‘I can barely do one story. I just feel dizzy’ – BBC’s Gaza freelance journalists tell of struggle for food

2 days ago Share Save Yolande Knell Middle East correspondent, Jerusalem Share Save

Anadolu via Getty Images Journalists are facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering

Three trusted freelance Palestinian journalists whom the BBC relies on for its Gaza coverage have shared how they are now struggling to feed their families and often go two days or more without eating. All of the men have kept their cameras running, sending us vital footage, even on days when their close relatives have been killed, they have lost their homes, or have been fleeing from Israeli military advances with their families. One was previously badly wounded by shrapnel from an Israeli bombing while on assignment. But he says the current time is “the hardest time I have lived through since I was born. It’s a huge crisis of suffering and deprivation.” Global food security experts have not yet classified the situation in Gaza as a famine, but UN agencies have warned of man-made, mass starvation taking hold. They have blamed Israel, which controls all supplies entering the Palestinian territory, but it has denied responsibility.

Reuters For many months, local journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza

We have agreed not to identify our colleagues by name out of consideration for their security. They tell us that not being able to provide for the youngest and most vulnerable of their loved ones is most difficult of all. “My son who has autism is unaware of what is going on around him. He doesn’t know that we are in a war and he doesn’t speak,” says one of our cameramen in Gaza City, who is a father of four. “In recent days, he’s so hungry that he’s started hitting his stomach with his hand to signal to us that he wants food.” Our youngest colleague, who is in southern Gaza, is the main breadwinner for his parents and siblings. “I am constantly wondering how to get food for my family,” he tells us. “My little sister, who’s 13, keeps on asking for food and water and we can’t get any for her. Any water we find will be contaminated.”

Reuters BBC News and the AFP, AP and Reuters news agencies are urging the Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza

The BBC has released a joint statement with other media organisations saying it is “desperately concerned” about the wellbeing of local freelance journalists that it works with in Gaza. “For many months, these independent journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering,” says the statement by the BBC and AFP, AP and Reuters news agencies. The current conditions make telling the story of what is happening even more challenging.

“I feel tired and exhausted all the time, to the point of dizziness and falling to the ground,” says a veteran journalist who now works with us in Gaza City and is looking after his mother, sisters, and five children aged two to 16. He says he has lost 30kg (4st 7lbs) in 21 months of war. “I used to complete most news reports with great speed, but now I am slow in finishing them due to my poor health and psychological state,” he tells us. “Delirium and fatigue accompanies me.” “I can’t describe the feeling,” says our southern Gaza cameraman. “My stomach twists in knots, and I have a headache, add to that being emaciated and weak. I used to work from 07:00 until 22:00 but now I can barely do one story. I just feel dizzy.” Recently, he collapsed during filming but later resumed his work.

Reuters Almost 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces during the war

While food shortages have been a constant issue during the war, previously those receiving salaries from outside could still buy basic supplies albeit at exorbitant prices on local markets. Now even those markets are largely empty. “I’ve reached the point of taking food from the charity kitchen. In recent days, this has meant my kids have been eating one meal a day – just limited foodstuffs like lentils, rice and pasta,” says the Gaza City journalist with four small children. Two of the men say they have taken to drinking water with a little salt to try to suppress their hunger. One says he can sometimes buy a 50g biscuit for his daily meal but this costs 30 shekels ($9; £6.60). Getting hold of money is an ordeal in itself. It now involves using money merchants. “If I need cash, it’s mostly not available, but when it is, it’s accompanied by a withdrawal fee of 45%,” explains one Gaza City cameraman. “That means that if I go to withdraw $1,000, I will get only $550. The whole process is exhausting and any vendors nowadays demand cash.” “The difficulty is because of the closure of the banks. These money transfers are another form of suffering after our hunger,” our colleague in southern Gaza adds.

Reuters BBC News, AFP, AP and Reuters say it is essential that adequate food supplies reach the people of Gaza

More than two million Palestinians in Gaza are facing a starvation crisis, with deaths from malnutrition rising by the day, according to the United Nations.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a group backed by Israel and the US, has been operating in Gaza since late May. It says that it has distributed 91 million meals, primarily in the form of food boxes.

While the BBC has been unable to see these boxes first-hand since Israel has blocked international journalists from entering Gaza, BBC Verify has examined photos and other information shared by the GHF and spoken to aid experts who have raised concerns about their nutritional value.

What’s in the boxes?

Videos have circulated online of Palestinians showing the contents of the boxes, but the GHF has only shared images of them this week.

