GAZA — Berdepan dengan kekurangan makanan utama selepas hampir 14 bulan perang, rakyat Palestin menggambarkan hari yang panjang memburu tepung dan roti di Semenanjung Gaza dilanda konflik.
Setiap pagi orang ramai berkumpul di luar beberapa kedai roti yang dibuka di wilayah Palestin, ketika orang ramai berusaha untuk mendapatkan sekantong roti di tempat pengedaran.
Sejak meletusnya perang di Gaza tahun lalu, badan amal dan pertubuhan bantuan antarabangsa telah berulang kali memberi amaran tentang tahap krisis kelaparan bagi hampir dua juta orang.
Penilaian disokong Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (PBB) bulan lalu memberi amaran tentang kebuluran yang melanda di utara Semenanjung Gaza di tengah-tengah bantuan makanan yang hampir terhenti selepas Israel melancarkan serangan di kawasan itu.
Barangan keperluan seperti air, hasil segar dan ubat-ubatan juga terhad.
Penduduk Gaza di seluruh wilayah telah memberitahu AFP dalam beberapa bulan kebelakangan ini bagaimana mereka bangun pada waktu fajar hanya untuk memastikan mereka boleh mendapatkan sedikit tepung atau roti, dengan ketersediaan semasa mencecah paras terendah sepanjang masa.
Di bandar selatan Khan Yunis, jurugambar AFP melihat berpuluh-puluh orang di tempat pengedaran, badan bertindih antara satu sama lain.
Di atas kepala masing-masing, semua orang cuba menghulurkan tangan sejauh mungkin untuk meraih roti bulat.
Seorang kanak-kanak kecil, mukanya dipenuhi air mata, memerah duit syiling di antara jari-jarinya ketika dia melalui kerumunan orang dewasa.
“Saya berjalan kira-kira lapan kilometer (lima batu) untuk mendapatkan roti,” kata Hatem Kullab, seorang pelarian Palestin yang tinggal di kawasan kejiranan khemah sementara, kepada AFP.
Ia adalah di tengah-tengah salah satu daripada kerumunan ini bahawa dua wanita dan seorang kanak-kanak telah mati dipijak dalam rempuhan di sebuah kedai roti di bandar Gaza tengah Deir el-Balah pada Jumaat.
“Bagi mendapatkan sebuku roti, anda memerlukan lapan hingga 10 jam sehari penuh,” kata abang kepada salah seorang wanita yang terbunuh, menggambarkan pengalaman pahit kakaknya ketika dia cuba mendapatkan roti untuk memberi makan kepada 10 ahli keluarga.
“Penderitaan yang dilalui kakak saya dialami oleh semua rakyat Palestin,” kata Jameel Fayyad kepada AFP, mengkritik apa yang disifatkannya sebagai pengurusan kedai roti yang lemah.
Kemarahan Fayyad sebahagian besarnya ditujukan kepada Israel, tetapi dia juga menyalahkan Program Makanan Sedunia (WFP) dan “peniaga yang ingin membuat wang di belakang orang.”
Penduduk Palestin dari Semenanjung Gaza memberitahu wartawan AFP bahawa adalah amat sukar untuk mencari beg tepung seberat 50 kilogram (110 paun) yang akan bertahan beberapa minggu sebelum perang.
“Tiada tepung, tiada makanan, tiada sayur-sayuran di pasar,” kata Nasser Al-Shawa, 56, yang seperti kebanyakan penduduk, terpaksa meninggalkan rumahnya kerana pengeboman dan tinggal bersama anak-anak dan cucunya di tengah Gaza.
Shawa, yang kini tinggal di rumah rakannya di Deir el-Balah, berkata beg seberat 50 kilogram berharga antara 500 dan 700 shekel ($137 dan $192). Sebelum perang, harganya sekitar 100 shekel.
Di Gaza di mana lebih separuh daripada bangunan telah musnah, pengeluaran hampir terhenti. Kilang tepung, gudang menyimpan tepung dan kedai roti industri tidak dapat berfungsi kerana ia telah rosak teruk akibat serangan.
Bantuan kemanusiaan semakin mengalir tetapi kumpulan bantuan telah berulang kali menyelar banyak kekangan dikenakan ke atas mereka oleh Israel, yang dinafikan negara itu.
Dalam tamparan terbaharu, agensi PBB yang menyokong pelarian Palestin (UNRWA) mengumumkan pada Ahad ia menghentikan penghantaran bantuan ke Gaza melalui titik lintasan utama dengan Israel.
UNRWA berkata penghantaran telah menjadi mustahil, sebahagiannya disebabkan oleh rompakan oleh kumpulan samseng.
