In Gaza’s Emaciated Children, a Hunger Crisis Is Laid Bare

Aid began to trickle into the territory this week. But there is never enough.

The starvation of Gaza can be measured in the jutting ribs of a 6-year-old girl. In the twig-like thinness of her arms. In the pounds she and those around her have lost. In the two tomatoes, two green chili peppers and single cucumber a destitute child can buy to feed his family that day.

Until last week, Israel had blocked all food, fuel and medicine from entering the Gaza Strip for 80 days. With international alarm surging over its total blockade, Israel allowed in a drip of aid starting last week. That enabled some bakeries to reopen. But humanitarian officials said it did little to alleviate Gaza’s enormous needs and to stop the territory’s slide toward famine. Limited amounts of food began being distributed to residents on Tuesday under a much-criticized plan backed by Israel.

In northern Gaza, cut off by Israeli troops from the rest of the territory, hundreds of thousands of people are reduced to waiting for hours for charity-kitchen food that runs out too soon and to digging boreholes for water to drink, unsanitary though it might be.

People struggle to find fuel for hospital generators, cars and cooking stoves. Families have resorted to burning wood or even trash.

Pastry shops along with grocery stores, have long since run out of anything to sell. Bakeries have no fuel to bake with.

There is no electricity and little clean water available in Gaza, so people dig for whatever water they can find. Then, they lug it away in plastic containers.

With nothing being imported and Gaza’s farmland mostly destroyed or inaccessible because of evacuation orders, there is now little produce for sale at vegetable markets in Gaza City.

What few fruits and vegetables are available are far too expensive for most families, so if they buy at all, they buy by the piece, not by the usual kilogram. This week, locally grown tomatoes cost $11.30 per kilogram and locally grown cucumbers cost $10 per kilogram.

With bakeries closed for lack of wheat flour and fuel, people grind pasta down into flour that they can bake into bread. Lentils, too, are being ground into flour for patties or bread. In all, people bring between 400 and 500 kilograms of lentils, rice, pasta and other dry goods a day, some of it saved from when more aid was entering Gaza, to Gaza City’s Jaber Mill, which grinds it down.

You can read the rest of the article here, including more examples of the conditions in Gaza and accompanying pictures.