As hunger worsens in Gaza, one man wants to help local farmers feed families

• Ahmed Sourani of Gaza came to the UN climate summit to accept a $1 million prize for his nonprofit.
• He said the money will go to emergency food aid and rebuilding small farms when the war ends.
• Most Gazans struggled to find food before the war, which has exacerbated hunger and water scarcity.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Ahmed Sourani was physically in Dubai, but his mind was in Gaza.

The founder of a nonprofit that promotes local food production and women-owned businesses traveled to this year's UN climate summit to accept a $1 million sustainability prize from the United Arab Emirates.

Back home, his wife, children, and grandchildren were in the south of Gaza in shelters, having fled from the northern part of the strip that's largely been reduced to rubble by the Israeli military's bombardments.

"We are praying all the time for a lasting ceasefire," Sourani, founder and general coordinator of Gaza Urban and Periurban Agriculture Platform, told Business Insider over Zoom. "That's our most important wish."

The Israel-Hamas war erupted after the militant group Hamas and other Palestinian fighters attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 civilians, according to Israeli authorities. Israel has responded with a now two-month-long air and ground campaign that has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians and many of them children, according to Gazan health officials.

Israel has pushed into southern Gaza, where millions of residents were previously told to evacuate. Hospitals, refugee camps, and schools have all been hit by bombing, and Gazans are in desperate need of food, water, and shelter, humanitarian groups say.

"Nowhere is safe in Gaza," United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said. He invoked a rarely used power, known as Article 99, to call on the 15-member UN Security Council to vote for a ceasefire. But the US for the third time blocked the resolution on Friday, the sole veto. The UK abstained and 13 other countries voted in favor.

Even before the war, the majority of Gazans struggled to find food on a daily basis and relied on aid distributed by the UN, Sourani said. Most farming in the densely populated strip is done on small plots in urban areas or just outside the cities.

Israel has maintained tight control over the territory through a land, air, and sea blockade since 2007, after Hamas was elected to power, while Egypt controls the southern border. Israel provides half of the Gaza Strip's electricity and there are restrictions on the movement of people and goods.

Food insecurity is a constant problem in Gaza

Sourani said the food insecurity crisis is why he founded the Gaza Urban and Periurban Agriculture Platform six years ago. The nonprofit has helped expand access to local food and boost incomes for family farmers, particularly women.

Before the war, there were about 3,000 micro-agricultural businesses led by women, such as crop and animal production and food processing, Sourani said. The nonprofit works on developing more markets in grocery stores and malls, securing quality control certificates for their products, and providing opportunities for women to network and speak with policymakers.

"We need to help women restore their enterprises and the thousands of families who are in need of food, especially those who are displaced in the shelters," Sourani said.

He estimated that at least 50% of those enterprises have been completely or partially destroyed during the war, with hundreds of millions of dollars lost.

Sourani said it was a difficult decision to leave Gaza to accept the Zayed Sustainability Prize, but he had the support of his family and help from the UAE and its humanitarian arm, the Emirates Red Crescent, to get to Dubai.

He felt it was important to share the mission of the Gaza Urban and Periurban Agriculture Platform and be a voice for Palestine at the UN summit attended by more than 100,000 world leaders, foreign diplomats, corporate executives, reporters, and activists.

Palestine can speak at UN meetings, but has non-member observer status and therefore can't vote on resolutions — including on the war in Gaza.

Protests spill into the UN summit in Dubai

The war has at times spilled into the UN climate summit, known as COP28, including during the first days as world leaders arrived to give speeches. The Iranian delegation left Dubai in protest of Israel's presence. On Saturday, hundreds of climate activists, many wearing the black and white checkered keffiyeh and holding up watermelon signs that are both symbols of Palestinians, marched through Expo City where the summit is being hosted. They called for a ceasefire and an end to Israel's occupation of Palestine.

"We cannot talk about climate change in isolation from the humanitarian tragedies unfolding around us," Jordanian King Abdullah II said during his speech at the start of COP28. "The massive destruction of war makes the environmental threats of water scarcity and food insecurity even more severe."

Palestinians have little say over land and water resources, Sourani said, which is why climate justice is so important.

He said the prize money awarded to the Gaza Urban and Periurban Agriculture Platform will be used for emergency response to help distribute food aid to the 1.9 million Gazans – or 85% of the population – who've been displaced by the war and to help women restore their businesses when the war is over.

"The world is thirsty for real and just peace," Sourani said.