[Source: Reuters]

Mervat Hijazi and her nine children didn’t eat at all on Thursday – save her underweight baby who had a sachet of peanut paste.

Six-year-old Zaha can’t sleep because of Israel’s bombardment.

Hijazi, 38, recounted a terrible week.

Sunday, May 18: Her family was given about half a kilo of cooked lentils from a community kitchen run by a charity, half the amount she would normally use for a single meal.

Monday: A local aid group was distributing some vegetables in the camp but there wasn’t enough to go round and Hijazi’s family didn’t get any. Her 14-year-old daughter Menna went to the community kitchen and came back with a meagre amount of cooked potato.

Everyone was hungry so they filled up by drinking water.

Tuesday: The family received about half a kilo of cooked pasta from the kitchen. One daughter was also given some falafel by an uncle who lived nearby.

Wednesday: A good day, relatively. They received a bowl of rice with lentils at the community kitchen. It wasn’t nearly enough, but Menna went back and pleaded with them and they eventually gave her two other small dishes.

Thursday: the kitchen was closed, the family couldn’t find out why. They had nothing to eat except for the peanut sachet for 11-month-old Lama, received from a clinic as a nutritional supplement because baby milk formula has all but disappeared.

The Hijazis’ plight is a snapshot of the misery plaguing the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. A global hunger monitor warned this month half a million people face starvation while famine looms.

Israel has been bombarding and besieging Gaza since the territory’s ruling group Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israeli border communities on October 7, 2023. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people, according to Israel, while Gazan authorities say the ensuing Israeli offensive has killed more than 53,000 people.

Israeli authorities have repeatedly said there is enough food in Gaza to feed the population and accuse Hamas of stealing aid in order to feed its fighters and to maintain control over the territory, an accusation the group denies.

This week Israel started allowing some food to enter the territory for the first time since March 2, including flour and baby food but it says a new U.S.-sponsored system run by private contractors will begin operating soon.

The plan will involve distribution centres in areas controlled by Israeli troops, a plan the U.N. and aid agencies have attacked, saying it will lead to further displacement of the population and that aid should flow through existing networks.

Hijazi said her family had seen no sign yet of the new aid and she is consumed by worry for her baby, Lama, who was 5 kg when weighed last week. That’s about half the average for a healthy one-year-old girl according to World Health Organization charts.

This week the family have had, at most, a single meal a day to share, the mother added.

U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher said this week that the amount of aid Israel was proposing to allow into Gaza was “a drop in the ocean” of what was needed.

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