Onions cost more than week’s wages in Gaza

Like all children of Gaza, Hala Yahya Abu Saleem, aged 16, wakes up at dawn to queue for bread, water and gas.

The teenager, who lives in a ‘scorching’ tent with eight family members in the city of Deir al Balah, spends at least half a day trying to gather food for the minimum needs.

Hala stressed that no nourishing food is available ‘to strengthen our frail bodies,’ adding: ‘Sometimes our food consists of canned goods that we receive at times and buy at others.

‘Occasionally, we witness a drop in vegetable prices, but it is for a short period.’

For most families in the besieged Palestinian territory, food prices are a matter of survival amid Israel’s ‘intentional and targeted’ starvation campaign, which has resulted in famine across Gaza.

Data from Christian Aid shows the price of vegetables in the north of the Strip has reached exorbitant levels in the last year.

Onions are on sale for up to 400 times their pre-war price at £82 a kilo, equivalent to eight times the average daily wage in Gaza before the conflict.

A kilogram of tomatoes, which cost between 0.20 and 0.40 pence before October 7 is now £49.20.

Eggs – one of the few protein foods still available in the north – cost £30 a dozen.

While the price of some staples like bread and flour has fallen since March, nearly all remain high in the north along with cooking oil, which is £10 a litre.

Cucumbers, for example, cost 60 times more per kilo at the end of last month than in the start of October 2023.

Aubergines and lemons are 40 times more, while green beans, strawberries, dates and chicken are no longer available on the markets.

With most families no longer able to work, and savings fast running out, mothers told the UK charity’s partner in Gaza that they go without food so their children can eat.

One of them, Thikrayat Al-Masuabi, said that so far, she has lost 30 kilograms of weight as famine has spread throughout Gaza.

‘We often survive on one meal per day, if we can find one,’ the 42-year-old said.

‘My children cry and fall asleep hungry, and I spend nights crying because I am helpless and heart-wrenched as their tears of hunger feel like a knife cutting through me, even though I always prioritised them over myself.’

Meanwhile, Nisreen Al-Aklouk said that since the war began her family has had to eat animal feed to stave off hunger.

This led to her contracting several illnesses, and 20 kilograms of weight loss.

The 50-year-old added: Prices are very high; my children see the goods available in the market, but I cannot afford to buy them.

‘The pains of war grow within me, and the pain of their hunger is so triggering that it squeezes my heart every night.’

In July, a group of independent experts called Israel’s starvation campaign against the Palestinian people ‘intentional and targeted’.

They warned that the recent deaths of more children due to malnutrition has left them with no doubt that famine has spread across the entire territory.

‘Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on May 30, 2024, and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on June 1, 2024, at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah,’ they said in a statement distributed by the United Nations.

‘Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3, 2024, in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis.’

They stressed that all three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare.

Food insecurity has been one of most fraught issues of the war that began after Hamas’ October 7 massacre in Israel last year, in which more than 1,000 people were killed.

Since then, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government increased the obstruction of aid from 34% in 2023 to 83% in 2024.

UN and Israeli government data shows that in September, deliveries of food and aid sank to their lowest in seven months.

Israel’s military humanitarian unit, Cogat, which oversees all aid and commercial shipments to Gaza, confirmed that no UN-chartered convoy has moved from Jordan to Gaza since September 19, but a spokesperson said Israel was not blocking goods.

In addition to the blockade, Christian Aid was told that some merchants are using ‘dirty’ tricks such as concealing goods in order to drive up prices.

One of the charity’s consultants in Gaza, whose family is trapped in the territory, said: ‘As well as the scarcity of products coming into Gaza and very low quantities of vegetables being grown locally, the cost of transporting goods from one area to another is very high because there is no fuel.

‘Some merchants are also trying to play dirty games by hiding products.

‘They are buying them at reasonable prices, keeping them in their stores and then selling them at very high prices and in limited quantities.

‘Because there is no law or monitoring process to control the local markets, they are mainly governed by greedy merchants.’

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