Gaza City – I only saw recently what it is for the crowd that is desperately awaiting aid to Gaza.
I do not see them in Deir El-Balah, but we go north to Gaza to visit my family, and on the Al-Rashid Coast Street, I saw something that made me bad about the ceasefire much discussed in Gaza-and if that does not respond to the help crisis?
This crisis has prompted Hamas to request changes to the ceasefire proposed, on the entrance to the aid and the end of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), supported by the United States and Israel (GHF), in Gates Israel kills dozens while waiting for aid every day.
On Al-Rashid Street
Since Israel broke the last cease-fire in March, our visits to the North have become very calculated, less on planning and more on reading the climbing levels of Israeli air strikes.
The intention to go north, formed before sleeping, is canceled when we hear bombs.
Conversely, waking up in relative calm could stimulate an instant decision. We dressed and quickly pack clothes, supplies and documents, always under a persistent fear: that the tanks again cut the road and will trap us in the North.
The first day of Eid Al-Adha, on June 6, we have been visiting my family for three weeks.
The assault on the ground of Israel, “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”, was at its peak, and my husband and I decided to remain in the hope of avoiding violence.
But finally, the desire to see the family prevailed over fear and our daughter Banias really wanted to see his grandfather for Eid, so we made the trip.
Travel reveals the dysfunction of the current transport system in Gaza.
A trip that took a little more than 20 minutes in a private car – door to Deir El -Balah at my family home in Gaza City – now requires several stops, long walks and long expectations for unreliable transport.
To reach Gaza City, we make three “internal walks” in the center of Gaza, short trips between neighborhoods or cities like Az-Zawayda, Deir El-Balah and Nuseirat, often on shared donkey carts or old cars causing carts open behind them.
While waiting for these rides can take an hour or more, donkey carts holding up to 12 people and car combinations by car carrying six in the car, plus 10 to 12 in the cart.
Then comes the “external journey”, the longer and more risky trips between the governors generally involving a crowded tuk-tuk carrying 10 or more passengers along the bombed roads.
Since the truce of January – broken by Israel in March – Israel has only authorized the movement of pedestrians and carts, with prohibited vehicles.
The entire trip can take up to two hours, depending on the road conditions. Exhausting trips have become my new standard, especially when I travel with children.
“Aid seekers”
My last two trips to the north brought me face to face with “aid researchers”.
This severe label recently dominated the titles of the news, but witnessing their nearby travel defies the whole imagination. It belongs entirely to another world.
On June 6, to make the wish of the Eid de Banias to see his grandfather, we climbed a tuk-tuk at the end of the evening.
Near the western edge of what the people of Gaza call Al-Shari al-Jadeed (“the new road”), the 7 km netzarim corridor that the Israeli army has built to divide the enclave, I saw hundreds of people on sand dunes on both sides of the street. Some had lit fires and gathered around them.
It is a sterile and ghostly section of sand and rubble, filled with living shadows of the most desperate Gaza.
I started filming with my phone while the other passengers explained that these “help researchers” were waiting to intercept the help trucks and grasp everything they could.
Some of them also await a “American GHF” distribution point on the parallel street of Salah al-Din, which is supposed to open at dawn.
A bitter discussion ensued at the point of help managed by the United States which had “caused so many deaths”. The help system, he said, had transformed survival into lottery and dignity into a victim.
I sank, seeing it was entirely different from reading it or looking at the news.
Banias took me out of my thoughts: “Mama, what are these people doing here?”
Oh my God! This child lives in his own pink world.
My mind pulled from its joyful interpretation of one of the darkest scenes I have ever seen: black smoke, emaciated bodies, hunger, roads filled with dust.
I was silent, unable to answer.
Men and boys have passed, some with backpacks, others with empty white bags like bags of flour, for everything they could find. Cardboard boxes are too difficult to transport.
Help researchers are walking from all over Gaza, gathering by the thousands to wait all night until the 4th, 5 or 6 am, fearing that Israeli soldiers kill them before they can enter the “American GHF”.
According to reports, they rush to grasp everything they can, a chaotic stampede where the forts devour the weak.
These men were long -standing death projects; They know, but they go there anyway.
