The perilous journey for Palestinians to get food in Gaza : NPR

Editor's note: Anas Baba is NPR's producer in the Gaza Strip. His report is a rare account by a journalist inside a new food distribution site that the United States and Israel helped establish in the Palestinian territory. Some of the images in this story are graphic.

NEAR THE NETZARIM CORRIDOR, Gaza Strip —  What does it take to get food today in Gaza? It involves a perilous journey that I took myself.

I faced Israeli military fire, private U.S. contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations, and masked thieves — to get food from a group supported by the U.S. and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF.

Every day since the group began offering food on May 26, thousands of hungry Palestinians seeking food at these sites have been wounded and hundreds have been killed by Israeli military fire, according to Gaza health officials and international medical teams in Gaza. Many others have returned empty-handed after crowds grabbed all the food.

This is the story of what I witnessed from inside what GHF calls a “Secure Distribution Site.”

The United Nations calls the food program a “death trap.”

Why I took the risk to get food from the distribution site

I have lost a third of my body weight after nearly 21 months of war in Gaza.

Months of an Israeli ban on food entering Gaza, and the current strict controls on food distribution, have fueled widespread hunger. Gaza health officials have reported scores of children who died of malnutrition.

People are pale and weak. They walk on the street supporting themselves by grabbing onto walls and fences, or they walk together in groups to support each other. Women and children faint in the street.

In recent months, I have eaten one small meal a day, rationing my own stock. Three weeks ago, I ran out of the basics — flour, lentils, cooking oil.

Street vendors sell items with skyrocketing prices I can no longer afford. Two pounds of potatoes cost around $100. I began buying watermelon peels and spoiled potatoes to pickle them.

 So we had only one choice: going to get food from GHF. But since day one, we have witnessed one thing that made all of us terrified: that every single day people are getting killed when they go to pick up food from GHF sites.

But hunger is a little bit of an addiction. Once it's controlling your own mind, you cannot think straight. Once you feel that your stomach, your brain, your body, are craving something, you will not be afraid of anything. You will do anything to get food.

That's why on Monday evening, June 23, my cousin and I left Gaza City and walked south along the coast for hours to risk trying to get food at a GHF site in central Gaza.

Packing empty sacks and knives for the journey

We packed a small backpack with water, bandages and a first aid kit. Others tuck an empty sack under their pants' belt on one hip, and on the other, a knife, to protect themselves from looters and bandits, as hunger spreads lawlessness throughout Gaza.

Around midnight, large crowds began to gather along a wide road leading to the food site, waiting for some kind of sign that it is open. To reach the food site from that road, you have to pass through a military area near the Netzarim corridor, an Israeli military zone that during most times is a no-go zone for Palestinians. Crossing through the military zone before the food site is open draws Israeli military fire.

GHF doesn't have fixed opening hours. It opens and closes the site often within minutes. Those who get there first get to grab the most food before it quickly runs out. Many edge to the front of the crowd before the site opens, despite the risk of Israeli soldiers perceiving them as a threat.

At 1:30 a.m. on June 24, a car raced down the road with food tied to its roof. The passengers yelled: GHF is open!

Crowds began running down the road toward the site, as cars and motorcycles raced each other. I saw people get crushed underneath cars.

The crowd dodged bullets

When we reached closer to the site, we were surprised to find an Israeli tank. It had not yet withdrawn. The crowd was wrong: the food site was not yet open.

Every single person started to retreat and run. The tank immediately opened fire. My cousin and I threw ourselves to the ground. I heard the gunshots and people screaming that were injured. Others cried out: “My brother died,” “my friend died.”

By now it was 1:48 a.m. Gunfire continued. It was pitch black. And the crowds were still waiting.

At 2 a.m. the gunfire stopped. We took it as a sign that the site had opened. I ran with the crowds toward the food distribution site, stepping over bodies.

In a statement, the Israeli military said people had gathered adjacent to Israeli IDF troops. “Reports of injured individuals as a result of IDF fire in the area were received. The details are under review,” it said.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted anonymous soldiers who said they were ordered to deliberately open fire at unarmed crowds on their way to the food sites. Israeli leaders denied the allegations, which NPR has not been able to independently confirm.

