Currently Online 
‘They scream in hunger’ – How Israel is starving Gaza
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2024/3/26/they-scream-in-hunger-how-israel-is-starving-palestinians-in-gaza
By Maram Humaid, Abdelhakim Abu Riash, and Alia Chughtai
Throughout Gaza, many families are surviving with hardly anything to eat, making do with carefully portioned canned and cartoned food if they can find it.
The extreme lack of food is causing half of Gaza’s population — 1.1 million people — to suffer from “catastrophic hunger,” the highest indicator of famine, according to a UN-backed report published last week.
For three days, Al Jazeera followed three families in Gaza to document how they are coping with hardly any food during this crisis.
A family in Gaza shares their only meal of the day outside of a makeshift tent
Maysoon al-Nabahin squeezes out the last bit of cartoned cheese onto a freshly baked piece of bread, knowing it will be the only thing her family of eight will eat that day. Umm Muhammed, as she's known, fled from a school in Bureij where she, together with her husband and six children, were sheltering after Israeli forces destroyed their home in east Bureij in central Gaza.
The 45-year-old now lives in the crowd of tents around Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah further south. She’s a petite woman, her face etched with worry, looking older than her years.
In the centre of their plastic makeshift tent is a small fire where Umm Muhammed is making flatbread on a woodfire saj oven. She’s surrounded by a few neatly arranged backpacks containing the belongings her family managed to bring, as well as a pile of blankets, now cleared away to make space for their daytime living.
Also living under an overflowing plastic sheet-covered tent in Deir el-Balah are the 15 members of the al-Masry family. There is no food in the al-Masry tent. “We’ve been here almost a month. Since then, we have not eaten properly, and my children need food.
They scream in hunger and cry themselves to sleep”, 45-year-old Salwa al-Masry tells Al Jazeera, quivering.
Salwa, who also goes by Umm Mohammed, suffers from asthma and her husband has a cardiac condition. Her young children plead for food, and she has nothing to give them. “My young son tells me: 'Mommy, I am hungry, I want to eat.’ I am patient with him and tell him: 'Sit down, I will get it for you.'" But, she says, that is usually a lie as there is nothing she can do to help alleviate his hunger.
Umm Mohammed says she has been to every aid centre but all the warehouses have been cleaned out so she returns empty-handed. She has lost considerable weight since she, her husband, eight daughters and five sons fled their home in Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza to Gaza City, then to Nuseirat and finally to this tent in Deir el-Balah.
Sanaa "Umm Hassan" Abu Issa and her family of 11 have also been displaced multiple times.
In December, they fled their home in east Bureij in central Gaza after the Israeli army told them they had to evacuate. On foot, they fled to a school in Bureij camp where they were also told to evacuate. In search of safety, the family, along with many others, were forced to make the trek south to Deir el-Balah where they were joined by Umm Hassan’s pregnant daughter and her husband who fled their home in Shujayea, one of the largest neighbourhoods in Gaza City.
Umm Hassan had a small convenience store as part of a social affairs project in front of her house, which has since been destroyed. The shop part of the house still stands, she tells Al Jazeera ruefully. “Only part of the shop remains, because it is legitimate money, thank God,” she says, laughing.
They now live in a small tent, with plastic sheet walls. The hard earth is covered with bits of faded fabric to make a place to sit. In one corner of the tent is a pile of worn-out blankets and a few bags that the family managed to bring from their home. In another corner is a makeshift kitchen with a table, a hotplate, two pots, a few pantry items and bits and pieces of utensils.
No normal-sized babies
"Doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies," UNFPA official Dominic Allen told journalists after visiting hospitals still providing maternity services in the north of Gaza, where the need is especially great.
"What they do see though, tragically, is more stillborn births... and more neonatal deaths, caused in part by malnutrition, dehydration and complications," Allen added.
The numbers of complicated deliveries are roughly twice what they were before the war with Israel began - with mothers stressed, fearful, underfed and exhausted - and caregivers often lacking necessary supplies.
