Gaza: Europe and the Arabs
The head of emergency communications at the World Food Programme, Jonathan Dumont, has visited many conflict zones around the world, but what he saw during his recent visit to Gaza was on a “different scale”. The images of death, destruction, hunger and despair were etched into his memory after just ten days in what he described as a “mountain of rubble”. What will happen to the children who have endured 16 months of continuous war, and what will happen to a generation that has lost so much? “I need food,” Abdulrahman, whom I met in the southwestern Gaza city of Khan Younis, told me in this article, according to the UN’s daily news bulletin. “A boy was crying, fearing that the food provided by the World Food Programme would run out before his turn came.” “I was ambitious and I had dreams,” Abdulrahman said, describing his hopes that were shattered like the buildings around us. “But I need food, and I can’t afford to buy bread.”

I had arrived in Gaza the day before, after a ten-hour trip from Amman in a bus full of humanitarian workers. I had spent some of that time waiting on the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing – one of the few ways to get life-saving humanitarian aid into the Strip.

There was A huge backlog of urgently needed supplies – including boxes of medicine, food and other aid – awaits permits, and few trucks or licensed drivers are available to navigate the devastated roads, desperate crowds and armed gangs to deliver them.

My 10-day visit to Gaza in early December was my first since the war broke out nearly 15 months ago. As head of the World Food Programme’s emergency communications department, my job is to listen, record and deliver the stories of people in places like Gaza – to give a voice to those who would otherwise not be heard.

Gaza – the size of Detroit – is now a mountain of rubble. I have visited many conflict zones in the past year – gang-ravaged Haiti, the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the war-torn capital of Sudan – but Gaza is on a different scale. On one side, waves lap the Mediterranean, creating an illusion of calm. On the other, endless destruction, black smoke billowing from burning buildings.
Another difference from many war zones: Gazans have no way to escape the conflict. They are trapped.

Hunger is skyrocketing. According to the latest expert findings, more than 90 percent of the population is facing crisis-level food insecurity or worse, and more than 300,000 people are likely to be suffering from catastrophic hunger – the highest level of food insecurity.

“People are hungry and angry”
The food that WFP allows into the Strip meets only a third of what we need to reach the hungriest people. For months, we have had to cut rations, then cut them again. In December, we planned to reach 1.1 million people with just ten days’ worth of food, including canned food, tomato paste, oil and wheat flour.
The hungriest place is in besieged northern Gaza, and for the past two months, barely any supplies have been allowed in. “Bread is the most important food for people right now, because it’s so cheap,” baker Ghattas Hakoura told me at a WFP-supported commercial bakery in Gaza City.

As men and women picked up loaves of bread, which cost three shekels, or less than US$1, each, in two separate, tightly controlled queues, Mr. Hakoura said: “People are hungry and angry. They’ve lost their homes, their jobs, their families. There’s no meat, no vegetables – and if there are vegetables, they’re very expensive.”

A 25kg bag of wheat flour can cost US$150. In a strip where farmers were harvesting citrus fruits, vegetables and strawberries, I saw small peppers being sold in a Gaza City market for US$195 a kilo. No one was buying, no one could afford it. “I want a future for my children like any other Arab child,” Ibrahim al-Balawi told me. His little girl, who he was holding, had never had a glass of milk in her life, and had known nothing but war. This is a concern for many parents in Gaza, a place where the sounds of drones and explosions can be heard 24/7, coming from the air, land and sea. “I want my children’s future to be like any other child living in any Arab country,” Hind Hassouna, a mother of four, told me after a food distribution by the World Food Programme in Khan Younis. “To live a decent life, to wear decent clothes, to eat decent food, to have a good life. And most importantly, to be free from fear – just like any child in any Arab country.”
Gaza’s children are experiencing the worst horrors of war. As we drove to the food distribution centre in Khan Younis, I saw a dead horse in the rubble, and next to it, a little girl was searching through the garbage for food. Later, as we drove into Gaza City in our armored vehicle, we saw bodies scattered left and right, decomposing in the sun along the Netzarim military corridor – which separates the north and south of the Strip. A few hundred meters later, we saw a small group of women and children heading in that direction, looking tired and carrying their belongings.

How will such experiences affect Gaza’s children as they grow up? What will happen to their generation? Amid the devastation, Gazans cling to any semblance of life. In Khan Younis, Abu Bilal dug up his destroyed home, using the rubble to rebuild walls. Cement slabs from a multi-storey apartment building formed a fragile canopy. He took me on a tour of his home, which has a basic toilet and a makeshift plastic sink. He described his shelter as “dangerous,” and said it could easily collapse in a storm or airstrike.