As Infested Flour Becomes a Staple, State Dept “Still Assessing” Israel’s Aid Restrictions to Gaza

“I dream of food every day”

Palestinians, including children, living in the Nuseirat refugee camp wait with empty pots to receive food distributed by an aid organization as they are unable to meet many vital needs, including basic food supplies, in Gaza City, Gaza on November 08, 2024. (Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

This is the most difficult period I have endured since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began last year. Everyone is so hungry.

Over the past week, my family and I have resorted to eating canned pet food mixed with poor-quality rice that feels like chewing plastic. We live in Deir al-Balah, and like everywhere else in Gaza, there is nothing to buy in the markets. We typically eat one meal a day, usually some canned food along with olive oil and za’atar. To bake bread, we have to use bug-infested flour. Some days, when we are unable to find anything else, we are forced to pay absurd prices for vegetables that are rotten. I have severe stomach pains. I would rather fast than eat this.

I dream of food every day. I imagine our fridge full of meat, lettuce, milk, and cheese. I sometimes talk to myself at night, when I’m hungry and have nothing to eat. I dream of when I will be able to sit at a dinner table with my family again. My nephew and niece, both 2 years old, wake up every day crying for an egg. Their mothers don’t know what to do. To distract them a bit, we show them videos of eggs on the internet.

It has gotten so much worse over the last month. Israel is intentionally starving us even more than it was before.

According to the United Nations, the number of aid shipments being let into the Gaza Strip over the past few weeks is lower than at any time since the start of the war in October 2023. On average, just over 40 trucks have entered Gaza per day over the past month. That’s compared to an average of 500 trucks a day before this Israeli assault began, which was insufficient even then.

A UN-backed panel last week issued an alert, warning of “an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip.” 

In response to the alert, Oxfam’s Middle East Director, Sally Abi Khalil, said in a statement: “It is a crime against humanity for a country to unleash famine upon a population. For over a year Israel has used starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, while the rest of the world has stood by and watched. The situation in northern Gaza is now beyond catastrophic and families there literally have nothing to eat. In southern Gaza, things are also rapidly deteriorating, with almost no food left in the markets in Deir al-Balah.”

Yasmeen Abu-Hmeidan, a displaced mother of four children in Deir al-Balah, can barely scrounge together enough food to prepare one meal a day in her dilapidated tent. The last few weeks have been a nightmare for her as she can’t find milk, vegetables, or anything nutritious.

“I recently took my 1-month-old infant and queued up for more than three hours for a can of milk and a bag of diapers. However, I didn’t get any. Our usual meal is cooked beans or peas, but we don’t always have it or even have the firewood to cook it. Instead, we may have some zaatar or dukka with a few loaves of mostly stale bread,” she said. “My nearly two-year-old son is now suffering from dental bleeding due to the lack of milk. I can’t find milk or medication for him. Here in Gaza, we have to pay unaffordable sums to barely bring a little. For example, you need to pay $20 to make some lentil soup. It’s really insane.”

The situation is dire everywhere in Gaza, but it is the worst in the north, where Israel has waged a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign over the past 5 weeks and completely cut off aid, with humanitarian deliveries ceasing entirely for weeks and hardly any aid making it through since. 

If there is any food in the north, it is extremely difficult and dangerous to get to. In the Jabaliya refugee camp, Abbas Saleh, 48, was recently trying to make his way to a makeshift food stall in search of something to eat when an Israeli tank fired on him, wounding him and several others.

“Israel deliberately targets people searching for food and water,” he told Drop Site News. “We can hardly get one meal per day. It’s actually not a meal, it’s just a piece of bread or a can of food that expired months ago. During this latest invasion, I went many days without a bite. On several days, I only had a date biscuit for the whole day. I split it into two halves, one for the day and the other for the night. We sometimes eat some homegrown plants like mallows. Even the water here is contaminated.”

He continued: “I’ve lost more than 30 kilos. We’re very brutally starved, and I feel very dehumanized and heartbroken. I stayed here alone and left my entire family behind one year ago. I don’t know if I’ll ever meet them again.”

The United States is allowing Israel to do this. Israel has faced no real consequences for its genocidal assault on Gaza – whether it’s the relentless targeting of homes, universities, schools, hospitals, displacement centers and children, mostly with American bombs; or it’s the use of starvation as a weapon of war. 

Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (who has since been replaced) demanding progress within 30 days to reverse the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza and outlining concrete steps, including allowing in 350 trucks a day. Today, on the deadline for compliance, eight humanitarian organizations issued a report with a “scorecard” on Israel’s actions over the past month. “Israel not only failed to meet the U.S. criteria that would indicate support to the humanitarian response, but concurrently took actions that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in Northern Gaza. That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago,” the report said, adding that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” The report also criticized the Biden administration’s request, noting that “350 trucks per day already fails to represent the assessed level of aid needed to respond at scale.”

Last week, the State Department’s Matt Miller provisionally said Israel was failing to meet the requirements but joked that he could not give a grade before the semester was up. His response earned criticism by a reporter in the room for his "levity." But despite his assessment that Israel was failing on a number of issues, and even though the scorecard created by eight aid agencies indicates the situation is worse now than it was 30 days ago, today State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said there would be no change to U.S. policy and that the administration was continuing to assess.

On top of the humanitarian aid, Israel also suddenly stopped allowing all commercial trucks into Gaza in early October. Commercial trucks once complemented the deliveries of humanitarian aid, providing a variety of basic goods like flour, oil, biscuits, milk, and so on. “Before the recent stoppage of commercial entry, most basic needs were met through the market, not humanitarian assistance,” the aid agencies report said. “International humanitarian actors have not observed a single entry of commercial trucks since September 30.”

The markets are now empty and what there is is even more expensive than it was.

“One day when we had some money, I went to buy some almost rotten vegetables. I paid $20 for only two potatoes and three tomatoes,” said Hani Qarmoot, a 21-year-old former resident of northern Gaza, who has been displaced since the early days of the war and now lives in a tent along with seven members of his family in the damaged courtyard of Al-Aqsa University in Khan Younis. “We here among our family ration out and divide things in advance. For instance, we share a few loaves of bread for everyone, one can of fava beans for three people, and so on. It just goes like this,” he said, choking up with pain.

“I spend hours walking for kilometers to bring some lentil soup or cooked beans in buckets. The food inside the buckets sometimes gets mixed with sand along the way,” he said. “We’re really fighting to get food here. I never imagined I would go through this in my entire life. It’s the peak of humiliation and the food we get is not enough. We eat dukka, made from animal feed, or some canned tuna. They taste terrible, but I have no other choice.”

“I really fancy having my favorite dish, shakshouka. But there are no eggs or even tomatoes to make it. Our agony is indescribable. Our pain is immeasurable. We’re starved and shivering with fear and cold. But no one is moving to stop this tragedy. I don’t know when this will end, but I just dream of the day when a ceasefire is announced and I can return to the rubble of my home and eat all the dishes I’ve been dreaming of during the past 14 hours.”

Negotiations for a ceasefire are not progressing. There is no end to Israel’s assault on Gaza on the horizon, and we are continuing to be bombed, displaced and starved.

Sharif Abel Kouddous contributed to this report.

Nicholas Rodelo contributed research.