Gaza farmer grows vegetables in tent city to 'survive another day'
"Our bodies need tomatoes, cucumbers," he told AFP.
"And these products are expensive here. Not just expensive -- they're not even available. There are no tomatoes, and even if there were, we wouldn't have the money to buy them."
The displaced farmer has cultivated the sandy plot of 120 square meters (about 1,300 square feet), using seeds from dried vegetables and relying on an erratic water supply.
"Due to the situation we're going through... and the soaring prices of vegetables, I had to return to my old profession," said Abu Jabal.
Water in Gaza, much like food, is in precariously low supply, and to keep his garden green, Abu Jalal usually has to carry large jugs he fills from a nearby pipe where water flows only one hour a day.
Israel is under growing pressure to bring an end to the war in Gaza, where UN warnings that famine was unfolding have heightened global concern for the territory's more than two million Palestinian inhabitants living through a humanitarian crisis.
Aid access 'blocked'
The Israeli offensive, triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, has killed at least 61,258 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which are considered reliable by the United Nations.
The Hamas attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel in late May began easing a complete aid blockade that had lasted more than two months, but only a trickle of food and other basic supplies has entered Gaza since then.
Before the war, agriculture accounted for around 10 percent of the Gaza Strip's economy, with about a quarter of the population at least partially supported by agriculture and fishing.
But on Wednesday the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said that just 1.5 percent of the territory's farmland remained accessible and undamaged, citing the latest satellite data.
"People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods," the agency's Director-General Qu Dongyu said.
Hungry Gazans have increasingly been forced to brave chaotic scenes at a handful of distribution points managed by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
On July 22, the UN rights office said Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid in Gaza since the GHF started operations in May -- nearly three-quarters of them in the vicinity of GHF sites.
Abu Jabal said his nine-year-old daughter had been injured near a charity kitchen.
© 2025 AFP
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AFP
a day ago
- AFP
Images of people setting bottles of food adrift towards Gaza are AI-generated
"Egyptians set food adrift in the sea in an effort to help Gaza," reads part of a Malay-language Facebook post shared on July 25, 2025. The post continues: "In an effort to help the people of Gaza, Egyptians filled one- and two-litre bottles with dry food such as rice, beans, and lentils before releasing them into the Mediterranean Sea in the hope that they would reach the shores of Gaza." The accompanying image appears to show a group of people releasing plastic bottles filled with rice or flour into the sea. Image Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on August 7, 2025, with a red X added by AFP The image was also passed off as genuine elsewhere on Facebook and in other languages such as Italian, French, and Arabic. A similar claim surfaced in a Bengali-language Facebook post on July 27, 2025 with an image of several bottles filled with food and notes floating in water. "May Almighty's divine power deliver this to the hungry people of Gaza," reads the caption. Image Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on August 7, 2025, with a red X added by AFP The image also circulated elsewhere on Facebook, and some users appear to believe the picture is genuine. One user wrote, "Hopefully it reaches the people of Gaza..." "Thank you.. may Allah bless you for your efforts," another commented. The pictures circulated online as Palestinians scrambled for basic supplies after Israel imposed a near-total blockade on March 2. UN agencies warned that Gaza was "on the brink of a full-scale famine", while the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said the Palestinian death toll in the nearly 22-month war had topped 60,000 (archived link). The war was sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority civilians, based on an AFP tally of official figures. Israel began allowing a small trickle of aid to enter the densely populated territory in late May -- having imposed a total blockade in March after ceasefire talks broke down -- and started a series of "tactical pauses" while allowing deliveries from aid trucks and airdrops in Gaza. Although there have been media reports of a genuine symbolic initiative launched by "Egyptian citizens horrified by the images of famine", the images circulating online contain visual inconsistencies indicating they were AI-generated (archived here and here). Visual inconsistencies An analysis carried out using the Hive image verification tool on the image of people dropping the bottles into the water concluded that there was a 99.9 percent probability that these visuals were made by AI. Image Screenshot of the misleading post taken on Facebook on August 7, 2025 (left) and the result of the Hive tool (right) with colored boxes added by AFP The image also features a hand with a distorted thumb in the foreground, fully filled bottles floating improbably on the sea which defies the laws of physics, and people all facing the same direction unnaturally -- hallmarks of AI-generated images. While there is no foolproof method to spot AI-generated media, identifying watermarks and visual inconsistencies can help, as errors still occur despite the meteoric progress in generative AI. The plastic bottles in the second falsely shared image also appear to float unnaturally on the water's surface, while the size of the items contained in the bottles appears larger than the opening of the container. Image Visual inconsistencies of the false video highlighted by AFP AFP has debunked other posts of the Israel-Gaza conflict that falsely presented AI-generated images and videos here.
