Famine in the Gaza Strip undermines the occupation’s claims
“The entire Gaza Strip, from south to north, is experiencing a real famine, and the basics of preparing the simplest food are no longer within reach. There are no vegetables, no fruits, and no canned food, and if there are any, they are at very high prices. The Israeli occupation has not only killed us with various types of weapons, but it wants to kill us with the weapon of hunger”, with these words, a father of six children summarized the catastrophic living conditions in the Strip.
The people of the Gaza Strip, who are complaining about the lack of food, drinking water and clothing, and the video clips showing thousands standing in endless queues waiting for a loaf of bread or a truck of aid that does not arrive, refute all the claims made by the occupation a few days ago to open a new crossing to allow aid into the Strip as part of what it calls “expanding the humanitarian zone” before the end of a deadline set by the United States in a letter sent on the 13th of last month to the occupation officials, requesting an increase in humanitarian aid with a 30-day deadline under penalty of suspending part of the US military aid to Israel.
The seventy-year-old Umm Salah said: “For more than a year, we have been living a brutal war that aims to destroy the Gaza Strip while the world watches us as we are exposed to all forms of death at the hands of the occupation, and it seems that it does not want to move to save us”.
A Palestinian man, who was displaced by the occupation from the north of the Strip to its south, indicated that there is no difference between the north of the Strip and its south as the occupation is trying to make people believe, but in reality, it is fighting the entire Gaza Strip with the weapons of starvation and bombing.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) affirmed that Israel is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the northern Gaza Strip, where the blockade has been in place for 45 days.
It indicated that 50 requests to enter northern Gaza were submitted last month, but 33 of them were rejected outright, and 8 requests were accepted, but Israel placed many obstacles to prevent access to the area.
In turn, the Famine Review Committee of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which cooperates with the United Nations, issued a warning in which it expressed its concern about the imminent and significant possibility of famine in the Gaza Strip due to the rapidly deteriorating situation there, as a result of the aggression and blockade.
Director of Food Security Analysis at the World Food Program, Jean-Martin Bauer, said: “There is a strong possibility that famine will occur in parts of northern Gaza as a result of large-scale displacement”, stressing that the statements of the Review Committee deserve the attention of the international community and its action to prevent famine.
Najla Khoury