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Two pictures posted on X show mostly dried food items that require water and fuel to cook, including pasta, chickpeas, lentils, and wheat flour. Also included is cooking oil, salt and tahini, or sesame paste.

[BBC]

The GHF has said these boxes also contain some ready-to-eat food, like halva bars – a popular snack made from blending tahini or sesame paste and sugar.

The organisation has provided us with a table of what it describes as a “benchmark” list of items in each box, with a calorie breakdown.

A typical box contains 42,500 calories, and that “each box feeds 5.5 people for 3.5 days”. according to the table.

[BBC]

It occasionally includes substitute items like tea, biscuits, and chocolate, and is also delivering potatoes and onions, but these are not included in the nutritional figures, the GHF has said.

‘Serious weaknesses’

An international aid development professor from the London School of Economics analysed the list provided by the GHF to BBC Verify and said that while it could deliver sufficient calories needed to survive, it had “serious weaknesses”.

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“In essence, this basket provides a full stomach but an empty diet,” Prof Stuart Gordon said. “The biggest flaw is what’s missing… This (is) very much a ‘first aid’ food basket, designed to stop the haemorrhaging effect that is acute hunger.”

“A diet like this over weeks would lead to ‘hidden hunger’, increasing the risk of diseases like anaemia and scurvy” he said.

The Israeli government has also released images of different items contained in a GHF box [X: cogatonline]

Dr Andrew Seal, an associate professor of international nutrition at the University College London, said the food boxes were deficient in calcium, iron, zinc, and vitamins C, D, B12, and K. He added there was also a lack of foods to suit young children.

“Prolonged consumption of these foods, even if they were made available in adequate amounts, would lead to a range of deficiencies and serious health problems,” he said.

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He added that unlike the GHF, agencies like the UN typically distribute food in bulk and supplement it with targeted nutrition for vulnerable groups. The World Food Programme (WFP) has said it also aims to deliver emergency supplies for young children and pregnant women.

The GHF did not respond to BBC Verify’s questions surrounding the advice it received about the nutritional contents of its aid boxes or whether it planned to address concerns raised by experts.

Gazans have posted video of the aid boxes they’ve received [TikTok/@user427554577]

For those who manage to get hold of a box, they still need water and fuel to cook the dried goods, despite the water crisis and severe fuel shortage facing Gaza.

The UN’s Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned this week that the water crisis in Gaza was rapidly deteriorating. It also warned that families have had to resort to unsafe and unhealthy cooking methods, such as using waste materials.

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The WFP said in May that official supplies of cooking gas stopped and that it was being sold on the black market at prices up to 4,000% higher than pre-conflict levels.

UN Secretary General António Guterres said this week Gazans were facing grave shortages of basic supplies and that malnutrition was “soaring”.

Almost one in three people in Gaza are going days without eating, the UN’s food aid programme has warned.

“Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment,” the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.

Additional reporting by Matt Murphy

[BBC]

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Gaza aid site offered a ‘women only’ day. It didn’t stop the killing

1 hour ago Share Save Emir Nader BBC News, Jerusalem Share Save

BBC Mary Sheikh al-Eid’s family arrived at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after learning she had been killed

The food distribution was announced in advance, like many before it, in a post on social media carrying an illustration of smiling Palestinians receiving boxes of aid. This time, however, the invitation shared by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was different, featuring illustrations of only women. “Tomorrow at our morning distribution at our location in the Saudi district, only women are welcome to come and receive a food box,” the GHF post said. “Men should avoid the site during this distribution.” Mary Sheikh al-Eid wanted to feed her seven children. Her husband had been killed earlier in the war and the family had been surviving on lentil soup for three weeks, said Mary’s sister Khawla, but the last week had been a struggle. “Her children and mine told us not to go,” Khawla told the BBC. “Mary told me she wanted to because it was a day for women and the numbers wouldn’t be big.”

GHF The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) announced the women-only aid distribution day on social media

GHF’s food aid distribution system has been marred by near-daily scenes of chaos and killing since it was implemented in May with Israeli and US support. Huge crowds are forced to walk long distances into Israeli military zones, entering fenced sites that are surrounded by private security contractors and Israeli troops. Palestinian men mostly take on the risk, jostling to secure a box of food for their family. For Gaza’s two million people, there are just four GHF distribution sites but typically no more than two open on any given day. On Thursday, the sisters Mary and Khawla set off early for the aid point in the southern Rafah area. By the time they arrived, the scene was already chaos. “There was a huge crowd of women and the place seemed out of control, they couldn’t offload and distribute the aid,” Khawla said. “They started spraying the women with pepper spray, then they brought stun grenades and started throwing them on the women to force them backwards.” The sisters got split up in the mayhem. Khawla’s clothes were full of pepper spray and so she called her sister, agreeing to meet at their brother’s house. Shortly after she called again, feeling something wasn’t right. “This time a stranger picked up, he told me the owner of the phone was shot and was being taken to the Red Cross [field hospital],” said Khawla. “I called again and this time I was told she was shot in the head. I ran like crazy and called again, but this time I was told the owner of this phone had been killed.”

