Gaza – “Abu Luay” took circuitous routes through alleys and narrow streets to infiltrate his sister’s house on the northeastern outskirts of Jabalia camp, and returned to his family with some food to confront the famine that had returned to ravage the bodies of Gazans in the Gaza Strip, especially in its northern part, amid a scarcity of humanitarian aid and Israeli obstacles that reduced From its arrival.
It was a risky adventure, Abu Luay (44 years old) admits, but he had no other choice and his five children were starving.
However, his happiness with his achievement did not last long, as the food he obtained was only sufficient for a few days, and he and those with him will face great challenges in obtaining other food, in light of the stifling restrictions imposed by the occupation forces on the Jabalia camp and the northern Gaza Strip.
This camp, the densest among the eight camps in the Gaza Strip, has been subject for three weeks to a strict Israeli siege and horrific massacres committed by the occupation forces against its residents, depriving it and about 400,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip of all means of life.
Big obstacles
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip faces many obstacles, and out of 423 humanitarian aid movements that were coordinated with the Israeli authorities in the period from October 1 to 20, only 151 movements were facilitated. 189 were rejected, and the rest were disabled.
Regarding the movement of aid to the northern Gaza Strip, the UN office said that only 4 movements were facilitated out of 66 planned movements.
He explained that the Israeli authorities also rejected a separate request last Monday to reach Jabalia to distribute food, medicine, and fuel to operate water facilities, amid ongoing power outages and the depletion of fuel needed to operate water facilities, noting that people are risking their lives either to find drinking water or to consume water from unauthorized sources. Safe.
According to the OCHA office, “There is an urgent need to open safe and sustainable corridors to reach northern Gaza and other areas in the Strip,” stressing that “limited and unreliable crossings hinder humanitarian relief operations and make them ineffective.”
According to the government media office in Gaza, the occupying state has closed the Rafah land crossing with Egypt since the start of its ongoing ground military operation in the city of Rafah on May 6, and has closed the new humanitarian crossing (Erez West) for 180 days, in addition to the severe restrictions imposed. At the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing, the only commercial crossing under full Israeli control, in the southeast of Rafah.
Starvation policy
Due to what the government media office describes as a “starvation policy,” the majority of goods and merchandise disappeared from the markets in the south and north of the Strip, and prices rose significantly.
Citizen Muhammad Hammad told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that he searched for two continuous days throughout the city of Khan Yunis for a bag of flour for his family, but he did not find it. This matter was attributed by the Director General of the Government Media Office, Ismail Al Thawabta – in his speech to Tel Aviv Tribune Net – to prevent the occupation from bringing in flour trucks belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees. Palestinians (UNRWA).
According to Hammad, the price of a 25-kilogram bag of flour in the market is currently more than 150 shekels (about 40 dollars), although its price when available does not exceed two dollars.
Famine has once again reared its head in the small sector, and according to international bodies, the current state of hunger as a result of Israeli restrictions and restrictions reminds us of what the reality of Gazans was like during the first two months of the war.
Al-Thawabta said, “The occupation has prevented the entry of more than a quarter of a million trucks of aid and goods since the start of the genocidal war, within the framework of strengthening the starvation policy and using it as a weapon of war against civilians and against children, especially by preventing the entry of food, baby milk, and nutritional supplements.”
The situation began to escalate dangerously 169 days ago in the governorates of Central, Khan Yunis, and Rafah (south of the Gaza Strip), and more than 180 days ago in the governorates of Gaza and North Gaza, where the occupation imposed a complete lockdown on the Gaza Strip by closing all crossings and all humanitarian outlets through which some aid was entering. Humanity, but this stopped completely within the framework of the starvation policy, according to Al-Thawabta’s assertion.
Maha Al-Husseini, an official at the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory for Human Rights, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the rate of trucks entering the Gaza Strip before the war was estimated at 600 trucks per day loaded with various types of goods and merchandise, while their rate during the war did not exceed 40 trucks per day, which does not meet the needs of the population.
Israel prevented more than 220,000 trucks from entering the Gaza Strip, including about 100,000 trucks destined for areas north of the Gaza Strip, according to the human rights official.
Serious repercussions
The Israeli starvation policy affected the lives of about two million and 400 thousand people, and left serious repercussions represented by a shortage of food and medicine, complete economic paralysis, and increasing rates of unemployment and poverty, according to Al-Thawabta.
In furtherance of the starvation policy, the occupation deliberately destroyed the agricultural infrastructure. To do so, the spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, Engineer Muhammad Abu Odeh, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the occupation army destroyed agricultural lands, restricted access to basic resources for agriculture such as water and land, and imposed strict restrictions on the import of inputs. Agricultural products such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides.
The occupation forces also destroyed animal production farms in its various sectors, including poultry, red meat, eggs, and dairy, and destroyed the marine fishing sector and fish farming farms.
As a result of this policy, Abu Odeh explains that Gazans suffer from food insecurity, loss of sovereignty over food, deprivation of the right to food, and a decline in the rate of self-sufficiency. He says that there is a large gap in the local production of the majority of agricultural goods and products, and because of it, the rate of sufficiency does not increase. Self intake of vegetables is about 15% and fruits is about 20%.