Dead and injured following an Israeli raid on a school hosting displaced people in Gaza

The humanitarian crisis that has tormented the residents of the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli attack on October 7 cannot be limited. As the Israeli war continued, intensified and took the form of a global siege, hunger and thirst began to haunt the residents of the Gaza Strip, especially in the besieged areas of the north, which are witnessing violent clashes during the attempted takeover. Israeli army to control them.

Israel cut off electricity and water to the Gaza Strip 5 days after the start of the war, completely closed all its crossings and prevented the flow of various goods, causing a rapidly growing shortage of basic materials and of basic necessities, up to today an almost total lack of bread and water.

Raed Abu Sweilem, a resident of the Zarqa area in the north-central part of Gaza City, walks at least 3 km a day to reach a family bakery near Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, in order to get just one loaf of bread, to feed his 9-member family, as well as 13 other members, one of his nephews, displaced from Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip.

Abu Sweilem told Asharq Al-Awsat: “We distribute bread to children and women, but it is usually not enough for one meal, even if we only eat one meal a day.” Breakfast and dinner are not possible. We try to satisfy the hunger of children first, then of women and then ourselves.”

Abu Sweilem added: “If we are lucky, we will find some flour after so much suffering.” We cook it on whatever firewood is available. “It’s like a barbecue if you have flour and fire.”

Many bakeries have been bombed in Gaza city and the besieged Northern Strip, depriving hundreds of thousands of local residents of the luxury of getting more bread.

The inhabitants of Gaza live in a complicated situation, with the absence of electricity, gas and no flour. After the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been trying to supply a quantity of flour to bakeries over the past week and a half, quantities of gas and fuel to run the Electric generators had run out, which prompted it to close its doors.

Faced with this situation, getting a loaf of bread has become a difficult and difficult task, and it can cost a person’s life under bombing.

UNRWA’s director of affairs in Gaza, Thomas White, said the average Gazan lives on two loaves of bread made from flour that the United Nations has stored in the Strip.

White, who said he has traveled extensively in Gaza in recent weeks, described the Strip as a “theater of death and destruction,” stressing that “there is no safe place and people fear for their safety.” life”. , their future and their ability to feed their families.”

This affects IDPs in UNRWA-affiliated schools.

Muhammad Abu Hassanein, one of the evacuees from a government school in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City, said: “We receive a loaf of bread every two or three days.”

He added to Asharq Al-Awsat: “We live in tragic circumstances, everything is running out, and we no longer even have the financial means to buy canned food, if available… Our children and women are dying of hunger and thirst ”.

If it is possible to wait without bread, this seems more difficult regarding water.

Drinking water in Gaza is already scarce and dependent on desalination plants.

Residents of the Gaza Strip usually resorted to purchasing drinking water from desalination plants owned by private companies, but widespread fuel depletion, especially in the areas of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, where the army Israeli is concentrating its attacks more, causing the plants to collapse in response to the residents’ need for water.

Raafat Yassin, one of the managers of the Yassin desalination plant, said: “We can no longer supply water due to the interruption of the water that municipalities supplied to homes, due to the occupation cutting the main lines supplying water to homes. the strip.”

Running out of fuel has increased the suffering of station owners in desalination in large quantities, and this suffering increases as demand doubles.

Citizen Nour Faraj Allah said: “Desalinated water has become the only alternative for residents, not only for drinking, but also for washing utensils, personal hygiene and everything else, in light of the cuts water supplies in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.”

UNRWA Director Thomas White told diplomats from UN member states, in a brief statement via video technology from Gaza, that UNRWA supports around 89 bakeries across Gaza, but “now people are no longer looking for bread, they’re looking for… About water.” .

He added that the main phrase heard on the streets now is “water”.

According to the Union of Municipalities of the Gaza Strip, the cessation of water supplies by Israel and the running out of fuel in well water treatment plants, which are salty and close to the salinity of the Mediterranean Sea, have prompted municipalities to pump water without treatment, but this does not reach most areas due to the deliberate Israeli attack on infrastructure, including internal water lines and some wells.

In the absence of treated and untreated water, access to water becomes lifesaving, regardless of the costs involved.

Gaza’s Health Ministry and several international bodies have warned of the spread of disease among the Strip’s residents due to the use of this untreated water, amid reports of more than 1,300 cases of skin and infectious diseases.

Gaza’s government press office accused Israeli authorities of deliberately targeting all necessities of life and infrastructure as part of a strict siege on the Strip, aimed at starving the population.