For Gazans, the deep silence of hunger has replaced noise of daily life
By Diaa Ostaz
The streets of Gaza are quieter than they used to be — not because peace has returned. The deep silence of hunger has replaced the noise of daily life.
Every corner bears the marks of a deepening humanitarian catastrophe: gaunt faces of children, long lines at makeshift aid points, and parents who have nothing left to give but words of comfort and prayer.
The humanitarian collapse in Gaza did not happen overnight. On March 2, the Israeli Defense Forces sealed all crossings into the enclave — 16 days before the collapse of the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. With borders sealed, the already limited flow of food, medicine and fuel stopped entirely. Within weeks, hunger and malnutrition spread at an unprecedented pace. Preventable diseases began to take hold.
Dying from famine and malnutrition
By early August, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza reported 201 people had died from famine and malnutrition since the start of the war, including 98 children. Those numbers rise daily.
In the middle of Gaza City, amid rubble and market stalls selling a handful of overpriced simple popular sweets, 35-year-old Ahmed al-Sawafiri described the reality of survival:
'Out of poverty, we have children we want to feed — nothing more or less,' he said in an interview for Catholic Near East Welfare Association, or CNEWA. 'The situation in general is really difficult, really tragic, and we hope from God things get better.'
Hunger, he added, is now part of everyday life. 'The famine is great; children sometimes sleep without eating. What can we do? We just need to get by. It's all in God's will.'
'We ask God that things get better'
For Sawafiri, faith is both a comfort and a lifeline. 'Hopefully for the better,' he said, glancing at the street around him. 'We ask God that things get better.'
A few steps away, a boy in a small stall, barely tall enough to see over the market crowd, spends his days trying to earn enough to support his eight siblings, 'so we can eat and live, and feed my little siblings.' Abdul Rahman Barghouth, 12, dreams of school, but for now his hope is that 'the war ends, and prices go down.'Faith runs through these conversations as naturally as breath. People speak of God's will even as they recount the impossible choices they face, whether to send a child to line up for aid despite the risk of shelling, whether to sell the last piece of jewelry for a bag of rice, whether to skip their own meal so a child can eat.
'We have no income, nothing left to sell'
For 54-year-old Mozayal Hassouna, those choices leave deep emotional scars. 'Some days we spent four days without bread,' she said. 'My youngest son tells me, 'You let me go to sleep hungry, Mom.' But I can't provide anything. My husband is 65 and sick; he can't run after trucks for aid. We lost our stall in the market; our house was bombed like others. We have no income, nothing left to sell, but we do not object to God's will.'
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