In the northern Gaza Strip, where hunger is most severe, residents say that the severe shortage of vegetables, fruits and meat means that they subsist on bread only.
Palestinians there narrate how the foodstuffs available in the market are sold at exorbitant prices, as the price of a kilo of green pepper reached 320 shekels, or approximately 90 dollars, compared to only about a dollar before the start of the war. While traders sell onions for about $70.
Umm Muhammad, a mother of 6 children, said in Gaza City, “We are facing famine, and the whole world has forgotten about us.”
Umm Muhammad remained in the northern Gaza Strip for more than 8 months of Israeli military operations. But she and her family left their home for specific shelters in UN schools several times.
She described their food situation, saying, “There is only flour and bread. We do not have anything to eat with or dip in. I mean, we only eat bare bread.”
Blocking and exploitation
Palestinian officials and workers in international relief organizations said that in late May, the Israeli army lifted a ban on the sale of fresh food to the Gaza Strip from Israel and the occupied West Bank.
But in posts on social media, residents accused “unscrupulous merchants” of exploiting residents’ needs by buying goods at normal prices in Israel and the West Bank and selling them at a significant markup, taking advantage of the collapse of security in the Gaza Strip.
Umm Muhammad told Reuters via a messaging application, “There is no meat or vegetables, and if there are any available, the prices are incredibly expensive.”
The flow of United Nations aid to the devastated Gaza Strip has been greatly disrupted since the beginning of the Israeli military invasion of Rafah, located south of the Strip, which is the main crossing point into the Strip from Egypt. Israel is under increasing global pressure to ease the crisis, while humanitarian relief agencies warn that famine is imminent.
Israel says it does not place any restrictions on humanitarian supplies to civilians in the Gaza Strip and blames the United Nations for the slow delivery of aid, saying its operations are ineffective.
Witnesses reported on Friday that planes dropped aid boxes on areas in Al-Qarara and Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Imminent famine
“Much of the population in Gaza faces a catastrophic level of hunger and famine-like conditions,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday.
He explained that more than 8,000 children under the age of five were diagnosed and treated for severe malnutrition, including 1,600 children suffering from acute malnutrition.
The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip said on Friday that 27 children had died due to malnutrition in the Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression last October, and confirmed that a humanitarian tragedy was striking the northern Strip and that the specter of famine loomed on the horizon.
The Central Emergency Committee of the Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in the Gaza Strip issued an urgent appeal today, Friday, in a statement that said, “We call on the international community to put pressure to end the war, lift the siege, and open the doors to humanitarian aid to ensure that food and medicine reach those most in need.”
The statement added, “In addition to the shortage of food, water and medicine, the northern Gaza Strip suffers from a severe shortage of many basic necessities of life, including public and personal hygiene materials.”
He continued, “In addition to the lack of fuel and electricity, in addition to the lack of health care services, hospitals being out of service, and the complete destruction of all public and private facilities, in an Israeli attempt to reduce the chances of survival and living in the northern Gaza Strip.”