‘We have no food, flour, basic sanitation. What are we supposed to do?’
A security vacuum in Gaza has given rise to gangs and lawlessness across the Strip.
Gaza’s police services have been decimated by the war, and international peacekeeping forces have been barred from the besieged enclave.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum spoke to Amalat Wadi, a mother of seven, in Deir el-Balah. She said her family, displaced by the war, “wait desperately for the aid trucks, but with no law or protection, they are looted by gangs” before reaching their destinations.
“We have no food, no flour, not even basic sanitation. What are we supposed to do?” she said.
In recent days, with growing international pressure, Israel has allowed only a trickle of aid to enter. The UN says it’s a welcome step, but nowhere near enough.
Antoine Renard, the World Food Programme Palestine director, told our colleague that they have the capacity to provide aid, with supplies in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the occupied West Bank, but Israel and the security situation do not allow for a free flow of aid into Gaza.
“The war is still ongoing,” he said, adding that many of the WFP convoys are shot at as they leave checkpoints.
Palestinians, driven to the brink of starvation, grab bags of flour from a truck
‘Threatened either by bombs, starvation or engineered Israeli genocidal chaos’
Ahmed al-Najjar, a journalist and resident of Gaza who is sheltering in Khan Younis, says Palestinians in the besieged territory are faced with “tragedy and torment” amid Israeli bombardment, forced starvation and a complete feeling of insecurity.
“With the cats away, the mice will play – except that it’s not just a mouse, but an engineered Israeli genocidal chaos,” he told Al Jazeera, stressing that safety is “nowhere to be found” in Gaza.
“We are not just referring to the fact of constant fear of the Israeli bombs being dropped on our heads, but the fact that there is a total security and power vacuum that leaves us here unsure and uncertain of our own safety,” al-Najjar said.
He described that even walking in the street and going to buy a bag of flour or some other basic necessity makes people feel uncertain whether they will be able to return home safely.
“There is not any sort of presence of police or security forces in the streets; we’ve been seeing the continuous and systematic targeting of the police forces inside these ‘safe zones’ here.”
