- By Lucy Williamson
- BBC News, Jerusalem
Pipes carrying water to Gaza's 2.3 million people have been damaged or destroyed.
People living in Gaza's isolated north have told the BBC that children are going days without food because aid convoys are being refused entry. Some residents have resorted to grinding animal feed into flour to survive, but they say stocks of these grains are also dwindling.
People have also described digging in the soil to access water pipes for drinking and washing.
The United Nations has warned that acute malnutrition among young children has risen sharply in the north, and is now above the critical threshold of 15 percent.
Over half of aid missions in northern Gaza were denied access last month, and Israeli forces control how and where aid is delivered, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said. Interference is increasing.
It says 300,000 people living in the northern regions are largely without aid and face a growing risk of famine.
“There is no hunger in Gaza,” a spokesman for the Israeli military agency tasked with coordinating aid access to Gaza told a briefing last month. The agency, called Kogat, has repeatedly said it does not limit the amount of humanitarian aid it sends to Gaza.
The BBC spoke to three people living in Gaza City and Beit Lahiya, and watched footage and interviews filmed by local journalists in Jabalia.
Mahmoud Shalabi, a local medical aid worker in Beit Lahia, said people were grinding grain used for animal feed into flour, but that too is now running out.
He said that people are not looking for it in the market. “It is not available today in the north of Gaza and in Gaza City.”
He also said that tinned food stock is disappearing.
“What we had was actually six or seven days of truce. [in November]And whatever aid was allowed north of Gaza has so far been used up. What people are eating right now is mainly rice and only rice.”
The World Food Program (WFP) told the BBC this week that four of the last five aid convoys to the north have been intercepted by Israeli forces, meaning there is a gap of two weeks between deliveries to Gaza City.
'Serious threat of famine'
“We know that there is a very serious risk of famine in Gaza if we do not provide massive amounts of food aid on a regular basis,” said Matt Hollingworth, WFP's regional head.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the number of aid missions denied access to northern Gaza had risen sharply: 56 percent of deliveries were denied access in January, up from 14 in October to December. The percentage was
It also said that the Israeli military “sometimes needs justification” for the amount of fuel allocated to health facilities and “reductions in the volume of aid, such as the amount of food”.
The BBC asked the Israeli army for a response. They directed us to Kogat, who told us to ask the army our questions.
Doha al-Khaldi, a mother of four in Beit Lahia, told the BBC two weeks ago that she walked six miles (9.5 km) to her sister's house in Gaza City in search of food after her children did not. had eaten three days.
“I have no money, and even if I did, there is nothing in the central market of the city,” he said. “[My sister] And his family is also suffering. He shared the last batch of pasta in his house with me.”
“We feel that death has become inevitable,” said his sister, Wade. “We lost the top floor of our house, but we are living here despite the fear of collapse. For two weeks we have not found anything in the market; and if there are any products available, they are 10 times their normal price. are many times greater.”
Famine risk assessments carried out by several UN agencies have estimated that nearly a third of the northerners could now face “catastrophic” food shortages, even though restrictions on access to the area remain in place. Makes measurement very difficult.
Families in the northern regions are also struggling for reliable water supply.
“Many of us are now drinking undrinkable water. There are no pipes; we have to dig for water,” explained Mahmoud Salah in Beit Lahia.
In Gaza, people are digging for water by hand.
Video filmed in the Jabalia neighborhood north of Gaza City shows residents sitting amid the rubble of bombed-out streets, digging into the ground to tap large underground water pipes.
Yusuf Al Ayyoti said that we get water here once every 15 days. “The water is dirty. The dirty water has given our children swelling and knocked out their teeth. It has sand and is very salty.”
After four months of war, the temporary solutions to closing the hunger gap are gone. And there are a few ways to restore Gaza's larder.
Before the war, the region was dependent on food aid. Much of its agricultural industry has now been destroyed or abandoned.
'The devastation is vast'
New UN figures show that more than half of the agricultural land in the central region of Deir al-Balah has been damaged. It includes an olive press and the farmland of Basim Younis Abu Zaid.
“It seems to be the aftermath of the earthquake,” he said. “The destruction is extensive, covering neighboring buildings and farm animals. Even if we manage to restore the mill, 80-90% of the olives are gone. This is just this year. It's not a loss, it's a loss for the next several years.”
Further south, in the border town of Rafah, more than a million people displaced by fighting elsewhere are now seeking accommodation with the town's 300,000 residents.
The Israeli military regularly publishes live footage of busy markets and restaurants in southern Gaza's central hubs. Most of the 114 aid missions in the southern Gaza Strip were successful last month, but residents and aid agencies say many people are still hungry, and lack of shelter, sanitation and medical care. A public crisis is brewing.
Aid can be blocked by fighting, bureaucracy or debris. Earlier this week, a food convoy waiting to head north in Gaza was hit by naval gunfire.
But Matt Hollingworth says delivery is also complicated by the growing desperation of the people of Gaza.
“We need to solve the law and order problem, so that we don't have to negotiate our way through hordes of hungry people, to reach other people we haven't reached yet,” he said. can reach,” he said.
“It's probably the level of helplessness that bothers me. People have lost hope.”
A deal between Israel and Hamas is seen by many as the only way to get more aid to Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages.
As Israel bombards Rafah, ahead of a widely expected ground operation there, leaders on both sides are under pressure to end the suffering of those trapped in Gaza — their enemies', and their own.