Bagi Layla Hamad, yang tinggal di dalam khemah bersama suami dan tujuh anaknya di Al-Mawasi di selatan Gaza, keputusan UNRWA adalah “seperti peluru di kepala.”
Dia berkata keluarganya kerap menerima “kuantiti kecil” tepung daripada UNRWA.
“Setiap hari, saya fikir kita tidak akan bertahan, sama ada kerana kita akan dibunuh oleh pengeboman Israel atau kelaparan,” katanya. “Tiada pilihan ketiga.”
Majoriti syarikat swasta yang dimiliki Israel pada masa lalu membenarkan membawa masuk makanan ke Gaza berkata mereka tidak lagi mampu berbuat demikian.
Peperangan di Gaza meletus selepas serangan Hamas pada 7 Oktober 2023, ke atas Israel selatan, yang mengakibatkan kematian 1,208 orang, kebanyakannya orang awam, menurut pengiraan AFP berdasarkan data rasmi.
Kempen ketenteraan balas dendam Israel di Gaza telah membunuh sekurang-kurangnya 44,502 kematian, juga kebanyakan orang awam, menurut data daripada kementerian kesihatan Gaza dikendalikan Hamas yang dianggap PBB boleh dipercayai.
AN-AFP
Gazans walk miles for bread and flour amid war shortages
GAZA — Faced with major food shortages after nearly 14 months of war, Palestinians describe long days hunting for flour and bread in the conflict-ravaged Gaza Strip.
Every morning crowds form outside the few bakeries open in the Palestinian territory, as people desperately try to get a bag of bread at distribution points.
Since the outbreak of war in Gaza last year, charities and international aid organizations have repeatedly warned of crisis levels of hunger for nearly two million people.
A United Nations-backed assessment last month warned of famine looming in the northern Gaza Strip amid a near-halt in food aid after Israel launched an offensive in the area.
Essential goods like water, fresh produce and medicines are also scarce.
Gazans across the territory have told AFP in recent months how they wake up at the crack of dawn just to ensure they can get some flour or bread, with current availability reaching an all-time low.
In the southern city of Khan Yunis, AFP photographers saw dozens of people at a distribution point, bodies pressed against each other.
Over each other’s heads, everyone tries to reach out as far as possible to grab the round bread.
A small child, her face covered in tears, squeezes a coin between her fingers as she makes her way through the crowd of adults.
“I walked about eight kilometers (five miles) to get bread,” Hatem Kullab, a displaced Palestinian living in a neighborhood of makeshift tents, told AFP.
It was in the middle of one of these crowds that two women and a child were trampled to death in a stampede at a bakery in the central Gazan city of Deir el-Balah Friday.
“To get a loaf of bread you need a whole day of eight to 10 hours,” said the brother of one of the women killed, describing his sister’s ordeal as she tried to get bread to feed 10 family members.
“The suffering that my sister went through is suffered by all the Palestinian people,” Jameel Fayyad told AFP, criticizing what he described as poor management of the bakeries.
Fayyad’s anger was largely directed at Israel, but he also blamed the World Food Programme (WFP) and “traders who want to make money on the backs of people.”
Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip told AFP journalists that it is extremely difficult to find the 50-kilogram (110 pounds) bags of flour that would last them several weeks before the war.
“There is no flour, no food, no vegetables in the markets,” Nasser Al-Shawa, 56, said, who, like most residents, was forced to leave his home because of the bombings and lives with his children and grandchildren in central Gaza.
Shawa, who now lives in a friend’s house in Deir el-Balah, says a 50-kilogram bag costs between 500 and 700 shekels ($137 and $192).
Before the war, it cost around 100 shekels.
Inside Gaza where more than half of the buildings have been destroyed, the production is at an almost complete standstill. Flour mills, warehouses storing flour and industrial bakeries are unable to function because they have been so heavily damaged by strikes.
Humanitarian aid is trickling in but aid groups have repeatedly slammed the many constraints imposed on them by Israel, which the country denies.
In the latest blow, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced Sunday it was halting aid deliveries to Gaza via a key crossing point with Israel.
UNRWA said delivery had become impossible, partly due to looting by gangs.
For Layla Hamad, who lives in a tent with her husband and seven children in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi, UNRWA’s decision was “like a bullet to the head.”
She said her family had regularly received “a small quantity” of flour from UNRWA.
“Every day, I think we will not survive, either because we will be killed by Israeli bombing or by hunger,” she said. “There is no third option.”
The majority of private companies that Israel had in the past allowed to bring in food to Gaza say they are no longer able to do so.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,502 deaths, also mostly civilians, according to data from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
AN-AFP