Gazans Now Face "Real Famine" From North To South

By Ruwaida Kamal Amer, +972 Magazine

Mustafa Al-Darsh, a 35-year-old father of three from Gaza City, spends hours every day searching for food for his family. Some days, he manages to secure a few canned goods; other days, his family has to settle for plain rice. “In the north, we yearn to eat bread with some thyme,” he told +972. He hasn’t been able to find flour for months.

Since the start of October, when the Israeli army encircled northern Gaza and began subjecting it to a campaign of expulsion and extermination, no goods — including humanitarian supplies — have entered the area. In early November, a UN panel warned that famine was imminent in the besieged area in the north of the Strip, where around 75,000 Palestinians were estimated to still remain. Local organizations have since urged the UN and international bodies to formally declare a famine. Now, with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) forced to pause aid deliveries through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south, hunger and malnutrition across the enclave are set to intensify.

Palestinians return to their destroyed homes after an Israeli military operation east of Deir Al -Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on August 29, 2024.

As a father, Al-Darsh usually forgoes his own meals to ensure that his wife and children eat. “Our bodies are exhausted from the lack of food — we’re unable to do anything,” he explained. When night falls, he is usually too hungry to sleep. “Sometimes I feel that I will lose my mind because of what we are living through,” he added.

More often than not, Al-Darsh cannot find any food at all, and his children go without meals for several days at a time. “Every day, I cry because they miss food,” he said. “They constantly ask me about food, telling me what they want to eat.”

“In the north of the Strip, there is a real famine,” Adnan Abu Hasna, an UNRWA spokesman, told +972. “The situation is very dangerous: there is no food, potable water, or any supplies. All health facilities have collapsed, and there are dozens of bodies lying in the streets and under the rubble.” Without international pressure to surge aid into the Strip, Abu Hasna warned, “famine will spread in the north and south.”

But what Al-Darsh described as a “harsh war of starvation” only appears to be escalating by the day. “They treat us as people who do not deserve to live, with the continuous bombing, destruction, and starvation,” he lamented. “We want to die full, not hungry. This is all we hope for.”