Al Jazeera contributor describes what it is like to slowly starve alongside her family while struggling to survive under Israel’s relentless bombardment. Khan Younis, Gaza – What does it mean to be hungry for months? In Gaza, where more than 43,000 of us have been killed by Israel’s bombardment and ground invasions – and many more thousands are lost, feared dead, under the rubble – we have been punished with hunger now for more than a year. In war, survival becomes the only focus, and hunger is a constant reminder of that.
We have been forced to be hungry – we did not choose this. We’re struggling to survive under Israeli bombardment , but we’re failing. It has become clear to us that the Israeli army’s goal is to spread famine across the entire Gaza Strip , from north to south.
The fear of hunger has been a constant since the beginning. At the moment, we live on one meal a day. How I have come to hate the question: “What can we eat?” The cheese we eat for breakfast is the same cheese we eat for dinner.
I have developed a loathing for this type of cheese, but it is the only option we have. My sister and mother wake up every morning and go to the market looking for any food they can find for my sister’s children, for my brother who goes to work, or for my mother who needs to eat to take her medicine. They generally return downcast because there is nothing in the market.
We used to think that maybe it was just our neighbourhood that had no food, so we wo.
