Amid Starvation, People in Gaza Are Choosing Death at Home Over Displacement
Only two bags of infested flour are left in my house. I interviewed others also facing starvation and ground invasion.
By Shahad Ali , Truthout
Published May 13, 2025
Hamdi Hammoda prepares lentil soup on May 11, 2025. Lentils are now the only food left in his home in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza.
Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid has entered its third month, pushed Gaza to the grip of starvation. Food supplies are dwindling rapidly, shops are stripped bare — even of the most basic essentials – and bakeries have shut down. Finding anything to quiet our growling stomachs has become a daily struggle, especially as the prices of basic food supplies continue to soar. Flour, one of the most essential and irreplaceable ingredients in our diet, has become nearly impossible to obtain: a single bag now costs $300, far beyond what most families can afford.
In our home, there is no food left — only two bags of flour that we managed to store for these dark days, both spoiled and infested with worms and insects. We ration the flour carefully, hoping it will last as long as possible. Each person gets just two small loaves of bread a day, with nothing to eat alongside them Though the bread tastes awful and causes us diarrhea or stomach cramps, we still consider ourselves among the “lucky” ones — simply because we can still eat bread.
Across the Gaza Strip, many families have no flour left; for them, bread has become a forgotten luxury. In desperation, they turned to rice and lentils, which can be cheaper than flour, even though the price of a single kilogram of rice is currently $12, and the price of a kilogram of lentils has at times been fluctuating as high as $10. Many families began grinding them into flour to make makeshift bread. But as demand surged, even these basic staples began to vanish completely from the markets.
Amid our desperate suffering with daily bombardment and this suffocating starvation — one that drains our strength and leaves us frail, dizzy and too exhausted to carry out even the simplest tasks — on May 5 we were jolted by devastating news: the Israeli security cabinet had approved a new plan to expand the military operation in Gaza. Israel’s new plan aims once again to depopulate the north of its residents under the looming threat of bloody invasions, forcing people to flee to the south. Unlike in recent months, under the plan, the Israeli military would not withdraw after the ground operation; instead, it would remain in any area it seizes, preventing Palestinians from returning. According to reports from Israeli officials, the plan is meant to be implemented after Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East ends; even as rhetoric around potential negotiations has picked up, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that the preparations for the increased escalation will continue.
https://truthout.org/articles/amid-starvation-people-in-gaza-are-choosing-death-at-home-over-displacement/
And in this country nobody is allowed to speak on behalf of the Palestinians. 