothes, their mattresses and blankets, despite the approaching winter.
The woman says she is currently pregnant and doesn’t even own a blouse for her unborn child. She and her husband are forced to fast for two or three days at a time to provide food for their daughters, especially since food aid and water don’t reach their tent, forcing them to go to the sea daily to fetch water.
Similarly, another displaced person—who sells household items like plates and pans—recounts that he no longer sells just to raise money, but to secure a loaf of bread or a can of beans. He mentions that he sold the gold he had saved for emergencies, and even the phones they used to communicate. They have nothing left. He describes life as “more difficult than difficult,” completely closed off, with no solution except for this war to end.
On August 20, the United Nations warned of a sharp deterioration in the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, stressing that the vast majority of the population is now entirely dependent on aid.
Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, said that 94% of Gaza’s population (approximately 2.1 million people) are in dire need of shelter and basic assistance, with hundreds of families facing alarming levels of hunger, including four out of five families experiencing critical or catastrophic levels of hunger.
