“I ordered a complete blockade on Gaza. There will be no electricity and no food. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant began his speech two days after the Al-Aqsa flood.
After 108 days of the start of the aggression on the Gaza Strip, the people of the northern Gaza Strip are on the verge of a real famine that threatens those who survived the indiscriminate bombing of the occupation with death by starvation, which was confirmed by the Director General of the Government Information Office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabta.
In statements to Tel Aviv Tribune, Al-Thawabta pointed out that more than 400,000 Palestinians are experiencing real famine in the northern Gaza Strip governorate, and he called on the Egyptian authorities to expedite the opening of the Rafah crossing for humanitarian aid.
He confirmed that more than 9,000 Palestinians were martyred due to the lack of health care, while more than 20 different diseases are spreading among the displaced.
Manifestations of famine began when canned food, which the people of the Gaza Strip had relied on for their food since the beginning of the aggression, began to disappear from the markets, followed by wheat flour, which was empty in the markets, so the Palestinians turned to grinding corn and barley grains intended for making animal feed.
Hungry children
In the Jabalia camp market in the northern Gaza Strip, Amal Shaaban looked tired and exhausted as she searched for white wheat flour to feed her five children, but she did not find what she was looking for so she decided to buy ground whole wheat.
She says I couldn’t find white flour, so I bought 3 kilograms of wheat flour, which is made from “very poor wheat that was originally intended for animal feed.”
Amal continues her speech by highlighting what many residents of the northern Gaza Strip were like. We have been eating rice for a long time, and now the price of rice has risen three times and we are no longer able to buy it. Wheat flour is missing, and corn and barley flour are very expensive and taste bad, continues the Palestinian woman.
As her eyes filled with tears, Amal added that the bread we make from this flour “tastes very bad and children do not accept it” in any way, but I could not find anything else, so I bought it, “I will try to convince them to eat it.”
Buying 3 kilograms of flour costs a Palestinian daily 50 shekels (about 14 dollars), which is why Amal is now finding it difficult to save this amount, as she paid the last of what she had left to buy animal fodder and does not have any money with which to buy it.
A real famine threatens our people in northern Gaza. After the markets ran out of flour and rice, people began grinding corn intended for animal feed to obtain bread. pic.twitter.com/jMiH0zv7Dx
– Bilal Nezar Rayan (@BelalNezar) January 21, 2024
Multiple tragedy
For a family of 7 members, Abdul Rahim Al-Jarbi searches for food in the Jabalia camp market, after running out of flour. The family lived on bread and tea throughout the period of the aggression.
Al-Jarbi says, “We no longer understand anything. We wander around all night and day looking for flour that is sufficient for only one day, but we cannot find it.”
We do not know what to eat. A pound (3 kilograms) of flour costs between 50 to 60 shekels (13 to 15 dollars), and we do not know where we will get all this money from to buy food for our children. Those words came out of him as a muffled scream.
The Western citizen tries to explain what his fellow men in Gaza are suffering by saying, “The Palestinian man is living a tragedy on all levels. There is no food or good sleep due to the continued Israeli bombing, and no drinking water.”
While trucks continue to enter the southern Gaza Strip on a limited basis, none of these trucks have reached the Gaza and North governorates.
Like humans
Orange seller Khaled Abdel Nabi is also facing the same problem. He began collecting animal food to eat and feed his family members.
Abdul Nabi explodes with anger when talking about what he faces to feed his family. “This is not life. I get 20 shekels a day (about 7 dollars), and this amount is not enough to buy half a pound (1.5 kilograms of flour). The situation is difficult. We (want) flour, food, and water.” “Like humans.”
He added, “I have a boy and a girl, and I cannot (cannot) feed them. Our life is very bad. We want to live a decent life.”
Muhammad Hamada, owner of a grain mill in Jabalia camp, confirms that the markets have completely run out of white flour, and points out that what is available in the market now is only corn flour.
He points out that they used to grind rice, but because of its high prices, they stopped doing that and started making flour from corn and barley grains intended for animal feed.
⛔ Along a length of 4.5 kilometers, relief trucks are piled up at #Rafah crossing from direction #Egypt! This satellite image is dated January 20
Every minute the entry of trucks is delayed, famine strikes the people of Gaza more. For those who do not know yet, much of the aid has already spoiled due to the long wait at the border.#Open_the_crossing
For… pic.twitter.com/odiX2QTUiH— Murad Kwatly (@MuradSyr) January 21, 2024
To confront the atmosphere of famine that the Strip is going through, the government media office in Gaza stated that the two governorates need 1,300 food trucks per day to get out of the state of hunger, with 600 trucks for the north and 700 for Gaza.
While Israel says that it does not prevent aid trucks at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Cairo denies its responsibility for not bringing in aid, noting that the crossing is witnessing an accumulation of aid that has arrived in the Strip but has not been entered yet.
