For now, daily life The routine is Dignity and friendliness. My mother wakes up at dawn to peel and prepare the produce, my father sources the spices, and I work as the operations manager. By 7 a.m., endless lines of hungry families with pots in hand appear outside the homes where we prepare meals. It takes a series of small miracles to get through each day’s meals.
My family is one of about 300,000 Palestinians who remain in the far north of Gaza, facing what rights groups and the United Nations call deliberate starvation by Israel.Israeli army long ago It destroyed much of our bakery, farmland, poultry farms and fishing fleet. By January, we were relying on eating animal food to survive. Over the past few weeks, we have watched infants die of starvation, their bodies shriveled to skeletons, and once-healthy children reduced to nothing but skin and bones.
For a while I lost all hope.A series of fears continued Relentless: In late November, an Israeli airstrike killed my brother, his wife, and their four children as they slept in their home in the middle of the night. In December, I was abducted by Israeli soldiers, stripped to my underwear, and paraded along with other blindfolded men in the cold like a circus animal. I have nothing to do with the fighting in Gaza. I’m a shopkeeper, but neither were the men around me, who were also randomly gathered that day. We Palestinians understand that the sole purpose of these acts is to humiliate us. To crush us, to silence us, to cower us. But that didn’t hurt me. And now I’m on the front lines of Gaza’s most dangerous battlefield, the famine.
Virtually no aid enters northern Gaza. As of this writing, both Anela and World Central Kitchen have ceased operations, the latter after an IDF attack killed seven of its employees. Some 2 million Gazans rely on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the United Nations agency responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees, for survival. Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza on October 12 after air strikes there destroyed or damaged hundreds of UNRWA facilities.Little or no assistance has been granted since then. I entered Beit Lahia and my family continues to live there.
One day, he learned that the communal kitchen that his family relied on for food had run out of rice and closed, so he decided to start a family-run soup kitchen.
Nowadays, it is almost impossible to buy pulses and grains, and spices are a luxury item. But living in Beit Lahia, once considered the breadbasket of the Gaza Strip, I realized there was an opportunity for local farmers. I started sourcing basic ingredients like potatoes, carrots, and onions based on a list of old contacts. These are now treasures that most northerners can only dream of. I secured a bundle of firewood and paid a few hundred dollars. It was difficult to find because Israel blocked the supply of cooking fuel. I searched for seasonal edible vegetables such as mallow and wild chard, and bought canned mushrooms for seven times the old price to add protein. I researched prices, bought several bags of smuggled tomatoes for $27 a pound, and found overgrown zucchini that looked like pumpkins. These are zucchini that should have been harvested a few weeks ago. (Israeli snipers are firing on farmers, so no one feels safe enough to take care of their farms.) I’m kidding, but I think Gaza finally has a vegetable stock exchange. Told.
Our reality remains dark. Israel has reduced what was once a lush and beautiful city, famous for its apples, strawberries and citrus fruits, to a pile of rubble. There are no mosques to pray to, no schools for children to study, and no shops to speak of, but there is a makeshift black market for those lucky enough to obtain a small amount of aid through barter.
We are using what little money we have left to continue this makeshift soup kitchen. We need President Biden to send in more bombs to kill us before these dwindling resources are depleted, which the United Nations says a quarter of Gaza’s population is facing. I hope you will take action to prevent impending starvation.
Airdropping food or building Israeli-controlled floating jetties are dangerous and wholly inadequate solutions that prevent aid from reaching people in the first place, and our From my point of view, it seems like nothing more than a publicity stunt. My friend Muang Beik was one of those killed by a drone last week while trying to deliver this relief aid for his family. I appeal to Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire, to use his influence and power over Israel, to heed our pleas, to insist on open borders and allowing aid to flow into Gaza, and to call on the police. . Police officers responsible for overseeing the distribution of aid will be allowed to carry out their duties without fear of being targeted and killed.
Currently, our kitchens are in operation every day during Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims fast from dawn until dusk. This week, we were out of mallows and pumpkins, and what little lamb we had left sold for a whopping $2,500, so we decided to serve lemon juice and wild purslane stew instead. Our solution is a necessary but temporary solution to a terrible situation. I dream of a future where we are not dependent on foreign aid and where our natural resources and rich land are properly utilized. There is no stifling blockade in Gaza, now in its 17th year, which controls the movement of everything in and out of Gaza.
Until then, we will continue to serve our communities, remembering that even if all the Palestinians have failed, this land has not.
