Gaza- “With good health (with difficulty), I prepared two small packages of biscuits for them.” With these words, the Palestinian Hassouna Skafi summarized the arduous search for anything edible for his family in Gaza City, which is subject to stifling isolation imposed by the Israeli occupation army, depriving them of all means of life.
For Hassouna and hundreds of thousands of residents of Gaza City and those displaced from the northern regions of the Gaza Strip, providing any kind of food has become an almost impossible task, as a result of the occupation army isolating the city from the rest of the cities of the Gaza Strip, and the intense targeting of all means of life there, including markets, shops, and water wells.
Since the outbreak of the war on October 7, Gaza City has been subjected to the heaviest Israeli air strikes and shelling by land and sea, before the occupation army entered its camps and neighbourhoods, with its tanks and vehicles, and forced its residents to flee their homes inside the city or towards cities and camps in the southern Gaza Strip.
Searching for life
Hassouna did not flee, and preferred to stay in his home in the Al-Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, until he found himself forced to leave with his family as a result of a horrific massacre committed by the occupation army with air strikes that destroyed an entire residential square, a few days ago. He told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “I miraculously got them out, and we spent two days in front of the door of a school that houses thousands of displaced people from Gaza City and its north.”
Hassouna is married and has “Hoor,” a 6-month-old baby girl. He lives with his mother, two brothers, and other displaced people who took refuge in their home in the Shuja’iya neighborhood. He explains, “We were 15 people, including 6 children, 5 women, and my disabled uncle. We miraculously emerged from Shuja’iya under bombardment and air strikes. We stayed as if we were in the street at the school gate, until we managed our affairs at a friend’s house in the Al-Sabra neighborhood of the city.”
The Gaza Municipality estimates the city’s original population and those displaced from the northern regions at 400 to 500 thousand people, living in a collapsed humanitarian and living reality, where the most basic necessities of life are not available, and even movement in the streets is fraught with many dangers.
He added, “The streets are destroyed, and the aerial, ground, and sea bombardment does not stop in the city, in which all aspects of life are lacking. Everything has been destroyed, including markets, shops, and water wells.”
In his opinion, obtaining a kilogram of flour is “equivalent to life,” while answering a question about how his family manages its daily needs. He said, “Yesterday, the family’s meal – all day – was a few biscuits, which I got after a lot of effort, and if meat was available, there is no gas.” Cooking, and even firewood is missing in Gaza.”
Hassouna and his family have not tasted food prepared over fire since the first week of the war, and their daily dependence on canned food continued until it ran out, and their lives became dependent on what food was available to satisfy hunger and keep them alive.
Thirst politics
In order to provide two gallons with a capacity of 20 liters of water for drinking and other uses, Hassouna’s brothers are forced to walk on foot for a distance of two kilometers. He says that this arduous task may be repeated more than once a day, noting that it is “salt water and we are forced to drink it in light of the scarcity of water.” in the city”.
Hour after hour, Hassouna says that his concern increases for his infant daughter, “Hoor,” who suffers from severe diarrhea, and does not have milk available to her because pharmacies and shops are closed, while his breastfeeding wife suffers from malnutrition.
With great sadness, he continues, “I do not know when the moment of collapse will come. The pressures are intense and death may come upon us from bombing or hunger and thirst.”
These pressures that Hassouna referred to are confirmed by Gaza City Municipality spokesman Hosni Muhanna, who told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “Everything in Gaza has collapsed, and paralysis has affected all aspects of life due to aggression, isolation, and siege.”
In order to postpone the moment of complete collapse for an additional two days, after which all municipal services would stop, this institution was forced to extract fuel from cars and machinery that went out of service, after being targeted by the occupation army inside its own parking lot, in addition to an amount it extracted from small tanks in the destroyed sewage stations, according to Muhanna. .
Since the beginning of last November, the municipality has not received any liter of fuel, Muhanna confirms, and says that the municipality was finally forced to stop all its work to save the small amount of fuel to ensure the continued operation of the water wells.
Gaza City depends on three sources of water, and with the outbreak of war, the lines transporting water coming from Israel, which represented 40% of the water need, were lost, and Israel stopped them as part of the implemented blockade policy.
The power outage caused the cessation of the second source of water, which represents 20% of the need through the desalination plant, and only 3 wells remaining from the third source were operating at a minimum out of 80 wells.
Disaster and famine
Hosni Muhanna said that the occupation army destroyed the majority of these wells, and a number of them stopped as a result of running out of fuel. Currently, only 3 wells operate for 3 hours a day to ensure that water reaches about 400 to 500 thousand residents of the city and those displaced from the northern areas of the Gaza Strip, pointing out that this water “ “It is very salty and there is no other alternative.”
Gaza City faces the risk of flooding in low-lying areas due to the flow of water from sewage plants. According to the city’s municipality spokesman, 7 sewage pumping stations have stopped working, whether due to direct targeting or fuel exhaustion, and this has caused the streets to be flooded with untreated sewage, which portends an environmental, health and humanitarian disaster.
He added that the flow of sewage water in the streets affects wells and the underground reservoir, and causes serious damage to the networks transporting water to the homes of citizens and to the displaced in shelter centers, in addition to the risk of stopping services for collecting the piles of accumulated waste spread in the streets, which threatens public health.
In addition to the fuel crisis, the destroyed streets are affecting the movement of the remaining municipal vehicles, which are struggling to reopen some of them to civil defense teams, to enable them to retrieve martyrs from the streets and alleys of neighborhoods and camps.
Muhanna says, “People in Gaza are struggling to survive, and the dangers of famine are imminent and looming on the horizon, as there is no water or food, and the aid that reached the city through the Rafah crossing did not touch the needs of the citizens and did not leave an impact on their lives.”
