Surviving Your Death, Gazans Forced To Eat Livestock

GAZA - Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who are battling starvation, were forced to blow up animal feed to be used as bread because it was hit by a prolonged shortage of wheat flour amid an Israeli blockade of humanitarian aid.

Speaking to Anadolu Gazan Awatif al-Besyuni said residents were forced to add wheat and corn, which should have been used as animal feed, to make their daily food.

Besyuni stressed that their living conditions were difficult, and said that they not only suffered the impact of war but also fought hunger and a very cold state of air.

He expressed the suffering of children who could not fulfill their simplest wishes even because of the prolonged attacks, even though they asked to eat other foods.

Highlighting the children's struggles amid the scarcity of flour to make bread, Besyuni called on the international community to intervene, urging Arab and Islamic countries to pressure Israel to stop the war and ease their suffering in Gaza.

Hasan Seref, a resident of Tel al-ZAatar in northern Gaza, described the tragic situation with food shortages, and stressed the adverse effects on children who could not understand the hunger forced amid the war and the blockade.

"The supply of food really runs out, making them have to fast for up to 48 hours," he said.

Um Asad al-Ketri, the resident who made the bread in a house that had been destroyed at the Jabala Refugee Camp as a result of the Israeli attack, highlighted the sad conditions they were experiencing just to survive.

Making bread from bird feed, al-Ketri says the roti is made of bird feed. Residents are trying to soften the bread made of the material, which is hard and unfit for consumption, to be given to children.

The Gaza Strip, home to about 2.3 million Palestinians, has been continuously attacked by Israeli forces since October 7, and the region has experienced a total blockade and has not been granted access to humanitarian aid.

Israel's continuing attacks and the full blockade has resulted in a narrowing of key food supplies in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people are now grappling with the problem of hunger.

Residents in the northern region of Gaza who are forced not to be fed by Israel face the threat of death from a malnourished disease, and about 600,000 Palestinians are at this risk, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced in November that everyone in Gaza had experienced food insecurity due to the Israeli blockade since October 7.

Despite a humanitarian agreement allowing aid entry into the northern region for one week from November 24, the Tel Aviv administration extended the lifting of all forms of aid deliveries to northern Gaza until early January following the humanitarian break in November.