'If we are not bombed to death we are going to die of starvation'
A full siege imposed on 9 October, followed by the bombing of bakeries, supermarkets and water tanks, has forced people to take extreme measures to find any food or water.
People sit in front of a bakery destroyed in an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip (AFP)
8 November 2023
There's only one thing on everyone's mind in Gaza right now: how to secure access to food and water.
Even the never-ending bombing has become a fact of life as residents accept that there's no way of determining where the next Israeli air strike will hit.
Since 9 October, Israel has imposed a full siege on Gaza, cutting off food, water, fuel, electricity and other necessities to the besieged enclave.
After a month of relentless bombing, Palestinians have exhausted the resources they had, as generators fall quiet due to a lack of fuel and even emergency food supplies dry up.
The fear of death from air strikes has become secondary to the unavoidable necessity of eating.
“Yes, I can have a small amount of food to keep me going today, but there’s the constant worry of whether I will have food tomorrow,” one resident of the Jabalia refugee camp, who asked not to be named, told Middle East Eye.
“I went to get dates, so I could eat one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening,” he added.
Most of those in Gaza are affected by the food shortage, which has particularly impacted the elderly, sick and young children.
Supermarkets have been swept clean of all products, with videos shared online showing empty shelves.
Stores and bakeries have been repeatedly bombed by Israel since the start of the war.
“Even mosques, which had water, have been bombed. Water points and solar panels are all gone due to the bombing, too," the Jabalia resident explained, adding: "If we are not bombed to death, we are going to die of starvation. This is a huge fear; I don’t need to explain how painful that would be.
“During these times of crisis we are being forced to drink any water we can find, even if it’s not clean,” he said.
The situation has become increasingly desperate.
Those able to provide essentials, such as bread, can cease to operate at any moment if Israel bombs their premises or they run out of fuel.
“There's only one bakery left, and people crowd and crowd around it in their hundreds. There isn’t even any flour left for people to try and make bread at home. It’s become like a famine here. People are living on biscuits and there’s only so long you can survive on that.”
Since the Gaza resident spoke to Middle East Eye, all bakeries in north Gaza have now closed, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the UN agency Unrwa, said that “hunger and despair are turning into anger” as people become frustrated by the lack of food and by living in unsanitary conditions.
'War of starvation'
According to the rights group Euro-Med Monitor, Israel is waging an "extensive war of starvation" against Gaza’s civilian population.
“Israel has deliberately focused its attacks over the past few hours on targeting electrical generators and solar energy units, on which commercial facilities and restaurants depend to maintain the minimum possible level of their work,” the group said in a statement published on Sunday.
Euro-Med Monitor added that Israeli attacks have also targeted agricultural areas east of Gaza, flour stores and fishermen's boats, leaving no sources of food.
Maha Hussaini, MEE’s correspondent in Gaza, said food shortages were an unavoidable reality on the ground.
“It’s been five days since we last found and ate bread. It’s getting harder to find food in markets. Items that completely ran out include cheese, yoghurt and mortadella,” she posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“A real starvation catastrophe has already started in Gaza while Israel persists on cutting off food and fuel supplies,” she added.
Palestinians in Gaza have reported feeling kidney pain due to the intense dehydration. Others have said they are mixing salt water with other things to drink.
Another resident in Gaza said: “The streets are full of rubbish, insects, flies and mosquitos, the air is polluted. My family is getting ill from the water, they have colic, they are vomiting, they have diarrhoea, congestion and kidney pain from the lack of water. It’s tragic and disastrous."
Many people have resorted to begging from others who have food to address their immediate need for nourishment.
Showering has also become a luxury, with families heading to the sea to bathe and wash their clothes - a practice that can cause skin irritation.
In schools, where thousands of people have been sheltering since the start of the war, skin diseases and conditions are rife due to the lack of clean water and overcrowding. According to Unrwa, in one site around 600 people are using one toilet.
Prior to the war, 70 percent of the Gaza Strip's children suffered from various health issues, including malnutrition, anaemia and weakened immunity, a figure which Euro-Med Monitor says has now increased to over 90 percent.