For what? Because hunger persists and there is no other solution. It is either starving or dying while trying to survive it.
We have reached Gaza City. Dust, darkness and congestion surrounded us while the tuk-tuk crossed completely destroyed roads.
While each shock crossed our back, a passenger pointed out: “We are all going to have back pain and disc problems of this tuk-tuk.”
A silence fallen, broken by Banias, our little journalist from the pink world: “Mama, Baba, look at the moon behind! It’s completely full.
“I think I see Aunt Mayar in the sky next to the moon,” said Banias, about my sister who traveled during the war in Egypt, then in Qatar.
When we asked how, she explained: “She said that her name means the star who lives next to the moon. Look!”
We smiled despite the misery, too drained to answer. The other passengers listened to his dreamlike observations.
“Baba, when are we going to study astronomy at school?” She asked. “I want to know more about the moon and the stars.”
We did not have time to answer. We had arrived and the curtain fell another exhausting day.
The return
I told my family what I saw on al-Rashid, and they listened, shocked and intrigued, their “correspondent on the field”.
They were also concerned about food shortages, discussing the mixture of their last kilo of flour with pasta to stretch it more – conversations governed by fear of hunger and the unknown.
We did not stay long, just two days before returning along a road filled with fear of bombing and aid seekers.
Only this time, it was daylight, and I could see women sitting near the road, ready to spend the night waiting for help.
About two weeks later, on June 26, we made the trip again.
I traveled with my two children, my sister – who had come back with us during the last trip – and my brother’s wife and her two young children: Salam, four years old and two years old. My husband came the next day.
We had seven years in a little worn minibus, and we had nine other piled up with us: three men next to the driver, a young man with his wife and sister, and a woman with her husband and child.
Sixteen people in a van, clearly not built for that!
Although vehicles are prohibited from Al-Rashid, some manage to pass. Tired and worried about young children with us, we took the risk and, that day, we did.
I do not know if it was fate or misfortune, but as our van approached the area around the Netzarim corridor, the trucks of the world program arrived.
Two trucks stopped on the road, waiting to be “looted”.
The people of Gaza will tell you that this is a new policy under Israeli terms: no organized distribution, no lists. Just let the trucks enter, let anyone can take help, take it and let the rest die.
In a neighboring street, three others have also stopped. People started to climb trucks, grabbing what they could.
In a few moments, all vehicles, tuk-tuks and carts, including our van, stopped. Everyone around us – men, women and children – started running for trucks.
Actation broke out in our car. The young man traveling with his wife and sister insisted to go there despite their pleadings. He jumped and two other men followed.
I was very shocked when a woman behind us passed the past, telling her husband and her son: “I’m going. You stay.”
She ran like the wind. Other women and girls have left vehicles nearby and have shaped in the trucks.
I was wondering: could it climb on the side of a truck and fight against men for food?
The human waves have left around us, apparently from nowhere, and I begged our driver to move on. The scene looked like a battle for survival, well -past thoughts of dignity, justice and humanity.
The driver moved slowly; He had to continue to stop to avoid the crowd of people running in the opposite direction. My anxiety has increased. Children also felt it.
None of us could understand what we saw, not even me, a journalist who claims to be informed. The truth: reality is entirely different.
While we were driving, I saw young men train bags, standing by the road. One had a knife, fearing that it was attacked.
Other men wore blades or tools because being attacked by hungry colleagues is not unlikely.
“We have become thieves just to eat and feed our children,” is the new phase that Israel imposes through its “humanitarian” foundation managed by the United States and its “distribution policy”.
And here we are, in this social order which collapses, where only the stomach cries are heard.
How can we blame people for their misery? Did they choose this war?
The car crossed until the flow of help seekers finally dissipates. It was like emerging from another world.
We have reached an intersection in the city center, completely drained. I unpacked the car silently, asking myself: How many painful worlds are buried in you, Gaza?
That day, I saw the world of help seekers after spending 20 months immersed in the worlds of displaced, wounded, dead, hungry and thirst.
How many additional worlds of suffering must endure before the world finally sees us-and we finally gain a lasting ceasefire?
