A mother hears her baby crying for food, so she grabs an empty pot nearby.
“Everything is going to be okay,” she said softly, pretending to mix a meal to help her child feel better. The food will be ready in a little while.
Living in the war-torn Gaza, the woman knows that there is no food for her hungry baby, and she doesn’t know when there will be any.
Many Palestinians are scared they will starve because they are constantly being attacked. The World Health Organization (WHO) says 93% of people are dealing with serious hunger and not enough food, leading to high levels of malnutrition.
There isn’t enough food and water, and shelters are almost full. Without fuel, there is no electricity.
“There’s a big fight happening, everyone knows that. ” “But there is a big problem with hunger that the world hasn’t noticed,” said charity worker Yusuf Kalam in an interview with Metro. couk
He saw security points and aid trucks waiting for a long time at the Rafah Border in Egypt, near Gaza.
Yusuf, who works as a manager at Muslim Aid, says: “People in Gaza are unsure if they should wait for help or leave and risk their safety. ”
“Many people are gathering on the roads, in churches, and in schools because there is not enough shelter available. ”
“Many people in Gaza feel like they are not getting enough help and that the world has left them behind. ” But actually, help is available, it’s just not reaching the people who need it.
The Rafah border is not a big business area, it’s a place for people to walk across. The roads and buildings there are not ready for the many trucks and help for people in Gaza that are trying to arrive.
Since fighters from Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Gaza has been completely surrounded, and there is not enough water and electricity.
In other places, there were videos of food being set on fire, said to be done by Israeli soldiers.
Human Rights Watch found out that people in Gaza are being starved on purpose as a way of fighting.
Yusuf said that kids are going to bed without enough food to eat. Someone told me about a mother who had an empty pot. She kept stirring it until her hungry baby fell asleep.
There are other stories I’ve heard that are too scary to tell. Some individuals felt really upset after seeing something at the Rafah crossing. They are not sure if they should wait for help or take a dangerous journey to a border with their families.
I met a woman whose daughter is still in Gaza. The mother had to leave because she had a different passport, but her daughter did not have to leave. She can’t reach her because there are problems with the connection, and it’s making everyone unsure of what to do.
500 people are staying in a school that was only built for 100. Illnesses are spreading. When people don’t have enough food, their bodies become less able to fight off sickness.
MP said that the family stuck in a church in Gaza only have one can of corn left.
I heard that some people are pooping in the street because they have nowhere else to go. People are gathering on the streets.
Yusuf, who is 33 years old, had trouble sleeping when he came back to London after working for a few days at the border. His little girl woke up at night and he hugged her tightly in the dark.
“I suddenly remembered detailed pictures of the events in Gaza,” he remembers. I was trying to calm my crying daughter and put her to sleep in a quiet room, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the loud noises and scary things that parents in Gaza have to deal with every day. I feel really messed up and scared.
“I have never seen anything like the situation in Gaza in the ten years I have been working in the humanitarian sector. ” Please simplify the following text. “Rewrite this text in simple words:’”
Yusuf has to stop thinking about his feelings and respond to disasters at work.
This year, he went to Gaziantep after big earthquakes happened in southern Turkey and northern Syria. There, he said the scene looked like the end of the world. However, he said that in Gaza, things felt different. The disaster happened because of people, not nature.
“In Turkey, people didn’t feel as hopeless or abandoned,” he says. “What I’m seeing now is the very worst of people. ” I have never seen something so sad and hopeless. The fighting is getting worse and there are still so many people dying, it’s really shocking.
These are actual people who are in danger. They breathe the same air as us and their bodies are made of the same things.
Yusuf and his coworkers at Muslim Aid got help from people who gave donations. They used the donations to get food, water, and ambulances and bring them to Gaza.
British aid workers put life-saving medicine and equipment and room for a stretcher in vans. Each one had a clear sign that said ‘ambulance’ so they wouldn’t get involved in any fighting.
During his time in Egypt, Yusuf heard about people suffering, but he also heard about people being kind to each other. He heard about doctors using phone flashlights for surgeries, aid workers working non-stop, and donors giving all they could to help end suffering.
Muslim Aid got £20,000 from a man in the UK who donated all his money to help them.
“In the dark, when it feels like there’s no hope, Yusuf says you can see a ray of light. ”
‘That light is us – as people – helping each other. It’s easy to feel discouraged by what’s happening or the politics, but if you pay attention to the good news, you can feel hopeful.
NGO people meet in Westminster to ask for a ceasefire right away.
Humanitarian breaks have helped aid to reach Gaza, but there is still fighting since a weeklong stop in fighting ended on December 1, 2023.
Muslim Aid, Oxfam, and Amnesty International are asking for fighting to stop so that people can stop suffering. Aid workers want to find new ways to quickly feed the hungry people in Gaza.
The entire city has been ruined. Soon, people will ask what will happen next in Gaza. Yusuf is asking how we can help these people find new homes and rebuild their lives. He wants to know what that process will be like and when it will happen.
Right now, the most important thing is to make sure that people stay alive until we figure out the answers to those questions. We’ve seen 20,000 people die.
When do we decide that we have had enough.