9-year-old Yazan Kafarneh died of a congenital illness turned deadly by severe malnutrition under Israel’s genocidal siege. “He didn’t need a miracle to save him,” cries his mother. “All he needed was the food we’ve always been able to provide him.”
Ramadan has arrived, and northern Gaza has been overtaken by famine. “People fast without the promise of breaking it, and the world watches on without doing anything,” Ghazi Oweis, a refugee from northern Gaza, tells Mondoweiss.
The “flour massacre” marked a new phase in Israel’s starving of northern Gaza when the army opened fire on crowds waiting for aid trucks. “Our lives must have become so cheap for so many people to die this way,” a witness told Mondoweiss.
Many Palestinians are fleeing Rafah ahead of Israel’s impending invasion, but when they return to their destroyed neighborhoods they still face bombardment. “We escaped death to walk into a different kind of death,” Jamila Eleywa tells Mondoweiss.
Palestinians in Rafah are dreading Israel’s impending invasion, but there is nothing we can do to ensure our safety. If the army surrounds us, we have nowhere left to go. We will be forced to endure the fire and look death in the face.
Five-year-old Arkan Shaqqura was with his mother when she was shot by an armed Israeli quadcopter. The last thing she told her child as she lay bleeding was to run away and save himself. Her family now doesn’t know if she is dead or alive.
Israel claims there is not a policy to forcibly expel Palestinians in Gaza, but direct testimonies from people arriving in Rafah reveal there is a ethnic cleansing campaign taking place around Gaza City.
Sameh Jindiyya’s daughter was born nine days ago in Al-Shifa hospital. Ever since he has been frantically searching for food for his nursing wife. “This is how we’re born in Gaza,” he tells Mondoweiss. “We are born with death hovering over us.”
Even in areas like Rafah, where the Israeli ground invasion has not reached, Gaza’s society has been decimated. Its economy no longer exists and basic goods can only be found on the black market where they cost ten times their prewar price.
Survivors of Israel’s ground invasion in northern Gaza tell chilling stories of kidnappings, torture, and the rampant use of civilians as bait and human shields. The world still has no idea how inhumane Israel’s genocidal war really has been.