Palestinian mother: children fear for their life in grocery shopping
Palestinian mother: children fear for their life in grocery shopping
gaza city, gaza - the way to the point where the trucks with Aid goods are expected, is long and dangerous. Around Khader and other women who live in the neighboring tents, are waiting in the dark next to a car, surrounded by a large amount of men.
In this junin night, which was recorded on video, only a few women can be seen around the campfires who line the horizon near Gaza City. These mothers are the sole suppliers of their children and stick together to protect each other. The most dangerous part of your trip is still ahead.
You could get under Israeli fire and, as soon as the auxiliary trucks arrive, you have to make your way through thousands of men if you want to get a bag of flour.
"Everything around us is a risk for our lives, be it thieves, Israeli soldiers, rockets or drones. Everything," says Khader, a mother of three children.
The risks of the help
Your friend Walaa remembers the previous day when she was able to get a sack of flour after ten hours. "Then a young man came with a knife and said, 'Give the flour or I get you around'," she reports. She gave it to him.
Your feet hurt, and you often have to take breaks on your up to 2 hours to the place where the aid deliveries may come by. Her friend Maryam, who only released three weeks ago, takes this dangerous journey every day in the hope of getting food for her three older children. There is little hope of baby food to eat your newborn.
The night ended disappointing. No auxiliary trucks passed, and they all returned with empty hands.
desperate decisions
The small amounts of relief goods that can reach Gaza, the collapse of the legal order and the dissolution of the distribution systems guided by the United Nations, have created new levels of despair, according to aid organizations. The strongest attempts to survive while the weakest have nothing.
For several weeks, CNN pursued a group of Palestinian women who were faced with the terrible decision to risk their own life, what their families of the last remaining providers could deport, or to watch their children starve.
"My children tell me: 'Do not go, mom, don't go to the auxiliary centers, we don't want you to die, mom. Who will take care of us if something happens to you?'" Her husband was killed in an Israeli air raid, and she now takes care of her family alone.
The pot with soup, which she could secure from a crowded charity kitchen, hardly enough for her eight hungry children. So at EL-ABED, like many Palestinians in Gaza, tried their luck with the auxiliary trucks and set off at night while their children slept. But like most women in this way, she returned empty -handed.
The famine in gaza
The danger that hovers over their children is real. According to the classification for nutritional security supported by the UN, the gaza strip has reached famine swells in food consumption and acute malnutrition rates in Gaza city where women live.
In July, 63 people died of hunger alone, including 25 children, almost all under 5 years, according to the World Health Organization. Over 11,500 children were looking for help in June and July for malnutrition in the hardly functioning hospitals and clinics Gazas, according to the UN authority . Almost every fifth had severe acute malnutrition, the most life -threatening form.
The crisis also asked for a difficult price for pregnant and breastfeeding women, the WHO reported with current data that show that over 40 % is severely malnourished.
desperate situations
Israel announced on the weekend that in certain areas it is "Human and avoidable" crisis.
From March,Israel imposed an 11-week blockade for all auxiliary measures into the area and only began distributing the controversial, supported by the USA and Israel, Gaza Humanitrian Foundation (GHF).
Instead of the 400 output offices, which the UN previously managed in the region, the Palestinians can only get food at four GHF locations, in crowded soup kitchens or through raids on auxiliary trucks that drive through the area. Stolen flour bags are sold on the market at exorbitant prices that these women and their children cannot afford.
friendship and despair
After several failed attempts in June, to get food from auxiliary trucks, received a donation from a compassionate stranger. She shared the bag of flour with her neighbor around Bilal, who had difficulty eating her five children.
Your friendship and camaraderie create a rare tender moment in the middle of the pain. The screams of their hungry children are often unbearable. Bilal reported that her youngest daughter sometimes pulls her hair while screaming with pain.
Both women said that they often get along without food for days or for weeks so that their children can have every single drop of the soup they get, and yet the children always fall asleep hungry.
In the course of the weeks, its despair has deepened. They decided to try their luck at the GHF distribution centers, where the majority of 1,100 aid-related deaths have been taking place since May, according to the UN and the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel admits that they have fired warning shots, but denies responsibility for the high number of death, while the GHF rejects the allegations and says that the statistics are exaggerated.
living conditions under pressure
"The American aid points are death zones. I reached one and spent the night there. A sniper fired over my head. The ball only missed me by centimeters," remembered Khader, while the two women spoke to CNN on Friday. Since then it has not returned.
It dissolves salt into water to give her children a little between the sporadic meals. This is not the first time that she experiences hunger during the war, which followed after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. "We used to eat animal feed. A year ago, our bodies were able to handle it, but now it is famine about famine, our bodies can no longer endure it," she said. Now it is too weak to make these long hikes.
around Bilal does not give up. She saw tanks, escaped shots and passed out of exhaustion and sunstroke while trying to get food from moving UN trucks or at GHF positions. But their desperate efforts to feed their children often remain unaware.
"My mother is not like the young men, she goes and comes back empty-handed," said her 10-year-old daughter Dalia. "She asks me what we will eat for lunch or dinner, and I tell her: 'It's okay, wine not, mom.'"
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