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Deial Al Bala, Gaza Strip (AP) – Every morning, Abia and Fadi Sob wake up to the same question in their tents in the Gaza Strip.
Couples have three options: The charity kitchen is open and you can get a pot of watery lentils. Or they can try to shake up the crowd and get flour from the aid truck passing through. The last resort is to gging things.
If they all fail, they simply don’t eat. Hunger is happening more and more these days, as it deprives energy, strength and hope.
After multiple evacuations, Sob, who lives in a seaside refugee camp west of Gaza, is also in families across the war-torn territory.
According to humanitarian workers, hunger has grown due to aid restrictions throughout the past 22 months of war. However, food experts warned earlier this week that “the worst-case scenario of hunger is currently unfolding in Gaza.”
Israel has implemented a complete lockdown of food and other supplies for two months starting in March. It said its purpose was to increase pressure on Hamas since it was attacked by Israel on October 7, 2023.
The aid flow resumed in May, but that amount is just a small part of what aid organizations say.
The breakdown of law and order made it nearly impossible to deliver food safely. Much of the aid that comes in is stocked or sold in the market at exorbitant prices.
Let’s take a look at this life day in the Sob family.
Morning beach
The family wakes up in a tent. The tent is 30-year-old street vendor Fadi Sobh says it’s unbearably hot in the summer.
His wife Abia (29 years old) is difficult to come, so he takes water from the sea.
The children stand one by one in a metal basin, rubbing themselves as their mother pours salt water over their heads. At 9 months old, Hara cries when she stabs her eyes. The other kids are even more stoic.
Abia then rolls the bedding and cleans up dust and sand from the tent floor. Since there is no food left since the day before, she goes out looking for something for the family breakfast. Sometimes, neighbors and passersby give her lentils. Sometimes she doesn’t get anything.
Abia gives Hara water from the baby bottle. When she’s lucky she has lentils.
“One day, it feels like a day because of the summer heat, hunger and pain,” she said.
Palestine UN ambassador Riyadh Mansour struggled to hold back tears Wednesday as he addressed the Security Council. “My mother accepts her immobilized body, loves her hair, speaks, and apologizes. I can’t stand this.”
A trip to the soup kitchen
Fadi heads to the nearby soup kitchen. Sometimes one of the kids goes with him.
“But food is rarely available there,” he said. The kitchen opens once a week, almost once, and is not enough for the crowd. Most of the time, he said, he waits all day, but returns to his family with nothing “and the kids sleep hungry without eating.”
Fadi once went to the northern part of Gaza. There, aid trucks arrived from Israel. There, a huge crowd of equally hopeless people flock to the trucks, removing food cargo. In many cases, the Israeli military has fired nearby, witnesses say. Israel says it only fires warning shots, and others in the crowd often have knifes or pistols to steal boxes.
Fadi, who has epilepsy, was shot in the leg last month. It got him too weak to scramble for the track, so he gave the kitchen a try.
Meanwhile, Abia and her three eldest sons (10-year-old Youssef, 9-year-old Mohammed, and 7-year-old Malak) are filled with trucks bringing freshwater from a desalination plant in central Gaza and head out with plastic jerrykan.
The kids are wrestling with heavy Jerrykan. Youssef loads one into his back, his tiny body bends sideways as he tries to keep it away from the dust in the street while Mohammed does his half-drag.
Scramble for assistance
Abia sometimes heads to Jikim herself, alone or with Youssef. Most people in the crowd are men – faster and stronger than her. “Sometimes I can get food and often I come back empty-handed,” she said.
If she fails, she appeals to the sense of charity of successful people. “You survived death thanks to God, give me anything,” she tells them. Many respond to her pleas, and she gets a small bag of flour to bake for the child, she said.
She and her son have become familiar faces. One guy, Youssef Abu Saleh, who regularly waits for the truck, gives her some of him as he often sees Abia having a hard time grabbing food. “They are poor people and her husband is sick,” he said. “We’re all hungry and we all need to eat.”
In the hottest part of the day, six children stay in or around the tent. Their parents prefer their children to sleep in the heat – it stops them from running around, running out of energy, or thirsting with hunger.
President Donald Trump took a rare break with Israel on Monday.
Foraging and gging in the afternoon
Once the fever is relieved, the kids go out. Sometimes, Abia sends them to ask for food from their neighbors. Otherwise, they will scrutinise the bombed streets of Gaza, foraging tiled rubs and trash, and fuel the family-to-family stove.
They became good at recognizing what burns. Paper and wood scraps are best, but the hardest to find. The bar is low: plastic bottles, plastic bags, old shoes, anything.
One of the boys came across a pot in the trash one day. That’s what Abia is using in her cooking now. The family has evacuated many times, and there are very few items left.
“I have to do something,” Avia said. “What can I do? We have eight.”
If you’re lucky, lentil stew is for dinner
After a day has spent searching for the absolute basics of sustaining life, the family has all three sufficient to eat Abear, including food, water, and fuel to cook. Usually it’s a thin lentil soup.
But often there is nothing, and they all go to sleep hungry.
Abia said she is weak and often gets dizzy when she is looking for food or water.
“I’m tired. I can’t do it anymore,” she said. “If the war continues, I’m thinking of taking my life. I no longer have strength or strength.”
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