In light of the food insecurity and the decline in the entry of aid to the Gaza Strip, Faris Hassouna, the father of six children, is forced to go at dawn on foot, several kilometers, in search of a sack of flour in which the hunger of his children who have not eaten bread for more than forty days.
Hassouna and his family live in a tent in Gaza City after the war destroyed his home, and he says that repeated attempts to obtain aid were unsuccessful, and that he no longer has what he provides to his children except the daily risk of going out in light of the bombing and insecurity.
The arrival of the flour bag to the tent was not an ordinary event. Rather, the family members received Faris with applause and zargdides.
He added with sorrow: “We do not want negotiations or a truce, just let the flour and water pass. I want to sleep without nightmares about my children as they starve.”
The story of Fares is not an exception, but one of the thousands of stories in Gaza, where it is estimated that the famine has reached catastrophic stages, according to international organizations, in light of the continued siege and the disruption of the entry of aid, while the Ministry of Health in Gaza registered a sharp increase in the rates of malnutrition, especially among children.
According to the latest reports of the Global Food Security Information Network (IPC), more than half of the Gaza population – about 1.1 million people – lives in “catastrophic” conditions of food insecurity (the fifth stage), which is the highest ranking, as the residents do not find what they eat for several consecutive days.
UNRWA also warned that children in the northern Gaza regions show clear signs of wasting and severe malnutrition, in light of the almost complete collapse of the diet and the absence of any local production due to the war.
On July 27, Israel announced a temporary ceasefire for a period of ten hours in some areas of the Strip, coinciding with the dropping of air aid from Jordan and the UAE, in an attempt to contain the growing international anger of the worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which observers described as the most dangerous in the modern history of the Strip.
But for Faris, all of this seems far from his tent, as his daily battle revolves around one goal: securing a loaf of bread for his children.