France 24
6 days ago
- France 24
Gaza farmer grows vegetables in tent city to 'survive another day'
Abu Jabal, 39, has turned a small patch of soil near the family's tent in Gaza City into a vegetable garden, where he tends to rows of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, surrounded by tens of thousands of other Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war. "Our bodies need tomatoes, cucumbers," he told AFP. "And these products are expensive here. Not just expensive -- they're not even available. There are no tomatoes, and even if there were, we wouldn't have the money to buy them." The displaced farmer has cultivated the sandy plot of 120 square meters (about 1,300 square feet), using seeds from dried vegetables and relying on an erratic water supply. "Due to the situation we're going through... and the soaring prices of vegetables, I had to return to my old profession," said Abu Jabal. Water in Gaza, much like food, is in precariously low supply, and to keep his garden green, Abu Jalal usually has to carry large jugs he fills from a nearby pipe where water flows only one hour a day. Israel is under growing pressure to bring an end to the war in Gaza, where UN warnings that famine was unfolding have heightened global concern for the territory's more than two million Palestinian inhabitants living through a humanitarian crisis. Aid access 'blocked' The Israeli offensive, triggered by Palestinian militant group Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, has killed at least 61,258 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which are considered reliable by the United Nations. The Hamas attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Israel in late May began easing a complete aid blockade that had lasted more than two months, but only a trickle of food and other basic supplies has entered Gaza since then. Before the war, agriculture accounted for around 10 percent of the Gaza Strip's economy, with about a quarter of the population at least partially supported by agriculture and fishing. But on Wednesday the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said that just 1.5 percent of the territory's farmland remained accessible and undamaged, citing the latest satellite data. "People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods," the agency's Director-General Qu Dongyu said. Hungry Gazans have increasingly been forced to brave chaotic scenes at a handful of distribution points managed by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. On July 22, the UN rights office said Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 Palestinians trying to get food aid in Gaza since the GHF started operations in May -- nearly three-quarters of them in the vicinity of GHF sites. Abu Jabal said his nine-year-old daughter had been injured near a charity kitchen. © 2025 AFP
France 24
04-08-2025
- France 24
Dire water shortages compound hunger and displacement in Gaza
Gaza was already suffering a water crisis before nearly 22 months of war between Israel and Hamas damaged more than 80 percent of the territory's water infrastructure. "Sometimes, I feel like my body is drying from the inside, thirst is stealing all my energy and that of my children," Um Nidal Abu Nahl, a mother of four living in Gaza City, told AFP. Water trucks sometimes reach residents and NGOs install taps in camps for a lucky few, but it is far from sufficient. Israel connected some water mains in north Gaza to the Israeli water company Mekorot, after cutting off supplies early in the war, but residents told AFP water still wasn't flowing. Local authorities said this was due to war damage to Gaza's water distribution network, with many mains pipes destroyed. Gaza City spokesman Assem al-Nabih told AFP that the municipality's part of the network supplied by Mekorot had not functioned in nearly two weeks. Wells that supplied some needs before the war have also been damaged, with some contaminated by sewage which goes untreated because of the conflict. Many wells in Gaza are simply not accessible, because they are inside active combat zones, too close to Israeli military installations or in areas subject to evacuation orders. At any rate, wells usually run on electric pumps and energy has been scarce since Israel turned off Gaza's power as part of its war effort. Generators could power the pumps, but hospitals are prioritised for the limited fuel deliveries. Lastly, Gaza's desalination plants are down, save for a single site reopened last week after Israel restored its electricity supply. Sewage floods Nabih, from the Gaza City municipality, told AFP the infrastructure situation was bleak. More than 75 percent of wells are out of service, 85 percent of public works equipment destroyed, 100,000 metres of water mains damaged and 200,000 metres of sewers unusable. Pumping stations are down and 250,000 tons of rubbish is clogging the streets. "Sewage floods the areas where people live due to the destruction of infrastructure," says Mohammed Abu Sukhayla from the northern city of Jabalia. In order to find water, hundreds of thousands of people are still trying to extract groundwater directly from wells. But coastal Gaza's aquifer is naturally brackish and far exceeds salinity standards for potable water. In 2021, the UN children's agency UNICEF warned that nearly 100 percent of Gaza's groundwater was unfit for consumption. With clean water nearly impossible to find, some Gazans falsely believe brackish water to be free of bacteria. Aid workers in Gaza have had to warn repeatedly that even if residents can get used to the taste, their kidneys will inevitably suffer. Spreading diseases Though Gaza's water crisis has received less media attention than the ongoing hunger one, its effects are just as deadly. "Just like food, water should never be used for political ends," UNICEF spokeswoman Rosalia Bollen said. She told AFP that, while it's very difficult to quantify the water shortage, "there is a severe lack of drinking water". "It's extremely hot, diseases are spreading and water is truly the issue we're not talking about enough," she added. Opportunities to get clean water are as dangerous as they are rare. On July 13, as a crowd had gathered around a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, at least eight people were killed by an Israeli strike, according to Gaza's civil defence agency. A United Arab Emirates-led project authorised by Israel is expected to bring a 6.7-kilometre pipeline from an Egyptian desalination plant to the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, in Gaza's south. The project is controversial within the humanitarian community, because some see it as a way of justifying the concentration of displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza. -'Fear and helplessness'- On July 24, a committee representing Gaza's prominent families issued a cry for help, calling for "the immediate provision of water and humanitarian aid, the rapid repair of infrastructure, and a guarantee for the entry of fuel". Gaza aid workers that AFP spoke to stressed that there was no survival without drinking water, and no disease prevention without sanitation. "The lack of access, the general deterioration of the situation in an already fragile environment -- at the very least, the challenges are multiplying," a diplomatic source working on these issues told AFP. Mahmoud Deeb, 35, acknowledged that the water he finds in Gaza City is often undrinkable, but his family has no alternative. "We know it's polluted, but what can we do? I used to go to water distribution points carrying heavy jugs on my back, but even those places were bombed," he added. At home, everyone is thirsty -- a sensation he associated with "fear and helplessness."
