As the sun begins to rise every day, Palestinian Ahmed Nassar from the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip rushes with five of his brothers on foot to reach their nearest bakery and line up in a long line to get a little bread for their displaced family.
After long hours of waiting, often punctuated by quarrels between citizens for fear of taking the other’s turn, Nassar (33 years old), a father of four children, complains that he can barely buy 4 kilograms of bread, and sometimes he may return to his house crowded with displaced people. “Zero” Hands without anything.
Nassar told Xinhua news agency after his turn to get bread approached, "The worst thing than waiting in such a queue is hearing the sound of successive explosions that result from targeting civilian homes, especially when they are close to the bakery that we are standing in front of."
He added, "Israel does not differentiate between civilian and military, and if it wants to target someone, it will not care whether he is among us or not. It will inevitably target us all."
He continued, "I do not want to die and leave my children to suffer after me. I am the only breadwinner for them in this tragic life that often puts us through difficult and deadly tests."
Nassar's family of six usually consumes four kilograms of bread daily, but due to the difficult circumstances they are going through, his wife decided to provide one meal for her children and a little bread once instead of three times.
His wife says, "We are displaced and do not live in our own house. Everything has changed and all the time we live under the sounds of bombing and explosions. I do not have a kitchen to cook nor even the tools needed for that. We are truly dying slowly."
The situation is not much different for forty-year-old Nidal Al-Ashqar, who used to stand in long bread lines for more than ten days after his displacement from Gaza City to Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip to escape Israeli raids.
Al-Ashqar, a father of six children, told Xinhua, "I was tired of waiting for a long time without getting enough for my children, so my wife decided to make bread at home."
However, Al-Ashqar does not have a sufficient amount of cooking gas, which prompted his wife, Wafa, to use wood to light a fire to cook food and prepare bread for her “homeless” family, as she put it.
The couple expressed their fears that the house they currently live in might be targeted by Israeli warplanes, especially with smoke rising from the fires.
Wafa says, "Mostly, I feel like an Israeli fighter plane might attack our house because of the smoke rising from the firewood."
She went on to say, "We are living in an unprecedented conflict, and Israel does not separate civilians from militants," noting that, "Even if we survive the Israeli attacks, I will not have enough money to buy more flour if we run out."
In addition to the Nassar and Al-Ashqar families, there are more than 2.3 million Palestinians suffering from the consequences of the severe Israeli siege that was imposed weeks ago on the coastal enclave as collective punishment for the local population, who have already been suffering from poverty, destitution, and food shortages for more than 17 years.
Israel has been waging a large-scale war on the Gaza Strip for 19 consecutive days, after the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) carried out a military attack on the Israeli towns adjacent to the Strip.
According to UN and Palestinian officials, the tightening of the Israeli siege and the military war led to a significant scarcity of goods as the third week of the war approached its end, without any indications of reaching a truce agreement.
This prompted Shadi Salha, a lawyer from the city of Rafah, to express his fears about the repercussions of the current reality, saying, “It seems that Israel is following a new policy of killing us in Gaza by committing mass massacres with its warplanes, or killing us en masse by imposing famine on us.”
He added, "They (the Israelis) are targeting bakeries spread throughout the Gaza Strip... Can you give us a logical justification for that?", stressing the need to protect civilians from the "Israeli madness" that targets everything Palestinian in Gaza.
In addition to providing food and basic needs, Salha wants to "provide safe areas with international guarantees that prevent the occupation from targeting these areas, in light of its deliberate targeting of civilian gatherings."
After intense and complex negotiations, Israel allowed the entry of about 40 trucks in successive batches loaded with humanitarian aid, including medicines and food, into the Gaza Strip without bringing fuel.
The Executive Director of the World Food Program, Cindy McCain, stressed that “there is an urgent need for food because the conditions inside Gaza are truly catastrophic (...) This aid is important for the people of Gaza, but we must also provide continuous and safe access for humanitarian workers and civilians inside Gaza so that we can Delivering this food to people in need.
The head of the government office run by the Hamas movement, Salama Marouf, said, “There are goods that have completely run out of markets and distribution and sales points, in addition to the presence of other goods remaining in very scarce quantities, which would put the sector in a state of stagnation,” warning that “food security "The population is at risk."
Marouf added, "What was allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing did not include basic food needs or even the fuel needed to operate electrical generators in hospitals, as the existing fuel is close to running out, which threatens to put hospitals out of service and threaten the lives of patients."
According to Marouf, about 1.4 million people were displaced from their homes (most of which were destroyed) to avoid the “barbaric attacks launched by Israel on the civilian population.”
For its part, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that about 406,000 displaced people reside in 91 facilities affiliated with the international organization in the central regions, Khan Yunis, and Rafah, while the agency’s shelters are designed to host between 1,500 and 2,000 displaced people in each shelter.
Acting Director of the UNRWA Information Office, Enas Hamdan, told Xinhua, "The situation in the Gaza Strip is extremely catastrophic in light of the ongoing Israeli raids, in addition to the lack of electricity and the availability of water only in very small quantities."
She added, "We are doing everything we can to provide the displaced people with supplies inside the agency's schools and headquarters."
However, the United Nations organization faces popular and official criticism from government agencies in Gaza, Palestinian factions, and even human rights organizations, against the backdrop of failure to provide for the needs of displaced people in various regions of the Strip.
