The humanitarian crises that have haunted the residents of the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli attack on October 7 cannot be limited. As the Israeli war continued and escalated and took a form of a comprehensive siege, hunger and thirst began to haunt the residents of the Gaza Strip, especially in the besieged areas of the north, which are witnessing violent clashes during the Israeli army’s attempt to control them.
Israel cut off electricity and water from the Gaza Strip 5 days after the start of the war, completely closed all its crossings, and prevented the flow of various goods, causing a rapid and increasing shortage of basic materials and daily needs, until today it reached an almost complete lack of bread and water supplies.
Palestinians wash cooking utensils in the Mediterranean Sea due to a water outage in the Gaza Strip on Thursday (Reuters)
Raed Abu Sweilem, a resident of the Zarqa area in the central north of Gaza City, walks at least 3 km daily to reach a family bakery near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, in order to obtain just one loaf of bread, to feed his family of 9 members, in addition to 13 other members. One of his nephews who were displaced from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
Abu Sweilem told Asharq Al-Awsat: “We distribute bread to children and women, but it is not usually enough for one meal, even though we only eat one meal a day.” Breakfast and dinner are not possible. We seek to satisfy the hunger of children first, then women, and then ourselves.”
Abu Sweilem added: “If we are lucky, we will find some flour after much suffering.” We bake it on whatever firewood is available. “It’s like a barbecue if you have flour and fire.”
Displaced people at a United Nations school in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip last October 25 (AFP)
Many bakeries were bombed in Gaza City and the besieged northern Strip, depriving hundreds of thousands of residents there of the luxury of obtaining more bread.
The Gazans are living in a complicated situation, with the absence of electricity, gas, and the absence of flour. After the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) sought in the last week and a half to provide a quantity of flour to bakeries, the quantities of gas and fuel to operate the electric generators had run out, which prompted it to close its doors.
In the face of this situation, obtaining a loaf of bread has become a difficult and difficult task, and it may cost a person his life under bombardment.
Palestinians prepare food at a United Nations center in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, last October 25 (AP)
Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza, Thomas White, said that the average citizen in Gaza lives on two pieces of bread made from flour that the United Nations has stored in the Strip.
White, who said he had traveled the length and breadth of Gaza in the past few weeks, described the territory of the Strip as a “theater of death and destruction,” noting that “there is no safe place, and people fear for their lives, their future, and their ability to feed their families.”
This affects displaced people in schools affiliated with UNRWA.
Muhammad Abu Hassanein, one of those displaced from a government school in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City, said: “We get one loaf of bread every two or three days.”
He added to Asharq Al-Awsat: “We are living in tragic circumstances, and everything is running out, and we no longer even have the financial means to buy some canned food if they are available at all… Our children and women are dying of hunger and thirst.”
Displaced people from Gaza City on Thursday (EPA)
If it is possible to wait without bread, this seems more difficult with regard to water.
Drinking water in Gaza is already scarce and depends on desalination plants.
Residents of the Gaza Strip usually resorted to buying drinking water from desalination plants owned by private companies, but the widespread fuel depletion, especially in the areas of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army is focusing its strikes more, made these plants collapse in the face of the residents’ need for water.
Raafat Yassin, one of those in charge of the Yassin desalination plant, said: “We can no longer provide water in light of the interruption of the water that municipalities were supplying to homes, due to the occupation cutting the main lines that supply water to the Strip.”
Palestinians prepare food at a United Nations center in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, last October 25 (AP)
The fuel depletion has increased the suffering of station owners in desalinating large quantities, and this suffering increases as the demand for it doubles.
Citizen Nour Faraj Allah said: “Desalinated water has become the only alternative for residents, not only for drinking, but also for washing utensils and for use in personal hygiene and for everything else, in light of the water cuts in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.”
UNRWA Director Thomas White told diplomats from UN member states, in a brief statement via video technology from Gaza, that UNRWA supports about 89 bakeries throughout Gaza, but “now people are no longer looking for bread, they are looking for… About water.
He added that the main phrase heard on the street now is “water.”
According to the Union of Gaza Strip Municipalities, Israel’s cessation of water supplies and the running out of fuel in well water treatment plants, which are salty and close to the salinity of the Mediterranean Sea, have prompted municipalities to pump water without treatment, but it does not reach the majority of areas due to the Israelis’ deliberate attack on infrastructure, including Internal water lines and some wells.
In the absence of treated and untreated water, access to water becomes life-saving, regardless of the subsequent cost.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza and several international bodies warned of the spread of diseases among the residents of the Strip as a result of the use of this untreated water, amid reports of more than 1,300 cases of skin and infectious diseases.
The government media office in Gaza accused the Israeli authorities of deliberately targeting all necessities of life and infrastructure as part of imposing a strict siege on the Strip, aimed at starving the population.
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2023-11-04 17:14:55
