Gaza- For three days, the child Jana Qudeih remained fighting death, clinging to life by drinking only water, while her small body collapsed due to hunger, before she was martyred in a shelter center inside the Taiba Governmental School in the large town of Abasan, east of the city of Khan Yunis, where her family had been displaced following warnings. Israeli and violent air strikes.
Jana (14 years old) was martyred yesterday, Friday, as a result of extreme hunger. She could not find a grave to house her small body, and her family was forced to bury her in the school yard, which was surrounded by tanks and targeted by Israeli warplanes with violent air strikes in its vicinity, coinciding with efforts to infiltrate overland from the eastern axis. Towards the depth of the city of Khan Yunis.
This was only one of several deaths monitored by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory, of children who lost their lives as a result of extreme hunger inside shelter centers, most of them in schools affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the southern Gaza Strip.
Martyrs of hunger
Jana suffers from cerebral palsy and cannot endure hunger, and her family did not find anything to protect her for 3 consecutive days. In her testimony to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, Nisreen Qudeih, the martyr girl’s aunt, said, “During these days, Jana only drank water, and I wish she had drinkable water, but what water was available in the school that was surrounded by tanks.”
Throughout these days, Jana’s family has been appealing to human rights and international organizations to save them from “the clutches of bombing, siege, and hunger,” but “no one responded to the cries of Nada, her family, and thousands of displaced people in the school,” Nisreen confirmed.
Nisreen herself is displaced with her family and four children in a school located west of the city of Khan Yunis. She says that she is almost killed by the fear that hunger will overtake them, and that they will die of starvation like Jana.
Nisreen met her niece, Jana, for the last time, on one of the days of the temporary truce, which Hamas and Israel reached under Qatari sponsorship, on November 22, and she said that two words from Jana’s father were still echoing in her ears: “The girl is dying.”
Jana, the eldest of her siblings in a family of 7, was displaced from her home in the town of Abasan Al-Kabira, one of the towns east of Khan Yunis, which was subject to an Israeli warning to its residents to evacuate and move towards the city of Rafah, with the start of ground military operations by the occupation army in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Nisreen said, “My brother was forced to leave the apartment to which he was displaced with his family, and take refuge in the Taiba School shelter center about 3 weeks ago, after the owner of the apartment needed his apartment, following an Israeli bombing that destroyed his house in the city of Khan Yunis.”
Grave at school
Although the cemetery is not more than 800 meters away from the school, Jana’s father found himself forced to bury her in a “temporary grave” in the school yard, and his sister Nisreen says, “Aerial and artillery bombardment does not stop around the school, and the occupation army prevents movement in the area and leaving.” “School is too risky.”
During this war, which Gazans describe as the “most violent” of the five wars and numerous rounds of escalation, the displaced are often forced to bury martyrs in school and hospital courtyards, after they were unable to reach the cemeteries, due to the difficulty of movement on the ground, whether due to the ground incursion of occupation tanks, or Due to the intensity of air strikes and artillery shelling.
With a lot of sadness and grief, Nisreen said, “Jana lived with a disability, and she died of hunger, and she could not find a grave to be buried in.” She was silent for a while before continuing her speech, “Our children are dying from bombing and hunger, and no one is doing anything, as if the whole world is watching a movie.”
Nisreen says that living conditions are continuing to deteriorate, and thousands of displaced people are in shelter centers in the city of Khan Yunis and towns in the eastern region, without water or food, after the interruption of UNRWA supplies. She wonders, “Today we share dates with each other, and we give our children priority over ourselves, as we adults can bear hunger.” But how long can we hold out?
He was killed by starvation
The reality of the situation in the central region of the Gaza Strip and Gaza City and its north appears to be worse, due to the isolation imposed on these areas, whether due to the intensity of fire, or the actual presence of the occupation tanks and vehicles on the main axes and roads, preventing movement and the flow of supplies and aid despite its scarcity.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that the limited aid entering the Gaza Strip has been distributed for several days only to the city of Rafah, due to field tension in the city of Khan Yunis, and the Israeli army’s isolation of the central region, Gaza City and its north.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warns of the dangers of expanding the cycle of starvation war practiced by Israel against civilians in the Gaza Strip, with the aim of deepening the genocide it has been practicing since the seventh of last October.
The head of the Observatory, Dr. Rami Abdo, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that they had received “reports recording cases of children dying from starvation inside UNRWA schools in the southern Gaza Strip, after suffering from health complications as a result of malnutrition.” The last of these cases was the child Jana, who was martyred as a result of hunger and lack of oxygen. necessary for her condition.
This human rights activist doubts the seriousness of UNRWA and international organizations and the extent to which they are making the necessary efforts to confront the Israeli starvation policy. He said, “United Nations agencies should not be complicit in the starvation war taking place in light of the sharp decline in the entry of humanitarian aid in recent days and be content with distributing limited supplies to the southernmost areas of the Gaza Strip.” “.
According to the head of the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory, “The security pretexts advanced by these agencies and international organizations cannot be accepted to justify leaving civilians in the Gaza Strip to face death from starvation,” stressing that UNRWA, the World Food Program and the International Committee of the Red Cross are required to bear their direct responsibilities for the escalation of the Israeli war of starvation. .
Official UNRWA data indicate that the average humanitarian aid received through the Rafah land crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt is estimated at 55 trucks per day, representing only 5% of the basic needs of more than 2.2 million Palestinians in the small coastal strip, while the average during the days of the temporary truce was 170 trucks. Daily.