A mother guards her food with a knife in each hand

The food site was finally open.

I watched hundreds of people tear down a fence surrounding the site, trampling over it to reach boxes of food sitting on wooden pallets. I grabbed my cellphone and started to document the scene.

Thousands of people — a human blender — were swirling around the food boxes, fighting each other to take as much food as possible.

A woman in her 40s, sweaty and with an angry face, held a knife in each hand, with her young son by her side. She was screaming at everyone: do not touch my son or the food.

Law and order had totally vanished. It was the law of the jungle.

Getting food in Gaza didn't used to be a free-for-all

For most of the war, hundreds of aid distribution centers across Gaza would provide flour and basics. U.N. agencies would send a text message when it was your turn to pick up food, you waited hours in line, and everyone received their share.

Israel and the U.S. accused Hamas of diverting that aid, so they set up the GHF, saying it would keep Hamas away. But at the GHF site, I saw people I am certain were Hamas members, based on their dress, taking food for their families.

As I was filming, people came to me and said: look at your forehead. There were three green laser dots on my head: private armed U.S. contractors who were guarding the site were pointing their weapons at my head. One spoke through a loudspeaker, in English: “No filming allowed.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation defended its activities

In a detailed email, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation responded to this reporting.

It said it understood concerns that the unpredictable opening times of its food sites could expose Palestinians to Israeli gunfire while approaching the sites.

But GHF asserted that it was seeking to prevent crowd surges. The group said it had urged the Israeli military to do more to ensure safe access, and the military said it has opened new roads and created new signage.

GHF said it is impossible to screen for individuals affiliated with Hamas, but said it was preventing Hamas from controlling the flow of aid. It said it prohibits Palestinians from filming U.S. contractors at the site because they have faced online threats.

GHF went on to say that Hamas militants have killed and threatened Palestinians working with the group. Hamas militants have also killed and wounded Palestinians en route to get food at their sites, GHF said in the email to NPR.

GHF says two private U.S. contractors working at another one of its food distribution sites were injured Saturday when two people threw grenades at them.

A group of 170 human rights and aid organizations called for this food distribution system to end.

Masked thieves stole food

At the distribution site, I pushed people aside and grabbed whatever food I found tossed on the ground under torn cardboard boxes: cooking oil, biscuits, a bag of rice that had been torn open and was mixed with sand from the ground. I didn't care. It's food. I can wash it.

My cousin got trampled on the ground by the crowds. I helped pull him up. But the real deal is getting out of the site, protecting your bags of food while pushing past a wall of thousands of people streaming in.

Leaving the site, we were walking in the street when we were stopped by four masked thieves holding big knives. They told us we had two options: give them half of our loot, or we would be harmed.

I offered to give them one item, but not half of what we had. One started to swing his knife. My cousin and I looked at each other, and then threw two bags of food at the thieves and ran away.

We brought back food for our relatives. I was left with about a week and a half of food for myself — eating one meal a day.

Bodies shrouded in empty food bags

At 4:30 that morning, I went to the hospital to a scene of screaming and blood.

Hospital officials said more than 200 people had been wounded and 26 killed outside the same food site I had visited that very day.

Others have been killed at GHF's three other sites in Gaza — the only major food distribution sites in Gaza today for a population of around 2.1 million people.

Starving families who sent their loved ones to collect some food for them were now at the hospital with their wounded loved ones seeking treatment.

 With two bullets in the thighs, and another bullet in his arm, one young man was screaming in pain.

A mother was grieving over her son, the only provider for his family, who had succeeded in snatching food from the GHF site once before — but now had returned as a dead body.

The hospital had run out of white shrouds to cover the deceased. The dead bodies lying on the hospital floor were covered by the same empty sacks — once filled with flour given out as international aid — that they had taken with them, in the hopes of filling them up with food.

Despite the daily killing and horrors for Palestinians seeking food from those sites, many still gamble with their lives to collect some food to bring back to their families — who wait for them, hungry, hoping they will return.

NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.