Gaza- Forty-year-old Samaher Al-Shinbari reveals the body of her youngest child, Mahmoud (7 years old), and says with eyes filled with helplessness and sorrow, “By God, we are tired and our bodies have collapsed.” Due to malnutrition, she was forced to present him to doctors at the Nasser Medical Complex, close to the school in which she lives, west of the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Gaza.
This widowed woman (47 years old) supports three children, the eldest of whom is Ahmed (19 years old), the middle of whom is Ibrahim (14 years old), and the youngest of whom is Mahmoud. She has one daughter, Sabreen (20 years old), who lives with her husband.
Samaher chose to devote her life to raising her children after the death of her husband, and with the outbreak of war, she displaced them eight times from Beit Hanoun in the north of the Gaza Strip to the city of Rafah in the south.
Samaher was living a “stable and simple life,” as she described it to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “and we were satisfied and satisfied with our lives. Then the war broke out and our circumstances changed. We lost the house and became homeless. I spent my small savings on rent for transportation vehicles, and we spent days in the streets and on the seashore.”
Displacement and hunger
Following the Israeli ground invasion of the city of Rafah last May, this mother was displaced with her three children to the UNRWA warehouses area northwest of the city. They miraculously survived a massacre committed by the occupation against the displaced. She was forced to spend two days with them on the beach of the city of Deir al-Balah, and they woke up to sea water sweeping over them. They were transferred to a school in Khan Yunis, where they lived in miserable conditions, and the school lacked the minimum basic requirements for life.
“By God, I cannot buy a head of onions,” Al-Shanbari swore as she explained in detail her living reality, as if she was waiting for someone to listen to her. “All of our food is canned peas, beans, and fava beans, and all of them are diseases caused by preservatives and their exposure to sunlight for long periods at the crossings and in the markets.”
Even these canned goods are no longer readily available due to the strict restrictions imposed by the occupation on the entry of relief aid into the Gaza Strip since the invasion of Rafah and the occupation of the Rafah land crossing with Egypt and its absolute control over the only Kerem Shalom commercial crossing with the Gaza Strip, through which it allows the entry of specific types of commercial goods and frozen meat at low prices. High.
During this October, under the pretext of Jewish holidays, the occupation closed this commercial crossing, tightened its restrictions, and stopped the entry of relief and commercial trucks. This had serious repercussions on the reality of Gazans, as goods and goods disappeared and prices rose in a way that Al-Shinbari describes as crazy.
She says that she was forced to buy “a 25-kilogram bag of spoiled flour (infected by weevils) at a price of 50 shekels (14 dollars), while its price last month was no more than 10 shekels (less than 3 dollars).”
This woman is suffering from cancer, and before the war she underwent a mastectomy. Her health condition requires that she eat fresh fruits, meat, and vegetables, which are scarce in the markets and their prices are very high. She says that she and her children have not eaten meat for many months.
As for Mahmoud, he hates canned food, which caused him pain in his stomach and itchy skin, but he finds no alternative to eating it with his mother and two brothers. He told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that he misses his home in Beit Hanoun and the “musakhan” meal, which is a traditional Palestinian dish, and its preparation requires chicken and a lot of onions. With teary eyes, his mother said, “A kilo of chicken costs 40 shekels, and a kilo of onions costs 45 shekels.”
In the same school, and in one of its small classrooms, Umm Samer Abu Amsha (62 years old) resides with her husband, children, and their families (30 members), and the war forced them to move 14 times.
Umm Samer told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that they have traveled the sector from north to south since they left Beit Hanoun at the beginning of the war.
The many and repeated displacements have depleted the savings of this large family, which lives in miserable conditions. Umm Samer has suffered from osteoporosis and needs someone to help her get up. She says, “My health was good before the war and I depended on my condition, but the war, displacement and fear destroyed us.”
Umm Samer needs foods that contain calcium, and doctors have recommended that she eat fruits, milk, eggs, and meat. She sadly asks, “Well, how and where can I buy them?” She continues, “The situation is bad and the prices are expensive (..) and we live a life that only God knows about. We are bored and tired of eating.” Canned goods. I am over sixty years old, and I only knew these canned goods during the war.”
