Gaza: A UN official describes horrific scenes of scattered bodies, extreme hunger and despair

With his writing in this article, Mr. Dumont gives voice “For those whose voices would not be heard” He describes the horrific scenes he saw in the Gaza Strip:

“I need food.” This is what Abdul Rahman, whom I met in the city of Khan Yunis, southwest of the Gaza Strip, told me. He was standing in a crowd gathered around men pouring hot rice into bowls taken out by the hands of desperate Gazans. One boy was crying for fear that the food provided by the World Food Program would run out before his turn came.

Abdul Rahman said, “I was ambitious and had dreams,” Describing his hopes as shattered as the buildings around us, “But I need food, and I don’t have the ability to buy bread.”

I had arrived in Gaza the day before, after a ten-hour journey from Amman in a bus full of humanitarian workers. I spent some of that time waiting on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing – one of the few ways to deliver life-saving humanitarian aid into the Strip.

There was a huge backlog of urgently needed supplies – including boxes of medicine, food and other aid – waiting for permits, few available trucks and licensed drivers able to navigate battered roads, desperate crowds and armed gangs to deliver them.

My ten-day visit to Gaza in early December was my first since the outbreak of war almost fifteen months ago. As the Head of Emergency Communications at the World Food Programme, my job is to listen, record and communicate people’s stories in places like Gaza – to give a voice to those who would otherwise not be heard.

Gaza – which is the size of the American city of Detroit – is today a mountain of rubble. I have visited many conflict zones in the past year – guerrilla-ravaged Haiti, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Khartoum, the war-torn capital of Sudan – but Gaza is on a different scale. On the one hand, the waves hit the Mediterranean shore, creating an illusion of calm. On the other hand lies endless devastation, black smoke rising from burning buildings.

There is another difference from many war zones: there is no way for Gazans to escape the conflict. They are surrounded.

Hunger is skyrocketing. According to the latest expert findings, more than 90 percent of the population faces food insecurity at crisis level or worse, and more than 300,000 people are likely suffering from catastrophic hunger – the highest level of food insecurity.

“People are hungry and angry”

The food allowed into the Strip by the World Food Programme only meets a third of what we need to reach the hungriest people. Over the course of months, we had to reduce food rations, and then reduce them again. In December, we planned to reach 1.1 million people with just ten days’ worth of food, including canned goods, tomato paste, oil and wheat flour.

Besieged northern Gaza is the hungriest place, and for the past two months, barely any supplies have been allowed in. Baker Ghattas Hakura at a WFP-supported commercial bakery in Gaza City told me that bread “It is the most important food for people nowadays, because it is very cheap.”

As men and women picked up loaves of bread, which cost three shekels, or less than one US dollar per bundle, in two separate, tightly regulated lines, Mr. Hakura said: “People are hungry and angry. They have lost their homes, their jobs, their families. There is no meat, no vegetables – and if there are vegetables, they are very expensive.”

The price of a 25 kg bag of wheat flour may reach US$150. In the sector where farmers were harvesting citrus, vegetables and strawberries, I saw small peppers sold in a market in Gaza City for US$195 per kilo. No one was buying, no one could afford it.

“I want a future for my children like any other Arab child.”

Ibrahim Al-Balawi told me that his little daughter, whom he was holding, had never drunk a cup of milk in her life. She had never known anything except war. This is a concern for many parents in Gaza, a place where the sounds of drones and explosions are heard 24/7, coming from the air, land and sea.

Hind Hassouna, a mother of four children, told me after a food distribution by the World Food Program in Khan Yunis: “I want my children’s future to be the same as any other child living in any Arab country: to live a decent life, to wear decent clothes, to eat decent food, and to have a good life. The most important thing is that they be free from fear – just like any child in Any Arab country.

Mrs. Hassouna’s children walk 1.5 kilometers in each direction to fetch water today. As she spoke in her tent, which could easily collapse in the wind or get soaked by winter rains, they ate their small portions of rice provided by the World Food Programme. This was probably their only meal for the day, and her little boy was slowly clearing every grain of rice from his plate with a small smile on his face.

The children of Gaza are experiencing the worst horrors of war. While we were driving to the food distribution center in Khan Yunis, I saw a dead horse in the rubble. Next to it, a young girl was searching through the garbage for food.

Later, as we drove to Gaza City in our armored car, we saw bodies scattered left and right decomposing in the sun along the Netzarim military corridor – which separates the north and south of the Strip. After a few hundred metres, we saw a small group of women and children heading in that direction, looking tired as they carried their luggage.

How will such experiences affect Gaza’s children as they grow up? What will happen to their generation?

Attempts to continue

In the midst of devastation, the people of Gaza cling to any semblance of life. In Khan Yunis, Abu Bilal dug up his destroyed house and used the rubble to rebuild the walls. Cement slabs of a multi-storey apartment building formed a fragile canopy. He took me on a tour of his house, which includes a basic toilet and a makeshift plastic sink. He described his shelter as “dangerous” as it could easily collapse due to a storm or air strike.

In a neighborhood that was densely populated, Nabil Azab also showed me the remains of his house. The former taxi driver pointed to the twisted body of the car he once made a living from. Like other families in Gaza, his family was displaced several times and moved from one camp to another.

When an airstrike hit his tent in the southern city of Rafah and injured him and other members of his family, his patience ran out. His family also removed rubble from their partially destroyed home in Khan Yunis and returned to it. The four-story building is among the few still standing in the area, leaning precariously over a sand hill. The family grows lettuce and other vegetables in the land under the building to satisfy their hunger, but it is not enough.

Mr Azab said: “I look at my little girl crying and asking for food and I feel helpless. There is nothing I can do for her. Absolutely nothing.”