People in the northern Gaza Strip are starving en masse because aid is not reaching the area. Many families are eating only once a day and lack even the most basic things like clean water, flour and cooking gas.
The Israeli military has ordered people in northern Gaza Strip areas such as Beit Lahia and Jabaliya to "evacuate" to the south. Residents say these areas are under constant Israeli airstrikes and shelling, and people are fighting desperately for food. Moving around the area is also dangerous.
"We eat whatever we can find, we eat once a day. "Sometimes it's lentils, sometimes it's pasta," said 21-year-old Palestinian Hazem Lubad in a video message from Gaza. Before the war, he was a student and supported himself by working as a waiter in a restaurant in Gaza City. He returned to his family in Sheikh Radwan, a neighborhood in the northwestern Gaza Strip, 19 months ago. After an 11-week blockade imposed by the Israeli government, food supplies have begun to enter Gaza, but they are still not reaching the northern parts of the coastal strip, residents of the affected areas say.
On March 2, Israel closed the crossings and stopped all aid deliveries to Gaza, arguing that Hamas was stealing aid and passing it on to its own fighters. But Israeli authorities have not provided evidence to support this claim. Hamas, which rules Gaza, is considered a terrorist group by Israel, Germany, the United States and several other countries.
A daily battle for food in the midst of war
Lubad can no longer buy the necessities in the markets, where prices have skyrocketed: "There has been no flour for about a month or two. A kilogram of flour on the black market costs 80-100 shekels (approximately 20-24 euros), and the situation we are living in does not allow us to buy it," the Palestinian explains, adding that no one in his family has a regular income anymore because of the war.
Local residents say that some of the aid that recently entered Gaza has been looted by desperate and hungry people. Others are selling the food at inflated prices. Residents in the north of the country have also watched with horror as reports of near-daily killings of people trying to reach food distribution points in southern Gaza. The sites are run by a private US-Israeli company called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and are guarded by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The United Nations (UN) and aid groups have rejected the new food distribution system, arguing that it is unable to meet the needs of Gaza's 2.3 million people and will allow Israel to use food as a means of population control. There are no food distribution points in northern Gaza, and it would be too dangerous for people to reach the ones in the south.
The UN said a limited number of trucks could deliver flour, which Israel has allowed to be distributed only to bakeries. Among the permitted supplies are medical products and baby food.
The UN refugee agency speaks of "planned deprivation"
"This is a planned shortage", says Jonathan Whittle, head of the UN refugee agency (UN-OCHA). "This new rationing scheme legitimizes a policy of planned deprivation. This is happening at a time when people in Gaza, half of whom are children, are struggling for their physical survival," he added.
The lack of food is widespread, as is the lack of clean water and cooking gas. People are forced to burn garbage or wood from destroyed buildings to cook.
On Tuesday, another fatal incident occurred: 27 people died near a humanitarian center after Israeli forces opened fire because they felt threatened by the crowd. People usually walk many kilometers to reach the aid distribution points, which are located near Israeli militarized zones.
The military has allowed the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation“ to operate independently so that it can distribute aid so that it reaches the people of Gaza, not Hamas.
What is happening at the new aid distribution points?
Last week, DW spoke by phone with Muhammad Qishta, a young man who was displaced in southern Gaza. He said he managed to get two boxes of food from a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation checkpoint. “Everyone could take as much as they could carry. There were no instructions on the number, no checks or anything”, he said. The boxes contained rice, sugar, flour, halva, oil, biscuits and pasta. “Since there were no clear instructions on which streets to enter and exit the area, some people used streets that they didn't know were forbidden, and they were shot at,” the 30-year-old Palestinian said.
Hazem Lubad explains that his relatives grind pasta and lentils to make bread. "We make 20 pieces of pita bread a day, which we distribute among 13 people. Each person gets one or two pieces of bread a day. This helps us until we find something else to eat", says Lubad. The family's stock of canned food has long since run out.
"It's extremely difficult for the children. One meal a day is not enough, but there is simply no more food", the 21-year-old Palestinian told DW by phone from Gaza.