The suffering of Palestinian mothers in the Gaza Strip is increasing amid the scarcity of food, with their desire to provide safety for their children amid the war launched by Israel; In response to the Hamas attack in October 2023.
The American CNN network monitored the suffering of mothers; They live in tents surrounded by a large crowd, and they have a long and dangerous march to the point from which aid trucks are expected to go to Gaza.
She reviewed the life stories of a group of mothers, the only breadwinners for their children, where they joined each other in order to protect, such as a woman named Umm Khader, and said that they may be exposed to Israeli fire, and as soon as the aid trucks arrive, and they will have to harden their path with difficulty among thousands of men if they want to obtain a precise bag and keep it.
“Everything around us threatens our lives, whether thieves, Israeli soldiers, missiles, or drones, says Umm Khadr, a mother of three children.” everything”.
Her friend tells the loyalty of what happened the previous day, when she managed to get a flour bag after waiting ten hours from dawn until dusk, and she says: “Then a young man carrying a knife said: (throw the flour or else you killed) and handed it over.”
The network stated that their feet hurt them, forced to take a break frequently during the walking journey, which may take two hours to the place where aid truck may pass.
She referred to that their girlfriend Mary gave birth to only three weeks ago, but she is doing the same trip every day since last week, hoping to secure food for her three older children, and the hope is little in obtaining artificial milk to feed her new baby. That night ended with disappointment that no aid trucks went through, and all of them returned to the male.
A terrible option
The lack of aid allowed to enter Gaza, the collapse of the law and order, and the dismantling of the UN -led receipts systems, to new levels of despair, according to relief organizations, and fight the most fierce to survive, while the most vulnerable is left without anything.
Over the course of several weeks in June and July (July), the network said it followed a group of Palestinian women facing a brilliant option between risking their lives; What may deprive their families of their only remaining breadwinner, or watching their children starving.
Umm Al -Abd said: “My children tell me: Do not go, my mother, do not go to relief centers, we do not want you to die, mom. Who will take care of us if something happened to you? ” Her husband was killed in an Israeli air strike, and she is now sponsoring her family alone, she said.
The soup that she was able to secure from a charitable kitchen was not enough to feed her eight hungry children; So, like many Palestinians in Gaza, Umm Al -Abd eventually tried her luck with aid truck, where she cut the trip at night while her children were asleep.
Like most women on that way, empty -handed returned, she said.
The network said that the threat facing their children is real; Food consumption levels have reached the limits of starvation in most parts of the Gaza Strip, as well as the levels of severe malnutrition in Gaza City, where women live, according to the integrated interim classification of United Nations food security.
According to the World Health Organization, 63 people died of hunger in July alone, including 25 children, all of whom are under the age of five, except for one child.
On Sunday, the United Nations Agency stated that more than 11,500 children sought treatment for malnutrition in Gaza hospitals and clinics, which barely operated during June and July, and added that almost every five of them suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which is the most threatening form of life.
The World Health Organization announced that the crisis is very harmful to pregnant and lactating women, as recent data showed that more than 40 percent of them suffer from severe malnutrition.
And Israel announced, at the end of the week, that it would stop fighting in certain areas and create corridors to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground, but very few foods reach Gaza to meet the needs of 2.2 million people, who entered a crisis described by the United Kingdom, France and Germany last week as “man -made and can be avoided.”
Israel imposed a siege for a period of 11 weeks on all aid to the Strip starting from March, and recently redistributed it in late May through the controversial and supportive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation supported by the United States and Israel.
Instead of 400 aid distribution points formerly managed by the United Nations, Palestinians can only get food through four sites belonging to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or in crowded soup kitchens, or by stopping and controlling aid trucks while passing through the Strip.
The looted flour bags are sold at the market at exorbitant prices, unbearable for these women and their children.
Friendship and despair
After several failed attempts in June to get food from relief trucks, Umm Khader received a donation from a strange person sympathetic to the road. She shared the flour bag with her neighbor, Umm Bilal, who was struggling to feed her five children.
Their friendship and their climax in the midst of suffering reached the screaming of their hungry children often unbearable, and Umm Bilal said that her younger daughter sometimes tightens her hair as she screams from pain.
Both women said that she often spends days without food until her children get every drop of the soup they get, yet the children always sleep hungry.
Over the weeks, their despair increased. They decided to try their fortune in the global humanitarian aid distribution sites, where the majority of the 1100 aid killings occurred since May, according to the United Nations and the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Israel recognizes the launch of warning shots, but it denies its responsibility for the large number of dead, while the World Health Organization denies accusations, saying that the statistics are exaggerated.
“American assistance points are death areas,” said Umm Khadr, while she was talking to the two women on Friday. I got to one of them and spent the night there. Fire a sniper over my head. A few centimeters missed the bullet.
Umm Bilal salt is dissolved in water to feed her children between their intermittent meals. This is not the first time that hunger has been tested during the war that followed the Hamas attacks, and said: “We used to eat animal feed. A year ago, our bodies were able to bear it, but now, a famine over a famine, our bodies are no longer able to bear it. ” Now, it has become so weak that it cannot make these long trips.
But Umm Bilal did not surrender, she came across tanks, fired fire, and she fainted from sunstroke and exhaustion while trying to get food from United Nations moving trucks, or from the sites of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but her desperate efforts to feed her children often go dam.
“My mother is not like young people, she goes and goes back to empty -handed. You ask me what we will eat for lunch or dinner, and I say to her: There is nothing wrong, do not cry, mom. ”
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