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There is no food or water in Gaza. This is not a sentence uttered in passing—it is a concise summary of a humanitarian catastrophe that is ravaging bodies on its way to the reports of international organizations. Famine is knocking at the door of every home, ravaging the bodies of children, women, and men alike. In Gaza today, no one is safe from hunger or thirst.
As shells rain down on civilians day and night, the Israeli occupation killing machine is not content with just this method. It has also deepened its siege and intensified its policy of systematic starvation and thirst. It is destroying water networks, bombing reservoirs, and preventing the entry of fuel needed to operate desalination plants, depriving more than two million people of their right to drink clean water.
Difficulty in accessing even a sip of water
Food has become a distant dream. Stores are empty, warehouses too, and the crossings are closed. Even attempts by humanitarian organizations to distribute meals are responded to with further shelling and restrictions. Gaza residents now have to walk for hours under live fire and stand in long queues under the scorching sun just to get their hands on a small amount of substandard food or to fill up a bucket of water that won’t last the day.
Because Israel is also systematically depriving the population of water, in yet another war crime targeting the daily lives of civilians. In Gaza City, the occupation destroyed the main water pipeline supplying the al-Tuffah neighborhood east of the city. This occurred during the Dar al-Arqam school massacre in the same neighborhood. Since that day, residents of the area have seen their suffering multiply when it comes to accessing drinking water, to the point that getting even one safe sip of water has become an arduous task.
Empty pots and queues of hungry people
Citizens—and this includes children, women, and the elderly—stand in long queues under the burning sun in search of a meal to appease their hunger amid the lack of any alternative to accessing food due to Israel’s continued closure of crossings and its ban on the entry of aid and cooking gas into the Gaza Strip. They carry metal pots, plastic buckets, and whatever else they have that could hold a handful of food that, although tasteless, might at least dull their hunger for a few hours.
These food banks are operated by international organizations working in the Gaza Strip, such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Red Cross, along with a number of charitable organizations that rely on donations and foreign aid. Their goal is to reach the largest possible number of people amid the severe economic decline and the genocidal war that has been ongoing for more than a year and a half now.
Imagine a member of your family losing their life simply for going out to get a simple meal, one that is barely sufficient to sustain life but that’s the only available food in the midst of the blockade-induced famine. This is what is happening in Gaza.
Despite the vital humanitarian role they play, these food banks have not been spared from bombing by the Israeli occupation. They have been targeted four times in just two weeks, in different areas of the besieged Gaza Strip.
The areas they are in are supposedly safe zones, as the Israeli occupation claims. It describes them as humanitarian aid zones and urges men and women to head there with every new evacuation order it issues for the Gaza Strip’s governorates. And yet, in these places where children, women, and men wait for food, they are bombed and killed.
In one of the Israeli strikes on a food bank, three children were killed. They had gone out on a simple mission: to bring lunch to their hungry families. They never returned carrying containers filled with food. They returned carried on people’s shoulders, little bodies covered in dust and blood.
The pots they held flew out of their small hands, hot blood soaking the remains of rice and lentils. A scene that epitomizes what war means when it intrudes on the daily lives of people made to go hungry.
These children had not gone to a battlefront. They’d gone to wait in line for aid. They were not carrying weapons. They carried the dreams of their younger siblings for a warm, satisfying meal. But further bombing was the brutal response to their hunger.
They die waiting for food
Among the victims killed in bombings of food banks were the young Mahmoud al-Karimi and his son Yahya. They had left together, hoping to return with food to feed their family, but the bombing didn’t allow them to. They didn’t return with the lentil dish the family was waiting for. They returned as two corpses wrapped in first-aid blankets, bringing with them indescribable shock and pain. Imagine a member of your family losing their life simply for going out to get a simple meal, one that is barely sufficient to sustain life but that’s the only available food in the midst of the blockade-induced famine. This is what is happening in Gaza.
Mahmoud’s last post on his Facebook page was a muffled cry, summing up everything the people of Gaza are going through: “Do you like the sight of me standing in line at the food bank, eyes to the ground, ashamed and humiliated, waiting to receive food that animals wouldn’t accept?”
Food banks were never the preferred option for the people of Gaza. They are one of the bitter realities imposed by the blockade and war, testing people’s dignity as they wait in queues for food, fear looming over even a piece of bread.
Even the meals distributed by these charities are not immune to the effects of the blockade. Because of the closed crossings and the ban on the entry of many basic foodstuffs, the quality of these meals has significantly declined. They are often cooked with limited resources and missing ingredients, which makes them barely enough to satisfy people’s hunger. They don’t even provide minimal nutritional value or variety, be it for children or adults.
It is worth noting that the Israeli occupation has directly targeted at least 26 food banks, in addition to more than 37 humanitarian aid distribution centers, since the beginning of its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Source cover image : Pixabay.
