‘This is a war that starves you’: For Gaza, hunger is a new enemy

By Ghada Abdulfattah and Taylor Luck

RAFAH, GAZA STRIP AND AMMAN, JORDAN- Kifaya Al Kafarna, a housewife from Gaza City who is currently living with 27 members of her extended family in a school library in Rafah, cannot remember the last time she ate a full meal.

After weeks of struggling to find shelter amid Israeli airstrikes, Ms. Kafarna – like hundreds of thousands of others in Gaza – is facing an even more acute crisis: starvation.

“There is nothing available in the markets: no flour, no water, no food,” Ms. Kafarna says, her voice trembling with exhaustion. “I am glad we have a place to stay, but we can’t find anything to eat.”

“Half the population are starving,” United Nations World Food Program Deputy Chief Carl Skau told reporters in New York on Thursday, after visiting the Gaza Strip. “Nine out of 10 are not eating enough, not eating every day, and don’t know where their next meal is going to come from.”

With the end of the recent humanitarian pause in the fighting between Hamas and Israel, food aid is now only trickling into Gaza, U.N. officials say, and black market prices are soaring.

A World Food Program survey carried out during the cease-fire in late November found that 97% of households in northern Gaza and 83% of households in southern Gaza reported inadequate food consumption – one meal a day or less. It also revealed that 50% of Palestinians in northern Gaza and 33% in southern Gaza faced severe hunger.

These numbers are thought to have climbed further since the Israeli army resumed its operations on Dec. 1. Parents say they are going without food to ensure their children get half a pita bread or a bowl of boiled wheat each day.

Vanishing vegetables

The prices of what little food is left on the market are skyrocketing. Twenty-five-kilogram sacks of flour sell for $120, which is 15 times the normal price; chickens, when they can be found, cost $7 a kilo, more than twice the prewar price; and even za’atar, an affordable dried thyme and sesame mix that was once a breakfast staple in Gaza, has doubled in price.

But the rarest, most sought-after food items are fruit and vegetables.

As an ambulance rushes another bombing victim into the Al-Aqsa Hospital in the southern Gaza district of Deir al-Balah, Mohammad Al Taaban calmly sets out his vegetable stall on the street outside, lining up a few crates of green peppers, tomatoes, and lemons.

The owner of a small greenhouse farm in central Gaza, Mr. Taaban is one of the few who have vegetables for sale. A crowd instantly forms around him; his stock will not last long. In a matter of minutes he has sold out.

“It is remarkable how quickly the vegetables vanish before my eyes,” Mr. Taaban says as customers eagerly sort through bell peppers. “People buy them instantly,” even though prices have risen tenfold since the war began, and few shoppers can afford to buy more than a kilo or so of produce.

Mohammed Al Qazzar walks away with a small bag of sweet peppers and tomatoes, holding it up like a prize. He says his find will be greeted with celebrations back home. It has been a week since the last time they ate vegetables.

Food shortages and hunger in Gaza are affecting all, demolishing any remaining class barriers. Mr. Qazzar’s wealthy neighbors, who once owned their own businesses, now knock on his door regularly, pleading for bread.

“This is not a normal war,” Mr. Qazzar says. “This is a war that starves you, that stresses you, and pressures you to find food, fuel, and water all day.”

That pressure is weakening law and order…………………...READ ON AT THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR