Palestinians who are starving in Gaza eat leaves, horses, and scraps

Abu Gibril killed two of his horses because he was so short of food in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where he was living.

“Sacrificing the horses to feed the kids was our only option. We are dying of hunger,” he told AFP.

Prior to the start of the conflict, which started on October 7 when Hamas militants invaded southern Israel, Jabalia was the largest camp in the Palestinian territory, with an estimated 1,160 people killed, according to Israeli estimates.

When fighting broke out, 60-year-old Abu Gibril fled there from Beit Hanun, which is close. He and his family now reside in a tent close to the site of a former UN school.

Set constructed in 1948 on approximately 1.4 square kilometers (half a square mile), the densely inhabited community already had issues with contaminated water, electrical outages, and overpopulation.

Among its nearly 100,000 residents, poverty as a result of excessive unemployment was also a problem.

Food is now running low, and the bombardment is making it impossible for relief organizations to access the region. In addition, the few trucks that manage to get through are being looted ferociously.

The UN issued a warning last week that 2.2 million people were in danger of starvation, and the World Food Programme claimed that its teams had seen “unprecedented levels of desperation.”

A two-month-old infant died of starvation in a hospital in Gaza City, which is seven kilometers (just over four miles) away from Jabalia, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Friday.

The ministry reports that about 30,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza throughout the conflict.

CHALLENGING AND CREMATING
Bedraggled kids in the camp carry beaten cooking pots and plastic containers as they wait impatiently for what little food is available.

Costs are increasing as supplies are becoming low. According to one guy, the price of a kilogram of rice has increased significantly from seven shekels ($1.90) to 55 shekels.

“These four and five-year-old children can still survive, but what went wrong for them to go to bed hungry and wake up hungry?” He said those words furiously.

UNICEF, the UN agency for children, has issued a warning, stating that there may be a “explosion” in child fatalities in Gaza due to the severe food shortage, rising rates of malnutrition, and illness.

In Gaza, one in six under-two-year-old toddlers was assessed to be severely malnourished on February 19.

To attempt to stave off the mounting hunger pains, residents have started to eating scavenged fragments of rotting grain, animal feed unsuitable for human use, and even leaves.

One lady exclaimed, “There is no food, no wheat, and no drinking water.”

We’ve begun pleading with our neighbors for cash. There is not a single shekel in our house. We knock on people’s doors, but nobody gives us money.

“DYING OF STARVATION”
In Jabalia, tensions are growing over the scarcity of food and its effects. There was an unplanned demonstration on Friday that attracted dozens of individuals.

A little kid displayed a placard that said, “We are dying from hunger, not from air strikes.”

One demonstrator carried a sign that said, “Famine eats away at our flesh,” while others yelled, “No to starvation.” Genocide is not acceptable. Blockade not, please.

Abu Gibril in Beit Hanun harvested a field with the help of his two horses. But it was destroyed in the fighting, along with his home, and he was left with nothing.

Gaza has mostly become a scene of broken concrete and lives as a result of Israel’s unrelenting shelling over the last several weeks and months.

The drastic choice Abu Gibril made to butcher his horses, cook the meat with rice, and distribute it to his gullible relatives and neighbors remained a secret.

He admitted that it was necessary, but he was still nervous about their response. “Nobody is aware that they were really consuming a horse.”