Last month, the Israeli government launched a paid campaign on social media, claiming there is no famine in Gaza. It released a video showing food at restaurants and markets full of fruit and vegetables. “There is no famine in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie,” the video says.
It is true that today you can see markets and shops with full shelves in southern Gaza. You can see crates of cucumbers and tomatoes, sacks of flour, cartons of eggs and bottles of oil. There are even cafes and restaurants serving pizza, drinks and improvised desserts made from whatever the market offers.
From a distance, these places look almost ordinary, like an attempt to preserve fragments of normal life. But in reality, these are places far out of reach. Their prices are astronomical, and even those who can afford them face another barrier: the cash crisis.
The few people who still have money in bank accounts have to pay a commission of 50 percent to withdraw cash. Banknotes are often so worn out that shops and cafes refuse to accept them. Thus, only a tiny, privileged minority can still sit at a cafe table and sip a coffee for $9 or have a small pizza for $18 while the rest of us can only watch.
The situation is similar at the market. Most people who pass by full stands do not pick up a bag of tomatoes or a tray of eggs. They only look, sometimes lingering in silence, sometimes moving on quickly with hollow eyes. For the majority, these goods are visible but untouchable, mocking in their abundance and hurtful in their unaffordability.
This is the paradox of hunger in Gaza: Food is available in certain places, but it is out of reach. I still remember how in early August cheese and sugar briefly returned to the market after not being seen for months. Israel had just started letting in commercial trucks into Gaza instead of aid.
I cannot describe the sudden surge of joy that rushed through me at the sight of them. I hadn’t seen cheese in so long that even its shape looked strange to me. For a fleeting moment, I felt something I hadn’t dared to feel in months: excitement.
That morning, I had woken up dizzy from hunger. I had already lost more than 10kg (22lb) in just three months, and my body often trembled from weakness. But the sight of sugar and cheese on those shelves lit up a corner of my heart. Maybe, I thought, things would change now. Maybe the blockade was easing. Maybe we could begin to live again.
But when I asked the price, my heart sank. It was absurd. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so cruel. A single kilo (2.2lb) of sugar cost $70 – more than some families’ weekly income before the war. A block of cheese that could barely feed one family for breakfast cost $10.
Excerpted: ‘Here is the reason why markets in Gaza are ‘full’ while we starve’. Courtesy: Aljazeera.com
