Gaza Camp: Prior to the start of the conflict, which started on October 7 after Hamas fighters invaded southern Israel, Jabalia was the largest camp in the Palestinian territory, with an estimated 1,160 people killed, according to Israeli estimates.
GaAbu Gibril killed two of his horses because he was so short of food at the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Camp, where he was living.
“In order to feed the kids, we were forced to slaughter the horses. We are dying of hunger,” he told AFP.
Prior to the start of the conflict, which started on October 7 after Hamas fighters invaded southern Israel, Jabalia was the largest camp in the Palestinian territory, with an estimated 1,160 people killed, according to Israeli estimates.
When the fighting started, Gibril, 60, ran away from adjacent Beit Hanun to that location. He and his family currently 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 faced 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 currently running low, and the bombardment is making it impossible for relief organizations to reach the area. In addition, the few trucks that manage to get through are being looted ferociously.
This week, the UN issued a warning 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.
According to the ministry on Saturday, at least 29,606 individuals have died in Gaza as a result of the conflict.
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.
“We the grown-ups can still make it but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?” He uttered those words furiously.
An “explosion” in child deaths in Gaza might result from the severe scarcity of food, rising rates of malnutrition, and sickness, according to UNICEF, the UN organization for children.
In Gaza, one in six under-two-year-old toddlers was assessed to be severely malnourished on February 19.
To try to ward off the mounting hunger pangs, residents have started to eating scavenged fragments of rotten grain, animal feed unfit for human use, and even leaves.
One woman exclaimed, “There is no food, no wheat, and no drinking water.”
“We have begun pleading with our neighbors for cash. Not a single shekel in our possession. We knock on people’s doors, but nobody gives us money.”
“Passing away from starvation”
In Jabalia, tensions are escalating due to the scarcity of sustenance and its repercussions. Recently, a spontaneous demonstration unfolded, drawing the participation of numerous individuals.
A young one exhibited a banner proclaiming: “We have not succumbed to aerial assaults, yet we wither under the grip of famine.”
Simultaneously, another protester brandished a sign bearing the stark caution: “The scourge of starvation gnaws at our very flesh,” while the rallying cry of the crowd echoed: “We reject famine. We denounce genocide. We defy blockade.”
Meanwhile, in Beit Hanun, Gibril harnessed a pair of equines to cultivate a tract of land. However, the ravages of conflict obliterated his efforts, along with his abode, leaving him bereft of all possessions.
Over the passing weeks and months, the unyielding bombardment unleashed by Israel has rendered Gaza primarily a landscape of shattered concrete and shattered lives.
Gibril harbored the audacious resolve to slaughter his equines in secrecy, simmering the flesh with rice, and distributing it to his unwitting kin and community members.
Despite the imperative nature of his actions, he expressed apprehension regarding their response. “None are privy to the fact that they have, in reality, consumed horse meat.”