Khawla Sheikh al-Eid (R) said her sister was shot after they had become separated at the aid site

Since the GHF aid system was established in late May, the UN says over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get aid mostly near GHF distribution sites, as well as near UN and other aid convoys. On Friday, one former US soldier who worked with the GHF said he had witnessed Israeli troops and security contractors firing on crowds. Anthony Aguilar told the BBC he had never seen such a level of “brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population”. Israel has previously said that its troops have fired “warning shots”, and that it was implementing “lessons learned”. It accuses Hamas of instigating chaos near the aid points and disputes the number of deaths reported.

Mary Sheikh al-Eid’s daughter, Warshazat (R), was comforted at Nasser hospital

Medics at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said Mary Sheikh al-Eid died from a bullet injury to the neck. She is one of two women known to have been killed on Thursday’s “women’s day”. The BBC also spoke to the family of the second woman who was killed, Khadija Abu Anza. One sister, Samah, who was with her said that they were travelling to a GHF aid site when an Israeli tank and troops arrived. From a distance of just metres, the troops first fired warning shots as they told them to move back, Samah said on Friday. “We started walking back and then she was hit by the bullet,” Samah said. “They shot her in the neck and she died immediately.” “I tried to carry her and her blood fell on me, a man helped me carry her to Nasser hospital. The aid point was opened right after they shot her and they let people go in.” In response to the BBC, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had “identified suspects who approached them, posing a threat to the troops” and “fired warning shots” early on Thursday, but added that it was unaware of casualties. It said the shots were fired ‘hundreds of meters away’ from the distribution site, before its opening hours. A spokesperson for the GHF said there were no incidents or fatalities near its site on Thursday. “Overall, the day was very successful, with a lot of mothers and daughters participating,” they added.

Reuters

Until May, UN agencies, other international organisations and charities provided most of the aid to Gaza’s population at 400 distribution sites throughout the territory. The introduction of the GHF has been criticised by many in the aid community as an attempt to undermine the previous humanitarian system and increase Israeli control over the distribution of food in Gaza, forcing people into dangerous military locations. The UN refuses to cooperate with the GHF system calling it unethical. In recent days, Israel’s control over food deliveries to Gaza has been widely condemned by many European governments and the aid groups. Israel says that it introduced the GHF system because Hamas was previously diverting and profiting from aid under the United Nations-led system, though it hasn’t provided evidence to show this happening on a systematic basis.

The UN says it has recorded the killing of more than 1,000 Palestinians seeking aid since late May

Malnutrition worsens in Gaza as aid agencies criticise Israeli aid air drop plan

Thomas Mackintosh

Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

Aid agencies have said today that Israel’s decision to allow air drops of food into Gaza is inadequate and a “grotesque distraction” that won’t end starvation in the Strip.

Israel announced earlier it will allow aid air drops by Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the coming days – but it’s not clear yet when those drops will begin. Israel has repeatedly insisted that there is no restriction on aid deliveries to Gaza.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry has reported an additional five deaths due to malnutrition today, bringing the total to 127 since the war began. That number includes 85 children.

Fears are rife within Gaza about the risks involved in air dropping aid. One man tells the BBC: “When aid is dropped from the air, it risks landing directly on tents, potentially causing serious harm, including injury or even death.”

Meanwhile, Palestinians struggle to source food for their families, with one mother saying they are “living with no food or drink, no food, no bread, not even water. We’re craving even water.”

We will shortly be pausing our coverage on the worsening malnutrition crisis in Gaza.

He went to get aid and didn’t come back – stories of people killed in Gaza

1 day ago Share Save Ethar Shalaby BBC News Arabic Share Save

Family handout Abdullah Jendeia had been searching for food when he was killed

A teenager who went looking for food, an eight-year-old girl living in a camp for displaced Palestinians, and a man who endured months of malnutrition are among those who have died in Gaza in the past week. On Thursday, the Hamas-run health ministry recorded two new deaths due to malnutrition in the past 24 hours, as aid agencies warned Israel’s siege of Gaza was causing “mass starvation” to spread across the territory. An Israeli government spokesman denied this, saying Hamas was to blame for creating a food shortage and hijacking aid. With the UN warning that humanitarian conditions in Gaza are breaking down at an “accelerating” pace, and the World Health Organization saying that at least 10% of Gazans are acutely malnourished, the BBC has been speaking to people in the territory about loved ones they’ve lost in the past week.

