Gaza city, Gaza
–
It is a long and dangerous walk to a point where a truck carrying aid is expected to pass through Gaza. Um Khader and the other women who live in the tent next to her are gathered next to the car in the dark, surrounded by a large number of men.
On this June night, many women are not seen around the bonfires scattered on the horizon near Gaza city. This group of mothers, the only provider for children, clings together for protection. The most dangerous part of their journey has not yet begun.
They could come under Israeli fires and when the aid truck arrives, they will have to pass through thousands of men if they want to get a bag of flour and keep it.
“Everything around us is risk to our lives, including thieves, Israeli soldiers, rockets, drones.
Her friend Wallaa tells us what happened the day before she waited 10 hours from Dawn to Dusk before getting a bag of flour. “Then the young man with the knife said, ‘I’ll drop the flour, or I’ll kill you,'” she says. She handed it over.
Their legs hurt, and they had to frequently rest on a walk of up to 2 hours to where the aid truck could pass. Their friend Mariam gave birth just three weeks ago, but she travels the same day every day, hoping to secure food for her three older children last week. There is little hope for a formula that will help feed her newborn.
The night ended with disappointment. The aid truck did not pass, and they all returned empty-handed.
Aid groups say trickle to Gaza, the collapse of law and order, and the demolition of the UN-led delivery system have created a new level of despair. The most vulnerable, surviving, have nothing left.
Over the weeks of June and July, CNN, following a group of Palestinian women, faced a terrible choice between putting their lives at risk.
“My kids tell me: “Don’t go, mama, don’t go to the aid centre, we don’t want you to die, mama. Um, Elbed said. Her husband was killed in an Israeli airstrike and she is now caring for the family alone, she told CNN.
The pot of soup she could secure from the crowded charity kitchen was hardly enough for her eight hungry children. So, like many Palestinians in Gaza, Um Elbed eventually tried his luck with the aid truck and trekked at night while her child was asleep. And, like most women on that route, she said, came back empty-handed.
The threats children face are real. The hunger threshold has been reached for most food consumption levels on the Gaza Strip and the rate of acute malnutrition in Gaza, where women live.
According to the World Health Organization, 63 people died of starvation in July alone. More than 11,500 children sought treatment for malnutrition in barely functional hospitals and clinics in Gaza in June and July, a UN agency said on Sunday. He added that one in five of them suffered from severe acute malnutrition, the most life-threatening condition.
The crisis has also hit harder for pregnant and breastfeeding women, with recent data showing that over 40% are severely malnourished.
Over the weekend, Israel announced it would suspend fighting in certain regions and establish corridors for humanitarian delivery on the ground. But too few foods have been moving forward to meet the needs of Gaza’s 2.2 million people, and we are entering a crisis last week that the UK, France and Germany described as “artificial and evasible.”
Israel imposed an 11-week lockdown on all aid to the strip, beginning in March, and eventually resumed distribution in late May through the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Instead of the 400 aid distribution points that were previously managed, Palestinians can only get food through four GHF sites by stopping and overwhelming aid trucks in excess soup kitchens or by driving the territory. Looted bags of flour are sold in the market at outrageous prices that are unruly and unruly for these women and their children.
Friendship and despair
After many failed attempts to get food from aid trucks in June, UM Khader received a donation from a sympathetic stranger. She shared a bag of flour with her neighbor Um Bilal, who was struggling to feed her five children.
Their friendship and friendship threw unusual gentle notes in a dissonance of suffering. The screams of hungry children are often unbearable. Um Bilal said she sometimes pulls out her hair when her youngest daughter screams in pain.
Both women often eat without food for days so that they can drink every drop of the soup they get, but they say that children always fall asleep hungry.
Over the weeks, their despair grew deeper. They have decided to test their luck at GHF distribution sites, where the majority of 1,100 aid-related killings have occurred since May, according to the United Nations and the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel has allowed the launch of warning shots, but the GHF has denied responsibility for the severe death toll, stating that the statistics are exaggerated.
“American aid points are the death zone. I reached one person and spent the night there. A sniper was fired over my head. The bullet missed me just a few centimeters.” She has not returned since.
She dissolves salt in water and gives it to her children between sporadic meals. This is not the first time she has experienced hunger during the war that followed the attack on Hamas on October 7, 2023. “We were eating animal feed. A year ago our bodies were able to process it, but now we are hungry above hunger, our bodies can’t take it anymore,” she said. Now she was too weak to make those long treks.
um bilal is merciless. She ran into a tank, avoided the shooting and fainted from day strokes and fatigue as she tried to get food on UN trucks and GHF sites. However, her desperate efforts to feed her children often do not pay off.
“My mother isn’t like a young man. She’s going and coming back empty-handed,” said her 10-year-old daughter, Dahlia. “She asks what we’ll eat for lunch or dinner, and I say to her, ‘It’s okay, I won’t cry, mom.” ”
