Survivors in the Gaza Strip are scavenging whatever they can find to feed their families amid an ongoing food crisis that was brought about by Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
According to reports, food in Gaza is extremely scarce these days. What little makes it across the border is often spoiled, reports indicate, assuming any can even be found at all.
"My family, the kids, all of them wait for me to come and say 'there is food' or 'I brought vegetables,'" a Palestinian man named Ali who lives in northern Gaza told Middle East Eye, adding that most days he comes back sad and empty-handed.
"We stopped talking about 'When will the war be over?' and started talking about 'When will the food come in?'"
Gaza's starvation crisis is worsening by the day, Ali and other Gaza residents confirmed, as Israel continues to block delivery for basic life-saving resources like food and medical supplies.
Pray for the people of Gaza
In Gaza City, a woman named Rania says she, too, visits the market daily in search of food. What she typically finds is either too expensive for her family to afford or extremely limited in range.
"There are no vegetables, fruits, or milk in the markets – nothing that has any nutritional value," Rania said.
A little over a month ago, Rania received a food basket from the United Nations' World Food Programmethat contained halva, beans, peas, hummus and cold cuts. Rania says she is keeping these items for safekeeping and using them sparingly.
"I've been rationing them because if I run out, I will have nothing to eat," Rania added. "I feel dizzy and weak. My face is pale and I've lost a lot of weight."
Rania and Ali are just two among hundreds of thousands of other Gazans who are in the same predicament. Israel refuses to let food and other supplies enter the Palestinian enclave, so the crisis is worsening.
Israel's collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is of course a massively outsized response to the events of Oct. 7. IDF is responsible for probably half of all the Israeli casualties from that day, and yet men, women and children in Gaza are being relentlessly punished by the Netanyahu regime with no end in sight.
Back in March, it was reported that the hunger crisis got so bad in Gaza that residents were eating grass to try to stay alive. Meanwhile, IDF soldiers are bombing and shooting aid relief workers who try to help the people of Gaza survive.
In response to growing international pressure to stop committing genocide, Israel "slightly" improved food access in some areas of Gaza. The situation is still dire, though, as life-saving food deliveries are still not happening as they are supposed to because of the IDF occupation.
The UN's hunger monitoring system, known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, released a report this past week stating that there is a "high risk of famine (that) persists across the whole Gaza Strip."
"The humanitarian space in the Gaza Strip continues to shrink and the ability to safely deliver assistance to populations is dwindling," the report further states.
Several delivery routes into Gaza remain blocked ever since IDF launched a ground invasion on Rafah. As a result, more than half of all households have no food to eat in the house, with 20 percent having to go entire days and nights without eating.
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