Gaza famine: 'We are forced to eat what we used to consider animal feed'

A HIGH RISK of famine persists across the entire Gaza Strip as the war intensifies and humanitarian access remains restricted.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that it ceased all operations aimed at reopening the sea pier due to technical and weather-related issues. As a result, critical questions remain: How will aid be sent to Gaza’s hungry residents, and what are Gazans eating now?

The primary challenge now for aid groups is not how to get aid into Gaza, but rather transporting it within Gaza due to the high risk on the ground.

On Friday, four aid workers were killed in the so called “safe zone” in western Khan Younis, where thousands of displaced families are sheltering.

Maher Haboush, 35, a father who is still in Gaza city with his wife and two daughters – as they didn’t evacuate to the south – says his seven-year-old daughter misses fruit, which she hasn’t tasted in months. She now craves rice, which she had grown tired of a month ago when it was the only food available but is now unavailable.

Maher was displaced 10 times from western Gaza to eastern parts, moving from place to place, but he refused to flee to the south.

“I lost 16 kilos before the war; this is famine, and now a new level has started. When I go to the market, I can’t find items to feed my children,” Maher said.

Umm Nidal, 53, from Gaza city says she managed to get some rice at three times its pre-war price but couldn’t find any vegetables to prepare a salad dish for her five children, never mind their preferred stuffed vegetable dish.

She found mulberry leaves being sold in the market for the first time. Previously, Gazans only ate the mulberries, leaving the leaves on the trees.

Umm Nidal says, “During this war we found these leaves resemble grape leaves, which we used to use before the war, but there are no vineyards left after all the farms were bombed.

These mulberry leaves are from the large trees that survived the war. I thank God for this blessing.

“I boil them until they soften a bit, then stuff them with spiced rice and cook them. Unfortunately, I would normally put some meat at the bottom of the pot, but there’s no meat available in the market. Now, we cook food over a fire because there’s no cooking gas. Preparing meals has become a hassle compared to how things were before the war.

“We are forced to eat what we used to consider animals feed, this war is the worst for all of us,” she added.

Stage 5 hunger

The UN created the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, as an initiative in 2004 during the famine in Somalia. It now includes more than a dozen UN agencies, aid groups, governments and other bodies. It reports data about food insecurity in the Gaza strip every three months. 

The IPC has 5 stages with Stage 5 hunger being equivalent to famine. The IPC only declares an entire area to be in famine when 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition and at least two adults or four children per 10,000 people die daily.

The latest update of the IPC has reflected that 15% of North Gaza and Deir Al-Balah is currently in phase 5, with this number projected to rise in the coming three months.

About 96% of the population in the Gaza Strip (2.15 million people) currently faces high levels of acute food insecurity. While the whole territory is classified as Emergency (IPC Phase 4), over 495,000 people (22% of the population) are still facing projected catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 5).

In this phase, households experience an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion of coping capacities. 

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After nine months of repeated internal displacement, hunger and thirst, some local organisations are providing urgent humanitarian aid, yet the distribution isn’t sufficient or efficient.

Meanwhile, dozens of families from Gaza and its northern governorate who didn’t leave after the first Israeli evacuation orders have been forced to relocate to the central governorate, arriving over the past few days.

The Israeli army mentioned in the leaflets it dropped at the beginning of July that traffic would move quickly and without inspections, aiming to expedite the evacuation of Gaza City and the northern governorate.

However, consistent testimonies from Palestinians who fled south confirm that Israeli soldiers approached them and asked various questions, contradicting the Israeli army’s narrative.

Mustafa Ibrahim, a human rights researcher from Gaza who fled south, condemned international indifference to the suffering of Gazans, stating, “The people of Gaza face extermination through killings and rockets, deliberate spread of diseases, and blockades preventing hygiene supplies, leading to starvation. There is deliberate famine being created.”

Ibrahim criticised international inaction, adding, “The world fails to address the prolonged denial, misinformation, and Israeli propaganda, demonstrating ignorance of Gazans’ suffering.”

Commenting on the lack of hygiene items in whole southern Gaza, Ibrahim added, “Does the world know that we already don’t have any soap to wash our hands? We suffer from hunger, thirst, and dirt.”

The Journal knows the identity of the reporter on the ground but has used a pseudonym for security purposes.