Aid has also been slow to trickle in, and has not reached the vast majority of Gaza’s population. The last month’s supply of aid entering Gaza is equivalent to what used to enter the besieged area in a single day before the war.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-residents-fear-starvation-thirst
Western powers giving 'warrant for genocide', says prominent Israeli historian
Avi Shlaim told an audience in London that the international community was guilty of 'hypocrisy and ruthless double standards'
A father carries his injured baby daughter into the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City following Israeli air strikes on 29 October (AFP)
By Alex MacDonald in London
30 October 2023
Western powers are giving Israel a "warrant for genocide" in the Gaza Strip, a prominent Israeli historian has warned.
Avi Shlaim, a prominent Israeli-British historian and emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford University, told an audience in London that US, UK, and European Union support for Israel - including military support - have made them complicit in "mass slaughter" in the Gaza Strip.
"The Western response to the crisis is the usual hypocrisy and ruthless double standards, but this time it’s been taken to a new level. The western love of Israel has always been accompanied, has always depended on the erasing of Palestinian history and humanity," he said at an event on Monday, hosted by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP).
"Deep concern for Israel’s security is reiterated at all times by western leaders - but not a thought is given to Palestinian security."
The event, 'The War on Gaza: What's Next for Palestine?', also featured Daniel Levy, a negotiator for the Israeli side during the Oslo Accords; Wadah Khanfar, president of Al Sharq Forum and former director general of Al Jazeera; and Yasmine Ahmed, UK Director of Human Rights Watch; and was chaired by Middle East Eye’s Mohamed Hassan.
Shlaim was born in 1945 in Baghdad, to well-connected parents who were part of Iraq's millennia-old Jewish minority. But at the age of five, Shlaim was forced to flee with his family, following bombings targeting Jewish people in the Iraqi capital.
As one of the "New Historians" in Israel, he was part of a group that reassessed the history of the country and often shined a light on the repression of the Palestinians.
Speaking on Monday, Shlaim said that Palestinians' resistance had been "decontextualised and dehistoricised" and that media and political coverage of the ongoing violence in Gaza largely ignored the situation prior to the Hamas operation in southern Israel on 7 October.
"The Israel-Hamas conflict did not begin on 7 October. In June 1967, Israel occupied not just Gaza, but the West Bank and Jerusalem. This is the most protracted and brutal military occupation of modern times," he said.
"Israeli generals have a phrase – mowing the lawn. It’s a chilling metaphor, what it means is they have no solution to the problem, but every few years the IDF moves in with the most advanced weaponry, they smash up the place, degrade the military capabilities of Hamas...it’s a mechanical action that you do periodically every few years.
"So there’s no end to the bloodshed and the next war is always around the corner."
At least 8,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardment since 7 October, which came as retaliation for an assault by Hamas that day in which around 1,400 Israelis died and more than 220 were taken captive. Approximately 70 percent of the Palestinians killed are women and children.
The chief of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) said at a Security Council meeting on Monday that Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip are facing forced displacement and collective punishment.
In the same meeting on Monday, Unicef’s executive director Catherine Russell said over 420 children are killed or injured in Gaza every day.
Because of the lack of clean water and safe sanitation, Gaza “is on the verge of becoming a catastrophe”, she said, adding that people are at risk of dehydration and water-borne diseases.
She added that there is only one desalination plant in Gaza, which is operating at five percent capacity. All six of Gaza’s water-waste treatment plants are currently non-operational, she said.
Hospitals across Gaza have reached a breaking point and are dangerously overcrowded. Almost 1.4 million people in Gaza are now internally displaced, and thousands have taken shelter in hospitals.
Since Israel cut off all electricity, fuel and water to the besieged enclave on 9 October, hospitals have been overwhelmed with a lack of life-saving resources, a high volume of critically wounded patients, and thousands of people seeking shelter.
The hospitals that are still working are running on generators, which health officials say won't last long.
US President Joe Biden has, however, repeatedly resisted calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, while calling for aid to be allowed into the besieged enclave.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also told journalists on Tuesday that "a ceasefire right now really only benefits Hamas".
At the event on Monday, Khanfar - who was born in Jenin in the occupied West Bank - said he had not been able to return to his homeland in 30 years, but he hoped that at the end of the current violence, there could be new opportunities for a long-term resolution.
“We need a new imagination where people could live in peace, and where people could be equal and could have the right to dignity and the right to be respected as humans in that land,” he said.
“Out of this black moment, we could really start thinking about something new.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-western-powers-genocide-warrant-historian
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