 |
"Two weeks ago, for the first time in 60 years, we ran out of food," says Ging. (Reuters) |
CAIRO — Jindiya Abu Amra's heart breaks when she looks at the sunken faces of her hungry children.
"When I find nothing, we eat this grass," Abu Amra, a mother of eight, told the Sunday Times on December 14, pointing at the wild grass that grows along the streets of Gaza Strip.
She now goes out with her 12-year-old daughter Rabab every morning to scrounge for the types of grass that the family can find edible.
"We had one meal today - khobbeizeh," said the 43-year-old mother, showing the leaves of a plant growing wild in the streets.
Despite international criticism, Israel closes all commercial crossings with the impoverished Gaza Strip, home to 1.6 million people.
UN officials affirm that people are left to eat grass because the densely-populated territory is starving.
"Two weeks ago, for the first time in 60 years, we ran out of food," said John Ging, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza.
"We used to get 70 to 80 trucks per day, now we are getting 15 trucks a day, and only when the border opens."
UNRWA, which offers handouts to nearly half of Gaza's population, has only four days of food in stock for distribution among the most desperate.
Eight British rights organizations have warned in a joint report that Gazans are living through the worst humanitarian crisis in 40 years due to the Israeli closure.
Heating Furniture
The sufferings of Abu Amra's family, like that of most Gazans, do not stop at food.
"Every day, I wake up and start looking for wood and plastic to burn for fuel and I beg," said Abu Amra, whose husband has been unemployed for months.
The family's tiny breeze-block house has almost no furniture after they burned the last cupboard they had for heat in the chilling winter.
Israel cut fuel supplies to the impoverished strip in January.
Hard-to-find fuel and cooking gas, smuggled from Egypt through border tunnels, are sold at mind-boggling prices.
Last week, cooking gas prices skyrocketed from 80 shekels per canister (£14) to 380 shekels (£66).
The case with electricity is not much better with families having access to it only six hours a day.
Human Rights Watch has slammed Israel's fuel and power cuts as a violation of the law of war.
The closure highlights the plight of people in the overcrowded sliver of land, almost abandoned by international community since Hamas was voted to power in 2006.
"I can’t remember seeing a fruit," said bare-footed Rabab, dressed in a tracksuit top and holed jeans.
|
