Since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and subsequent Israeli retaliatory actions in Gaza, more than 45,000 Palestinians have lost their lives and more than 100,000 have been injured.
About 90 percent of Gazans are internally displaced, with large numbers forced to flee from place to place, sometimes to escape airstrikes and fighting.
They are struggling to find food and shelter: millions of homes have been destroyed, and 345,000 people face catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
Jonathan Dumont shared the dire situation in Gaza with UN News after returning from a visit to the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Abdul Rahman told me, ‘I need food.’ We were in the city of Khan Yunis in southwestern Gaza, where hot rice was being served to people desperate for food, fearing that the World Food Program (WFP) would take its turn. This food should not be exhausted.
Expressing the pain of his dreams being destroyed like the surrounding buildings, Abdul Rehman said, ‘I was very ambitious. I had many dreams. But now I just want bread. I can’t even buy bread.’
I had arrived in Gaza the day before, traveling 10 hours from Amman on a bus full of humanitarian aid workers. I spent some time at the border crossing from Kerem Shalom in Israel to the Gaza Strip.
It is one of the few remaining routes to deliver humanitarian aid. This 10-day visit in early December was my first visit to the area since the war began 15 months earlier.
There was a severe shortage of supplies for immediate needs, including boxes of medicine, food and other relief items. This material had to wait at the border for permission to send it to Gaza, and the few truckers who were allowed in would deliver goods, avoiding destroyed roads, impatient crowds and armed groups.
Today, the city of Gaza, the size of the American city of Detroit, has become a mountain of rubble. I’ve visited many conflict zones in the past year – gang-torn Haiti, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan’s war-torn capital Khartoum – but the destruction in Gaza is on a different scale.
On one side, the beautiful waves on the shores of the Mediterranean give an illusion of peace, on the other, a scene of endless destruction, black smoke rising from burning buildings.
It also differs from other war zones in that Gazans have no means of escape. They are completely trapped.
And the hunger is sky high. More than 90 percent of the population faces a crisis or worse level of food insecurity. According to the latest assessment by experts, more than three lakh people may face catastrophic levels of hunger – the highest level of food insecurity.
‘People are hungry and angry’
Only one-third of the food that the UN food agency WFP is sending into the Gaza Strip is being allowed to meet the needs of hungry people. We have been forced to cut rations repeatedly for months.
In December, we could provide only 10 days worth of food to 11 lakh people including canned goods, tomato paste, oil and wheat flour.
The people of northern Gaza under Israeli siege suffer the most from hunger. Relief materials have not been allowed to arrive here in the last two months.
Bread maker Ghatas Hakaura works at a WFP-supported bakery in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. He said that nowadays bread has become the most important food for people because it is very affordable.
Men and women stood in separate lines buying pita bread for three shekels, or less than US$1 per packet.
“People are hungry and angry,” said Ghatas Hakaura. They lost their homes, their jobs, their families. Meat is not available, vegetables are not available – and even if vegetables are available, they are expensive.’
A 25 kg bag of wheat flour is being sold at USD 150. In a region that once boasted citrus fruit, vegetable and strawberry crops, I saw small peppers selling for US$195 per kilo in a market in Gaza City. But no one is buying. No one had so much money.
Ibrahim al-Balawi, holding his young daughter in his arms, told me he had never drunk a glass of milk in his life. He knows nothing but war.
This is a concern for many parents in Gaza, as it is a place where you hear drones and explosions 24 hours a day from the air, land and sea.
After we distributed food in Khan Younis, Hind Hassuna, a mother of four, told me, ‘I want my children to have the same future as other children living in Arab countries. They can lead a decent life, wear good clothes, eat good food and lead a good life. The most important thing is freedom from fear – like any normal child in Arab countries.
Dead bodies rotting in the sun
Today, the children of Hind Hasona have to walk a kilometer and a half to fetch water. Their shelters, their tents, can easily collapse from the wind or be flooded by rainwater in the winter.
In this shelter their children were eating small portions of rice distributed by WFP with spoons. This may be the only meal of the day. A small boy slowly cleaned every last grain off his plate, a slight smile on his face.
War has the worst impact on children. While delivering food to Khan Younis, I found a dead horse in the rubble. Nearby, a little girl was rummaging through a pile of garbage in search of food.
Later, as we drove our armored car toward Gaza City, near the military corridor that divides Gaza north and south, we saw corpses rotting in the sunlight all around us. A group of women and children were seen going in the same direction with their belongings. He looked tired and exhausted due to the heat.
What effect will these experiences have on Gazan children as they grow up? What will happen to their generation?
Gazans cling to every hope of life amid the devastation. In Khan Yunis, Abu Bilal excavated his ruined house and rebuilt the walls from its ruins. It was earlier a multi-storied building, where cement slabs formed a fine living space. They showed me their shelter, which had a basic toilet and a makeshift plastic sink.
Abu Bilal described his shelter as ‘dangerous’ and said it could easily collapse due to storms or airstrikes.
Nabil Azab showed me the ruins of his house in what was once a densely populated area. Nabeel, who used to work as a taxi driver, pointed to the mangled car parts that were once his means of livelihood.
Like other families in Gaza, they have been displaced several times, forced to move from one tent settlement to another. He and other family members were injured in an airstrike on his temporary shelter in the southern city of Rafah.
Because of this, his patience broke. He cleared the debris from his damaged house in Khan Yunis and returned there. Their four-story building still stands leaning against a sandy hill. His family grows lettuce and other green vegetables on the ground below to survive. But it is not enough to survive.
Ajab told me, ‘I feel helpless when I see my little girl crying for food. I can’t do anything for him. Nothing.”