ActionAid Ireland’s colleagues and partners are reporting hellish conditions in Gaza as bombing intensifies and supplies run out. Hundreds of people have been killed and nearly 100,000 have been displaced in the last few days alone as the Israeli military further intensifies its attacks and expands its ground operation.
Karol Balfe, ActionAid Ireland CEO said: “There are simply no words to describe the horror people in Gaza are living through right now, with the entire strip under intense attack and virtually no food or other essentials available. Every single day the news from our colleagues and partners in Gaza gets more unbearable.”
Staff at ActionAid Ireland’s partner organisation WEFAQ have been forced to evacuate their office and homes in Deir Al-Balah, but with near-constant attacks across the entirety of the strip and nearly 80% of the territory under evacuation orders, there is nowhere safe for them to go.
ActionAid’s emergency response manager in Gaza, Alaa, who was also forcibly displaced from his home in Deir Al-Balah, said people were fleeing with just the clothes on their backs while hungry and exhausted.
“Gaza is hell on the earth,” he said. “We live under non-stop bombing along with starvation…The situation is beyond impossible.”
After almost three months of a total blockade on any food or supplies entering, nearly everyone in Gaza is going hungry. One staff member at WEFAQ told ActionAid that she and her children had not had anything to eat for three days now: the last meal they ate was a single loaf of bread which they divided up between them. She said she knew of three pregnant women who had experienced miscarriages in the last few days, likely as a result of the dire lack of food.
There is hardly any food left in the markets, and the items that are available are unaffordable, with a single kilo of flour currently costing 130 shekels [around £27.50], according to our colleagues in Gaza.
On Sunday, the Israeli authorities announced they would begin to allow a very limited amount of aid into Gaza. Ms Balfe said: “Let us be clear: a handful of deliveries will do next to nothing to alleviate the hunger of an entire population which has been deliberately starved for more than 11 weeks now. This is an utterly insufficient step that amounts to little more than a PR stunt as, in Gaza, people continue to go without the basic essentials needed to sustain life: as of Wednesday morning, while some trucks had entered the territory, no aid had yet been distributed, according to the UN.”
Ms Balfe continued:
“The stakes could not be higher. Every single one of the 2.1million people inside Gaza is experiencing acute food insecurity, according to the IPC, while the UN says 14,000 babies are at risk of imminent death. This unconscionable siege must end now. All border crossings into Gaza must be opened immediately. Aid must be allowed to enter at scale if there is to be any hope of halting a full-blown famine in its tracks.”
Ms Balfe said: “As the Israeli authorities continue to relentlessly bomb and starve the population, while openly announcing plans to take control of Gaza, it’s time for world leaders to take the tangible action needed to apply real pressure on the Israeli government to change course. That includes a full arms embargo and targeted sanctions. What more will it take for them to act? She added: “The indefensible siege on Gaza is not over: it must be lifted and the war must end now, for good. There is no more time to waste.”
