Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Hani Abu Rizq walks in the nautical streets of Gaza City with two bricks attached to her stomach while the rope cuts in his clothes, which stand out from the weight he has lost.
The 31 -year -old man desperately searches food to feed his mother and seven brothers and sisters with the bricks in a hurry against his belly – an old technique which he had never imagined that he would have needed.
“We are hungry,” he says, his hollow exhaustion voice.
“Even famine as a word does not become what we all feel,” he adds, his eyes according to people who pass in front.
It adjusts the rope around its waist, a gesture that has become as routine as breathing.
“I went back to what people did in ancient times, endearing stones around my belly to try to calm my hunger. It’s not just war. It is intentional famine. “
Gaza’s heart rate discoloration
Before October 7, 2023 and the start of the War of Israel against Gaza, food was the heart rate of daily life in Gaza.
The days in Gaza were built around municipal meals – breakfasts of zaatar and sparkling olive oil, maqlooba lunches in diapers and musakhan who filled heat houses, and evenings spent around rice, tender meat and sparkling seasonal salads with herbs from the gardens.
Abu Rizq remembers these days with the pain of someone crying the dead.
The single man liked to dine and come together with his family and friends. He talks about comfortable dining rooms where homemade houses were displayed as art and evenings were filled with desserts and spicy drinks that persisted on languages and in memory.
“Now we buy sugar and salt by the gram,” he says, his hands making a gesture to empty market stalls that have once overflowed with products.
“A tomato or cucumber is a luxury – a dream. Gaza has become more expensive than world capitals, and we have nothing. ”
Over almost 22 months of war, the amount of food in Gaza has been considerably reduced. The besieged enclave was under the complete pity of Israel, which reduced access to everything, from flour to cooking gas.
But since March 2, authorized humanitarian and essential objects have dropped to a frightening bottom. Israel has completely blocked all foods from March to May and has since authorized only minimum aid deliveries, which caused a generalized international conviction.
Look at children suffer
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 159 Palestinians – including 90 children and infants – died of malnutrition and dehydration during the war from Thursday.
The World Food Program warns against a “full famine” spreading through the enclave while UNICEF reports that one in three children under the age of five in the north of Gaza suffers from acute malnutrition.
Fidaa Hassan, former nurse and mother of three children from the Jabalia refugee camp, knows the signs of malnutrition.
“I studied them,” she said in Tel Aviv Tribune of her family refuge in the west of Gaza. “Now I see them in my own children.”
His youngest child, Hassan, two, wakes up every morning crying with food, asking for bread that does not exist.
“We celebrated each of my children’s birthdays with great parties (before the war) – except … Hassan. He had two months several months ago, and I couldn’t even give him a good meal, ”she said.
Her 10-year-old child, Firas, she adds, shows visible signs of severe malnutrition that she recognizes with painful clarity.
Before the war, his house buared life around meals. “We eat three or four times a day,” she recalls.
“Lunch was a moment to come together. The winter evenings were filled with the aroma of the lentil soup. We spent the spring afternoon preparing vines stuffed with such treatments.
“Now, we … sleep hungry.
“There is no flour, no bread, nothing to fill our stomachs,” she says, holding Hassan while her little body is shaking.
“We haven’t had a bite of bread for over two weeks. A kilo of flour costs 150 shekels ($ 40), and we cannot afford it. ”
Hassan was six months old when the bombing started. Now, at two, he hardly looks like a healthy child of his age.
The United Nations have repeatedly warned that the headquarters of Israel and the restrictions on humanitarian aid create artificial famine conditions.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, only a fraction of the 600 food trucks and supplies required in Gaza daily, in normal circumstances, occurs. The classification system for the integrated food security phase has placed Northern Gaza in phase 5: disaster / famine.
In the midst of a lack of security, the net of humanitarian aid authorized to enter Gaza is subject to gangs and to loot, preventing people in need to access rare supplies.
In addition, hundreds of desperate aid seekers have been slaughtered by Israeli soldiers while trying to obtain humanitarian aid provided by the GHF supported by the United States and Israeli since May.
Abundance as a distant memory
Hala Mohammed, 32, cradles Qusai, three years old, in the overcrowded shelter of a parent in Remal, a district of Gaza City, when she describes how she must watch him crying for hunger every morning, her little voice breaks.
“There is no flour, no sugar, no milk,” she says, her arms wrapped in a protective way around the child, who only knew war for most of his life.
“We cook lentils like dough and cooks simple pasta just to fill our stomachs. But hunger is stronger. ”
It is devastating for someone who grew up in the rich culture of Gaza’s hospitality and generosity and who has had a comfortable life in the Tuffah district.
Before the trip could force her, she and her husband, to flee to the west with Qusai, each milestone called for beautiful meals – New Year celebrations, Mother’s Day meetings, birthday parties for her husband, mother -in -law and quai.
“Many of our memories have been created around shared meals. Now meals (have become the) Memory, ”she says.
“My son asks for food and I keep it right,” she continues, her cute voice. “Famine spreads like cancer – slowly, silently and merciless. Children waste before our eyes. And we can’t do anything. “
This play was published in collaboration with EGAB.
