How to distract a starving child: Hunger in Rafah amid Israel’s war on Gaza
A Palestinian child looks on while waiting to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food, as Israel’s war on Gaza continues, Rafah on 20 February 2024
Ruwaida Amer reports in Al Jazeera on 6 March 2024:
Rafah, Gaza – A tiny little girl called Wafaa is sitting in front of a tent in Tal as-Sultan, playing in the sand listlessly as she cries with hunger. It is difficult to tell how old she is given her emaciated frame, but her mother, Tahrir Baraka, 36, tells Al Jazeera that Wafaa is two years old.
Baraka is despondent in the family’s worn-out tent, holding a can of peas and trying to start a fire to cook something for her five children. “I’m worried so much about my children. I don’t care if I eat, I worry about them, they’ve done nothing wrong to be starved like this,” she says.
Hunger stalks the children
Children up and down the Gaza Strip are going hungry every day, as are their parents who often go without to try to give their children at least one meagre meal a day.
With Israeli bombing overhead and a severe shortage of aid coming into the already aid-reliant and besieged enclave, families split their waking hours between wondering where they can keep their children safe and where they can find a bit of food or a little water.
Baraka and her family were displaced from Khan Younis, where they had a house in the city’s western refugee camp. “It was a struggle to find enough flour to make some bread for the kids,” Baraka said. “Then we had displaced family members from Bani Suhaila come to stay with us as well and things got worse. “I would give my share of bread to my kids to quiet their hunger. We couldn’t buy any other food as everything got so expensive, and my electrician husband has had no work since the beginning of the war.”
Across from Baraka’s tent, a similar situation has taken hold for Marwa Talbani, 32, and her family as displacement affects all these mothers and their children the same way, the only difference being how they try to feed their children.
Hoping against hope
“We were displaced from Tel al-Hawa in Gaza City, fleeing the bombing and making the exhausting trip south. But back then, it was still the beginning of the war, in late October. “I managed to put a few things in my bag for my children to eat on the way and now my six-year-old daughter Kenzi opens the bag every day, hoping to find something left to eat. “She hopes she forgot a piece of biscuit or a cheese sandwich, but unfortunately it’s all been eaten since we came to this tent.”
Rafah is massively overcrowded, with nearly 1.5 million people crammed into a tiny space, some having managed to find tents, others rigging up precarious shelters, and still more sleeping out in the open, unable to find anything to protect themselves and their families from the elements. What resources were available in this area are now depleted, and the displaced people there are largely reliant on sporadic, sparse aid deliveries and meals prepared by volunteer organisations.