Safety in Gaza is an illusion and a mirage, and the killing machine sweeps everything that falls underneath it, whether a person, a stone, a tree or an animal.
We were exhausted by Israeli intelligence communications throughout the war, demanding that we should evacuate northern Gaza area and move towards the south of the valley, as it is a safe area. But displacement is a tragedy followed by tragedy, and the tent is a heavy grave in which the refugee is held involuntarily, and the displaced carry their souls on their shoulders, die forcibly from the horror of what they see, and wear their white shrouds waiting for a resurrection that will take them back to the north.
The tent is an ancient covenant written on the people of Palestine, and something of the ancestral inheritance, passed down by generations without consent or choice. A piece of cloth or nylon, stamped with the name of its supporters, wraps its inhabitants in the bitter cold, stings them with the scorching sun, and kills them with lethal missiles, it is not easier than to be killed in a tent between heaven and shining star. Only those who have tried it know the tent, and can describe it to you more than I do, for “no one who has seen is like one who has heard”.
Weapon of Hunger
The chapters of the war do not end, and this time, the occupation has tried all kind of torment, until it reached the starvation of the remaining steadfast people of northern Gaza who refused to leave, and resisted displacement with their blood, the wreckage of their homes, and the valor of their detainees. All the goods in the northern Gaza Valley ran out as the war continued and prolonged, preventing the goods from reaching the north, burning stores there, and deliberately destroying them by the occupation forces.
Most of the agricultural land in the north has been bulldozed by the stationing of Israeli military vehicles there, and planting has dried up after farmers have been removed from it, attacked and targeted simply for approaching it. A total blockade of the north is about to cause a famine, as everyone is searching for food, whether flour or substitutes of rice and pasta, to no avail. Had it not been for God giving northern Gaza wild plants that grow on their own after the rains, such as mallow, sorrel and chard. their season is coming to an end, those plants gave Gazans some food otherwise the number of starving people would have been much higher. Today, Gazans eat what they find from the grass of the earth, even if they grow on graves or under ashes.
Everyone asks us today: How do you manage your livelihood under the imposed siege? Not a single dollar has entered northern Gaza since the beginning of the war, and no grain of wheat, barley, corn of salt, milk bottle or glass of water has reached the north since the fragile truce that collapsed in early December 2023.
The prices of available goods, despite their scarcity, have risen crazily, unprecedented in the entire history of Gaza, as the price of a kilo of flour or a kilo of rice reached 100 shekels, approximately ($ 33), while a kilo of green onions reached 80 shekels, or about ($ 24). The price of a kilo of green garlic reached 40 shekels, or about ($ 12), while a kilo of carrots reached 15 shekels, or about ($ 5). As for the price of a liter. Vegetable oil cost 60 shekels (about $20), one egg costs 7 shekels ($2), and a box of sauce costs 20 shekels (about $7). What I mentioned above is only available, fruits, vegetables or goods are completely unavailable.
Palestinians in northern Gaza are trying to secure their food, from what is left of their homes’ supplies, or what they have been able to recover from the rubble, or through food exchanges with neighbors, or barter, or from the food provided by hospices donated by philanthropists. The occupation fought us with weapons, then they found us alive, so they decided to kill us by starvation, and after we got used to the sound of children afraid of being killed, we heard them crying from hunger, awanting “bread”. People begged, with all the humiliation and sadness of the universe, for bread, refusing to take money even from each other.
Flour mixed with blood
The occupation claimed that we were human animals, and tried to prove this to the civilized world that pays lip service to human and animal rights, by forcing people in the north to grind chicken and rabbit feed, and donkey barley, instead of the wheat it had completely cut off from the north, and they reluctantly ate it in an attempt to survive. We are a society that depends mainly on bread for its food, which has become non-existent. But when the occupation has allowed in the last two weeks the entry of some flour, they deliberately bombarded the waiting Palestinians flour trucks, the latest of which was the flour massacre on Al-Rashid Street, where blood mixed with flour, and more than (117 martyrs) gave their lives in order to feed their families. Tens of thousands of those who remained in the north with their bare hands faced the bullets of the occupation and tank shells at the Nabulsi checkpoint and the Kuwait roundabout, for the sake of their children who opened their mouths to the wind, waiting for a living dipped in blood, until their pure blood mixed with the soil of the homeland and the bread of the children, as if loss was our share and destiny in this country.
What crime did a hungry person expect the aid convoy commit? And what crime did a child commit to bite his bitter bread with the mouth of sorrow and orphanhood? What sin did a child who was waiting for her father to return loaded with food and flour? And what sin did a woman commit to forbid bread to herself when she saw the body of her son carried on his brother’s shoulder? Everything in the country calls for heartbreak, brings despair, and ruminates misery, but how can we despair when we all realize that what seems long in individual lives, is short in the lives of peoples. This story will end, and we will inevitably turn the chapters of war.
- Text by Haya Freij, a Palestinian researcher from Gaza.