Abdullah Jendeia, aged 19

Nineteen-year-old Abdullah Omar Jendeia was killed on Sunday, 20 July, when he went out to find food, says his sister Nadreen. They had been staying in their mother’s damaged house in al-Sabra in central Gaza. “He was impatient to go and fetch some food that day,” Nadreen says. “I told him, ‘Just eat the few lentils we have left,’ but he refused.” She says that at 16:00 (13:00 GMT) Abdullah left the house to walk more than 5km (3.1 miles) north to an aid truck that comes weekly, to get a few kilogrammes of flour to feed the family. He was with two of his brothers and some in-laws. At about 23:00 that night, one of the brothers, Mahmoud, called Nadreen to tell her that while they were waiting by the aid truck Israeli soldiers had suddenly opened fire on them. They were in the Netzarim Corridor – a military zone cutting off the north of the Gaza Strip from the south.

Mahmoud told Nadreen that Abdullah had been killed and he and the other brother had been injured. “He was a joy to be around, kind-hearted and fun at the same time,” she says, recalling afternoon walks she and Abdullah used to take on the beach in Gaza when they were younger. “He loved football and sport.” She says Abdullah used to work with local grocers, helping to carry fruit and vegetables for them and “had dreams of opening a new business after the war”. In response, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was operating to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities and took feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm. It said that it could “better address your query if you were able to provide coordinates” for the location of the incident. Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency said Israeli fire had killed a total of 93 people and wounded dozens more across Gaza on that day, mainly near aid points. Speaking about one specific incident in northern Gaza, the Israeli military said troops fired warning shots at a crowd “to remove an immediate threat” but disputed the numbers killed.

Sela Mahmoud, 8

Family handout Sela Mahmoud had been staying with her mother and siblings at a camp for displaced Palestinians

Sela Mahmoud, eight, was killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning, her mother Alaa Shehada says. The little girl had been staying at a camp for displaced people in al-Shati in northern Gaza with her mother and two older sisters, aged 14 and 13, and younger brother, six. On Monday evening, Alaa says she and her 13-year-old daughter set out to the Zikim aid point, a couple of kilometres away, to get food, leaving the other three children behind. But at about 01:45 she heard the sound what she thought was shelling in the distance and immediately feared the worst. “I felt the strike in my heart. My intuition as a mother told me this strike reached my kids.” With the help of strangers, Alaa managed to phone her older daughter back at the camp who confirmed that they’d been struck and Sela killed. “My heart was broken,” says Alaa. The other two children survived but were seriously injured and are in Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital, she says. Alaa says Sela, who had been desperately hungry in her final days, loved spending time by the sea. Her last words to her mother were: “I want to eat a whole bowl of lentils until I’m full.” The Israel Defense Forces said that without being given co-ordinates, it could not comment on the incident. It says it takes “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.

Ahmed Alhasant, age 41

Family handout Ahmed had been a football fan who installed television satellites

Ahmed Alhasant, 41, died on Tuesday, 22 July. His brother, Yehia Alhasant, says “malnutrition killed him – day after day, he was getting more and more poorly”. Yehia says his brother started to become unwell after Israel imposed a blockade of aid into Gaza in March. Since May, Israel has been allowing some aid into the territory, but aid groups say this is nowhere near enough. For three months, Ahmed, who was also diabetic, was not able to get enough food or drink, relying on bits of bread and occasionally canned food, says Yehia. As a result, his weight plummeted from 80kg (12 stone 8lbs ) to 35kg and his health rapidly deteriorated, Yehia says. “His speech was slurred and sometimes we could hardly understand him,” Yehia says. Ahmed’s cousin, Refaat Alhasant, says the family took him to hospital, but “they would tell us ‘he needs food not medicines’. So we took him back home.” Yehia says Ahmed, who used to install television satellites and was a football fan, “passed away peacefully” at his home in the city of Deir al-Balah in the centre of Gaza. “He had a strong personality and was one of the kindest people you could ever meet,” Yehia added.

Mohamed Kullab, 29

Family handout Mohamed Kullab was described by his brother-in-law as someone who was ‘full of life’