Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif reports on the starvation experienced by people in north Gaza and what they are doing to overcome their hunger. He talks to three young boys about picking shrubs near the Jabalia Camp.
This report was made slightly before aid started to trickle to north Gaza, a 13-truck convey of flour that entered the region from the south, the first in months.
This is a drop in the ocean but many hope, it will be the first of other trucks that will be allowed by the Israelis to enter this area of the Strip.
People in northern Gaza are in starvation mode. The 700,000 people here, are acutely worse than those in the south and international agencies speak of a looming famine if aid trucks are not allowed in.
The clip is in a question/answer form:
Salamu Alaikum. hi, how are you, what are you doing?
“We are picking shrubs so we can cook and eat for dinner tonight.
What, near the beach, here?
“We have come here to wait for aid (planes, now-a-days, drop bundles of aid from the sky). I heard they are going to drop aid today and we have been waiting for them since 7 o’clock this morning.
(Another small boy muttered in agreement). Today the Gaza is frequently filled with black parachutes that open in the skies while carrying the airdrops.
And
“We are still waiting. We don’t want to go home empty-handed, so we thought we’d pick shrubs and to take home to cook.
(The reporter addresses the third boy): “What are you gathering?
“Same…some wood and shrubs.” The wood is for fire as many Gazan families today have no gas and cook on fire.
Are you going to eat this?
All replied “yes. We want to feed the children back home, so they wouldn’t starve to death.”
“We are all dying from hunger here,” added Al Sharif.
“They are for the kids which we want to feed. There is supposed be a ceasefire and allow the entry of aid so that the children won’t die.”
“Kids are dying every day in the Kamal Al Adwan and nobody pays any attention to them,” the bigger boy emphasized.
“This is the prevailing scene” the reporter interjects. “The children came to wait for the planes that drop the aid but they haven’t arrived till now so the boys started picking what sparse shrubs they can from this place so they can provide for the Iftar meal of the day in the Muslim month of Ramadan.
Maybe, these shrubs are not fit for eating but many families today in this part of the world are forced to do that.”
Marwan Asmar is a journalist from Amman Jordan writing on Middle East affairs