Her husband, Samir (67 years old), intervened, saying, “We are dying slowly, and sometimes we cannot find even canned food, and if there is bread with tea, it is a blessing and a favor from God.” This cancer-stricken man adds that he does not remember the last time he ate fresh meat and vegetables.
Destroying ways of life
Ministry of Agriculture spokesman, Engineer Muhammad Abu Odeh, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that Gazans lack the luxury of setting healthy food priorities, as they are often only provided with unhealthy food goods and products, such as canned goods that are rich in manufactured and carcinogenic preservatives, and have no benefit other than alleviating hunger, and are devoid of food. No nutritional value.
The population’s reliance on canned goods mainly in their diet was reflected in the spread of diseases such as hepatitis and poisoning, in addition to anemia among pregnant women, children and the elderly, as Abu Odeh confirms.
According to this official, the destruction of facilities and agricultural lands, the closure of crossings, and the prevention of supplying the needs of the local market led to a sharp rise in the prices of agricultural products, and the prices of vegetables, fruits, eggs, and meat in the northern Gaza Strip – if available – reach 50 to 80 times their prices before the war, while In the south of the Gaza Strip, it reaches 15 to 25 times.
An analysis by Christian Aid published by the UNRWA Information Office in Gaza showed that onions are sold in the northern Gaza Strip for more than 400 times their price before the war, and the price of one kilogram of them is 107 dollars, equivalent to 8 times the average daily wage in Gaza before the war.
Since the outbreak of the war, the occupation has been manipulating the movement of goods and commodities, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that the amount of commercial and humanitarian supplies that entered the Gaza Strip last September was the lowest since at least March 2024, and noted that this situation is expected to witness an increasing amount. Of deterioration.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only 52 humanitarian aid trucks entered the Strip last September on average per day, noting that the Strip’s daily need before the war exceeded 500 trucks loaded with various goods and commodities that entered through Kerem Shalom.
A survey conducted by UNICEF in mid-September indicates that between 35 and 40% of pregnant and breastfeeding women ate only one type of food on the day before the survey was conducted.
According to the World Food Programme, “flour and canned goods are the only foodstuffs available in the markets of the northern Gaza Strip,” and this data dates back to before the military operation against Jabalia that has been ongoing for two weeks.
Destruction of agriculture and fishing
The latest agricultural damage inventory – which is based on satellite images and conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Program (UNOSAT) – indicates that 67.6% of agricultural land was damaged as of September 1.
North Gaza Governorate currently records the highest percentage of damage among all governorates, amounting to 78.2%.
In addition, damage affected more than 71% of orchards and other lands planted with trees, 67% of field crops, and 58.5% of vegetable crops.
The pictures show that 1,188 out of 2,261 agricultural wells, representing 52.5%, and more than 44% of agricultural greenhouses (greenhouses) were damaged.
Moreover, the occupation destroyed most of the infrastructure in the Gaza port and fishing boats, and the Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza estimates the rate of destruction of fish wealth at about 98%.
In light of the “unprecedented levels” of agricultural damage, Beth Bechdol, Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization, stressed that this “raises major concerns about the possibility of food production now and in the future, and these damages exacerbate the risk of the imminent spread of famine throughout the Gaza Strip.”
The head of the International Commission for Supporting the Rights of the Palestinian People, Salah Abdel Ati, estimates that the humanitarian supplies that have entered the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war do not exceed 18% of civilian needs, and he confirms that Israel is using a “distillation” method by entering these supplies with the aim of putting pressure on the popular incubator of resistance.
Abdel Ati told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the weapon of starvation and thirst has victims, as do the rest of the prohibited and lethal weapons used by the occupation. The Commission has monitored the martyrdom of 600 Palestinians, including children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the sick, as a result of malnutrition and starvation.
The use of the weapon of starvation and thirst is currently evident in Jabalia and the northern Gaza Strip. According to Abdel Ati, the occupation creates a genocidal environment by using this weapon, as it deprives civilians there of all means of life for the purpose of killing and displacement.