The people in the Gaza Strip are able to stave off hunger by eating weeds and animal feed
What new and expecting mothers are facing in Gaza: Rafah’s poop-poo mother tells her. She’s devastated, and she can’t sleep
TEL AVIV, Israel — In Rafah, baby Manal has just woken up from a nap. “Have you ever made a poop-poo?” asked her mother, as she opened the diaper that was hard to find and was too small.
The 5-month-old is crying. The skin on her tush and legs has rashes and is peeling where the tight material of the diaper rubs — a skin irritation that won’t go away. “No, no, no,” he reassured her. “I’ll put some cream on you now and all the pain will go away. You’re a good girl.”
Saleh and her family used to live in an affluent area of Gaza City, a home with all the supplies she’d need to welcome her baby, who was due in late October. Instead, Manal’s arrival by C-section came under air attacks a month after the war in Gaza began.
“I can’t teach her to eat or feed her because there’s no food, no vegetables, and there’s not enough milk for her,” Saleh says. I can’t sleep at night because I’m thinking. I’m devastated.
“Those who pay the highest price in war are mothers and kids,” says Hiba Tibi, the program director for CARE, an aid organization that helps women and children in Gaza. “They are becoming less and less hopeful. They are giving up.”
“They see in almost all the shelters, babies that are born and dying before even getting registered,” says Tibi. They are not included in the count in life.
What New and Expecting Moms are Facing in the Gazan Hospital? A Comment on “Struggle, struggle, struggle.'”
The war has seen several hospitals come under attack. In the last week, the Israeli military has carried out raids at the Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, in order to “thwart terrorist activity” there. Equipment and supplies have been damaged, healthcare workers arrested and most hospital functioning has stopped, according to health officials in Gaza.
“It’s really bad and it’s becoming worse and worse every day,” says Maram Badwan, the lead physician at the clinic, who is also displaced from her home. “Most of the children and women [we treat] stay in tents and with no electricity, no clean water.” She and her staff see lots of cases of malnutrition and dehydration.
The clinic has a limited supply of medicine and prenatal vitamins, but it also gives away free ultrasounds. Women come from all over Gaza. Many people go in for their first doctor’s visit when they are pregnant.
Source: ‘Struggle, struggle, struggle.’ What new and expecting mothers are facing in Gaza
The crowded living of a baby with hepatitis A: Sanad, Abdel Hadi, and her three children
She caught hepatitis A, along with several members of her family, many of whom have fungal infections. “If there was cleanliness, would I have gotten hepatitis?” she asks, exasperated. The water we drink is not clean. Would we not get a disease?
While visiting Badwan, there was a revelation that she was hypertensive, but still the ultrasound showed her baby’s heartbeat was strong.
Arvind Das, who recently led a team of medics from the International Rescue Committee into Gaza, said that all across the enclave he witnessed women giving birth in overcrowded shelters.
“There is no privacy. There is no dignity,” he said, holding back tears. “You have literally 1.5 meters of space, and that’s where pregnant women are meant to deliver the children.”
The noise from Israeli planes and drones makes it hard for Sanad to sleep, she says. So does their crowded living situation: Abdel Hadi, the new baby and her three older children are staying with relatives, a large extended family crammed in together, sleeping three on a mattress.
“Sanad is crying all of the time,” she says. I don’t have enough clothes so he needs to change, but I just can’t afford the hot water to bathe him.
Likaa was trying to get young Manal to eat something. She’s boiled potatoes because she doesn’t have money to purchase anything else. With some coaxing, she gets her baby to stop crying and take a soft potato. She feels a bit of relief after Manal stopped crying and eating as she was worrying about her daughter’s future.
Gaza hunger stave off hunger any way they can: The case of Tafesh and her husband, Adam, during a war
JERUSALEM and GAZA CITY — In northern Gaza’s shattered streets, people buy and sell canned food, small amounts of flour and grain and a few household items in makeshift markets.
Everything is expensive, so the Tafesh family go to the stalls every day for something affordable to eat. The majority of people don’t have an income.
2 pounds of rotten looking potatoes now sell for 40 shekels, which is more than $10. Two pounds of rice was less than $2 before the war.
After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Israel responded first with heavy bombardment in the north. Tafesh was stuck: Most of her family members were in the south, and her husband was away for work. She heard stories of people being killed while trying to evacuate south, so she decided to stay.
Source: Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can
Gaza stave off hunger any way they can: When Israel becomes a humanitarian force, it becomes an epidemic. A Palestinian refugee in the Gaza Strip
“First there was flour, until it ran out. We could get wheat, but it ran out. Then corn kernels. We tried animal feed. He says that his mom makes them a pudding with water and starch.
According to UNICEF, acute malnutrition has doubled among children under age 2 in the last month. At least 23 children have starved to death, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Most people in the north don’t have access to hospitals, and experts fear the actual numbers of malnutrition are much higher.
In November, her family hid at a UN-run school after the Israeli airstrike killed her husband and several others. She hid with her children and brother at his house, where an airstrike killed her brother. A third airstrike killed one of her daughters.
In the first two weeks of the war, Israel cut off all food, fuel, medicine and other supplies. Under international pressure, it has since allowed some aid in, but nowhere near what’s needed, aid groups say. Israel says it isn’t limiting aid.
With the recent collapse of public order in the north, it has been rare for aid to get there, and people are running out of even last-resort foods such as animal feed.
Source: Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can
A woman’s perspective on the Gaza hunger: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can, writes Saed and Sheria Saleh
Nowadays, Saed forages for whatever leafy plants and weeds she can find. She cooked them in water in order to make a soup to keep the hunger at bay.
“We have to feed our children some of the things the donkeys refuse to eat,” Saed says. “The animal feed is tasteless. It is hard to digest, like chewing on wood.
“If we can go on like this, how much longer can we go?” says her daughter, who also suffers from the disease. “If the bombs don’t kill us, the hunger will.”
In Beit Lahia, 59-year-old Marwan Saleh cares for his grandchildren. He says he has lost 60 pounds over the last few weeks. Before the war, he would take walks for miles along the beach. Now he says he can’t go more than a quarter mile.
Source: Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can
Famine in Gaza: Why do Jews eat so much food in the first millennium of their lives?” Palestinians ask the Israelis
“We used to eat grass and weeds, but that ran out. Now we grind the pits of dates to make a sort of coffee, and we are eating succulents,” says Saleh. “They taste absolutely horrible, but we have to eat it to stay alive.”
Near the border with Israel there are Israeli soldiers, where the plants grow. The family hasn’t eaten for a long time so there is nothing else for them to eat.
In a normal way, bring us the aid by land, not from the air or the sea, because people have to clamber and fight for it. Help us in an honorable way, not in a humiliating way,” Saleh says.
A report by the world’s leading experts on hunger last week said that famine would hit Gaza anytime, as around 1.1 million people, more than half of Gaza’s entire population, are experiencing catastrophic food insecurity.
