GAZA: Itimad Al-Qanou, a Palestinian mother struggling to feed her seven children, feels abandoned by everyone.
She sometimes feels that death is the best way to end her family’s suffering after a year of war that has turned Gaza into a bombed-out wasteland gripped by hunger.
“Let them drop a nuclear bomb and end it. We don’t want this life we’re living; we are dying slowly. Have mercy on us. Look at these children,” said the mother of three boys and four girls aged between eight and 18.
Children in their town of Deir Al-Balah crowd at a charity site with empty pots, desperate for nourishment. Aid workers distribute lentil soup from a pot. But it is never enough to stave off hunger and ease widespread panic.
Qanou says her family faces the Israeli airstrikes that have killed tens of thousands of people and flattened much of Gaza on the one side, and hunger on the other.
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid were allowed through the Erez crossing into northern Gaza on Monday.
The US will decide this week on whether Israel has made progress toward improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and how Washington will respond.
Global food security experts said there is a “strong likelihood” that famine is imminent in parts of northern Gaza as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas militants there.
In response to the famine warning, the head of the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon.
Aside from the hunger, Gazans say they have no place to go that is safe after repeated evacuations left them living in tent encampments until they need to move again to escape more strikes.
Some say their plight is even worse than the 1948 “Nakba” or “Catastrophe” when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes.
With the war in Gaza now in its 14th month, Israel is focusing its operations in the north and centre in what it says is a campaign to stop Hamas militants waging attacks and to prevent them from regrouping.
