Mohammed Kilani is worried about his twin 2-year-old daughters. He cannot afford milk for them and most other food is unavailable in northern Gaza, where he lives with his family.
“They are not growing up well, I can see that,” said Mr. Kilani, a 38-year-old lawyer in the northern town of Beit Lahia. “But what can I do?”
The United Nation has warned of catastrophic living conditions and the risk of famine for some 400,000 civilians in northern Gaza amid a renewed Israeli offensive this month in the enclave. The U.N. and humanitarian groups say the lack of desperately needed aid is the result of aid crossings into Gaza being closed by Israel.
Israeli authorities say that they are not limiting aid into Gaza, and that humanitarian agencies have failed to distribute the aid.
Long before the latest offensive, Mr. Kilani and his family had struggled to find food. They have eaten apples only three times since the war began last year, and little other fruit. They ate chicken when it suddenly became available a few months ago. But the chickens disappeared from the market just as quickly as they had arrived.
Mostly, the family lives on canned food, which was distributed weeks ago and must be carefully rationed, Mr. Kilani said.
He and 11 other family members live in his home in Beit Lahia, which has been severely damaged by the war and is at risk of collapsing. “Words cannot describe how miserable and dangerous things are here in northern Gaza,” he said. “We have been given one option only: that is to die.”
On Monday, Israeli shells hit a food distribution center in Jabaliya, another town in the north. The attack killed 10 people, according to UNRWA, a U.N. agency focused on Palestinian refugees. The Israeli military said it was investigating reports that the attack occurred while people were collecting food.
“Death is everywhere,” said Mohammed Ewais, a freelance journalist who lives in Jabaliya with his family. “Hunger and thirst is everywhere,” he said, imploring the international community to intervene.
On Tuesday, the five-story building in which he was living was destroyed in an airstrike that turned his neighborhood into little more than a pile of broken stones. No one was inside the building at the time, he said.
For Reem Al-Busyuni, good days are those when she is able to eat and feed her family just one meal. Some days, there is nothing to eat.
“There’s no food and there’s no water and there’s no milk for the children,” said the 36-year-old mother of six in Beit Lahia. “It’s gotten to the point where we have to put water in their bottles and we can’t even find filtered water.”
The hunger comes as they live under the constant threat of intense Israeli bombardment and the fear of being struck at any moment, she said. “It’s like we’re dying multiple deaths each day.”
Widespread hunger has been common in the north for months as a result of the war. Mumin al-Farram, 35, and his parents fled their home in Jabaliya two weeks ago, before the latest Israeli offensive.
Even then, there was almost no food in town, except for some flour that had been distributed by the United Nation’s World Food Program. Desperate people lined up for hours to get just a few loaves of bread from one of Jabaliya’s remaining bakeries, Mr. al-Farram said.
“This whole year has been moving from one kind of hunger and siege to another,” he said.
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