When Hunger Games’ books came out in the late 2000s to be very acclaimed, probably few readers expected that the scenes of these dystopian novels would take place in the world in which they lived. But they do it now – here in Gaza, every day.
We have suffered under a full Israeli blockade since early March. Famine has spread throughout the band. Most families have only one meal per day. Some do not eat at all for days.
At the end of May, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the United States and Israeli and Israeli began deliveries of aid limited to the strip. Since then, the Palestinians have been forced to participate in a deadly game to get food.
None of the members of my family dared to go to a distribution point for the help of the GHF, but some of my neighbors and friends have done so. All I have heard of them are horror stories.
The first time we have heard of the help area that the Israelis call the “Netzarim corridor”, we imagined that there would be tents, queues, order. But those who risked going there found only chaos and death.
The distribution of the aid takes place in an area fenced near Street Salah Al -Din, near the eastern border of Gaza – in such a dangerous area, the inhabitants call it the death corridor. It is surrounded by sand and guarded by foreign military entrepreneurs. There are Israeli tanks and soldiers stationed nearby.
There is no clear schedule for help deliveries. Sometimes the GHF opens the doors at 4 am and sometimes later. The Palestinians wait while starting sunset the day before.
When the doors finally open, the crowd floods. There are no queues, no staff, no signs. Just noise, dust and fear.
Above, drones turn like vultures. Then, a voice of a speaker shouts: “Four minutes! Take what you can!”
Food boxes are left in the middle of the sand, but there are not enough. They are never enough. People rush to the battery, pushing and climbing on each other. They push each other. The knives come out. The fist fights burst. Children cry. Men fall. Women crawl in the sand. Few people are the luckiest who are able to grab a box and hang on to it. Then the gunshots begin. The sand square becomes a killing field.
People run for their lives. Many are affected. Some manage to crawl with injuries. Others are worn by friends or parents or even foreigners. Others bleed alone in the sand.
Since the end of May, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed when the Israeli army has opened a blind fire to people gathered to try to get help. More than 4,000 were injured.
Subhi, the father of my friend Nour, was one of them. The family had no food, so he felt forced to risk his life to get help. On the morning of June 14, he left for the aid center in Netzarim. He never returned.
Nourish told me how they were waiting by the door. Passable hours. No word. No call. Internet was cut. Silence was unbearable. Then suddenly, they heard the noise of shot in the distance. They immediately knew that something had been wrong, but they had no way to reach it.
Later, paramedical paramedics found his body. He was killed as he was trying to carry a bag of food at home to his children.
Another friend, Hala, told me the story of another victim of the GHF deadly trap, Khamis, his sister’s brother-in-law. He had been married for only two years and had no children yet, but he brought the weight of an entire house on his back. He had started to take care of his brother’s children after being killed earlier in the war.
When their food was exhausted, Khamis’ friends managed to convince him to accompany them to try to take help. On the morning of June 24, they were waiting near the help center when someone shouted: “They opened the doors!”
Khamis came out of their hiding place – just slightly – to see for himself. A bullet from an Israeli quadcopteri pierced his shoulder, then stayed in his heart, killing him. He left behind a widow in mourning and hungry nieces and nephews.
There are countless other stories – just as painful, just as heartbreaking – which will never be known.
The Gaza Ministry of Health described these incidents as “aid massacres”. Legal experts called them war crimes. But these are really “hunger games”.
Hunger changes people. It does not weaken the body – it tests the soul. He undermines confidence and solidarity between people and triggers the most basic instincts.
The occupier knows it, and he armaments.
It is not a coincidence that he viciously attacked and prohibited the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
The UNRWA help distribution system was a model of organization and equity. Each family registered with the agency had an identity card with which it could receive aid distributed by a prudent and transparent process. Priority has been given to the most vulnerable – widows, orphans, elderly and disabled – ensuring that those who need help have received it the most.
Its system has reduced the risk of deadly benches and violent clashes because there was order, dignity and respect for human life.
The occupier does not want any of this.
This is why he designed a distribution of aid in the form of “hunger games”.
These are orchestrated traps designed to provoke chaos and disorders so that the Palestinians fight each other and the social order and the solidarity that maintain Palestinian society together.
For a month, Israel and GHF denied that there were mass killings in aid centers – another Israeli lie that was largely raw. Now, the Israeli media themselves reported that Israeli soldiers had been ordered to shoot the crowds of the Palestinians trying to obtain help from the GHF POLD.
Will the world believe us now? Will it act?
What is happening in Gaza is not fiction. It is not a horror film. The “hunger games” are real, as is the genocide of which they are part. The fact that the world allows such dystopia to take place is overwhelming proof of its own loss of humanity.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
