Thousands of Palestinian families flee West Bank homes as Israel confronts militants

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Palestinians who fled the Israeli army operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp, gather around the fire for warmth at a temporary shelter for displaced people in the West Bank town of Anabta, near Tulkarem, Feb. 10, 2025. (AP)
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Updated 19 February 2025
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Thousands of Palestinian families flee West Bank homes as Israel confronts militants

  • “This is our nakba,” said Abed Sabagh, 53, who bundled his seven children into the car on Feb. 9 as sound bombs blared in Nur Shams camp
  • Ahmad Sobuh could understand how his neighbors chose to flee the Far’a refugee camp during Israel’s 10-day incursion

FAR’A REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank: By car and on foot, through muddy olive groves and snipers’ sight lines, tens of thousands of Palestinians in recent weeks have fled Israeli military operations across the northern West Bank — the largest displacement in the occupied territory since the 1967 Mideast war.
After announcing a widespread crackdown against West Bank militants on Jan. 21 — just two days after its ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza — Israeli forces descended on the restive city of Jenin, as they have dozens of times since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
But unlike past operations, Israeli forces then pushed deeper and more forcefully into several other nearby towns, including Tulkarem, Far’a and Nur Shams, scattering families and stirring bitter memories of the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.
During that war, 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes in what is now Israel. That Nakba, or “catastrophe,” as Palestinians call it, gave rise to the crowded West Bank towns now under assault and still known as refugee camps.
“This is our nakba,” said Abed Sabagh, 53, who bundled his seven children into the car on Feb. 9 as sound bombs blared in Nur Shams camp, where he was born to parents who fled the 1948 war.
Tactics from Gaza
Humanitarian officials say they haven’t seen such displacement in the West Bank since the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel captured the territory west of the Jordan River, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, displacing another 300,000 Palestinians.
“This is unprecedented. When you add to this the destruction of infrastructure, we’re reaching a point where the camps are becoming uninhabitable,” said Roland Friedrich, director of West Bank affairs for the UN Palestinian refugee agency. More than 40,100 Palestinians have fled their homes in the ongoing military operation, according to the agency.
Experts say that Israel’s tactics in the West Bank are becoming almost indistinguishable from those deployed in Gaza. Already, President Donald Trump’s plan for the mass transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza has emboldened Israel’s far-right to renew calls for annexation of the West Bank.
“The idea of ‘cleansing’ the land of Palestinians is more popular today than ever before,” said Yagil Levy, head of the Institute for the Study of Civil-Military Relations at Britain’s Open University.
The Israeli army denies issuing evacuation orders in the West Bank. It said troops secure passages for those wanting to leave on their own accord.
Seven minutes to leave home
Over a dozen displaced Palestinians interviewed in the last week said they did not flee their homes out of fear, but on the orders of Israeli security forces. Associated Press journalists in the Nur Shams camp also heard Israeli soldiers shouting through mosque megaphones, ordering people to leave.
Some displaced families said soldiers were polite, knocking on doors and assuring them they could return when the army left. Others said they were ruthless, ransacking rooms, waving rifles and hustling residents out of their homes despite pleas for more time.
“I was sobbing, asking them, ‘Why do you want me to leave my house?’ My baby is upstairs, just let me get my baby please,’” Ayat Abdullah, 30, recalled from a shelter for displaced people in the village of Kafr Al-Labd. “They gave us seven minutes. I brought my children, thank God. Nothing else.”
Told to make their own way, Abdullah trudged 10 kilometers (six miles) on a path lighted only by the glow from her phone as rain turned the ground to mud. She said she clutched her children tight, braving possible snipers that had killed a 23-year-old pregnant woman just hours earlier on Feb. 9.
Her 5-year-old son, Nidal, interrupted her story, pursing his lips together to make a loud buzzing sound.
“You’re right, my love,” she replied. “That’s the sound the drones made when we left home.”
Hospitality, for now
In the nearby town of Anabta, volunteers moved in and out of mosques and government buildings that have become makeshift shelters — delivering donated blankets, serving bitter coffee, distributing boiled eggs for breakfast and whipping up vats of rice and chicken for dinner.
Residents have opened their homes to families fleeing Nur Shams and Tulkarem.
“This is our duty in the current security situation,” said Thabet A’mar, the mayor of Anabta.
But he stressed that the town’s welcoming hand should not be mistaken for anything more.
“We insist that their displacement is temporary,” he said.
Staying put
When the invasion started on Feb. 2, Israeli bulldozers ruptured underground pipes. Taps ran dry. Sewage gushed. Internet service was shut off. Schools closed. Food supplies dwindled. Explosions echoed.
Ahmad Sobuh could understand how his neighbors chose to flee the Far’a refugee camp during Israel’s 10-day incursion. But he scavenged rainwater to drink and hunkered down in his home, swearing to himself, his family and the Israeli soldiers knocking at his door that he would stay.
The soldiers advised against that, informing Sobuh’s family on Feb. 11 that, because a room had raised suspicion for containing security cameras and an object resembling a weapon, they would blow up the second floor.
The surveillance cameras, which Israeli soldiers argued could be exploited by Palestinian militants, were not unusual in the volatile neighborhood, Sobuh said, as families can observe street battles and Israeli army operations from inside.
But the second claim sent him clambering upstairs, where he found his nephew’s water pipe, shaped like a rifle.
Hours later, the explosion left his nephew’s room naked to the wind and shattered most others. It was too dangerous to stay.
“They are doing everything they can to push us out,” he said of Israel’s military, which, according to the UN agency for refugees, has demolished hundreds of homes across the four camps this year.
The Israeli army has described its ongoing campaign as a crucial counterterrorism effort to prevent attacks like Oct. 7, and said steps were taken to mitigate the impact on civilians.
A chilling return
The first thing Doha Abu Dgheish noticed about her family’s five-story home 10 days after Israeli troops forced them to leave, she said, was the smell.
Venturing inside as Israeli troops withdrew from Far’a camp, she found rotten food and toilets piled with excrement. Pet parakeets had vanished from their cages. Pages of the Qur’an had been defaced with graphic drawings. Israeli forces had apparently used explosives to blow every door off its hinges, even though none had been locked.
Rama, her 11-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, screamed upon finding her doll’s skirt torn and its face covered with more graphic drawings.
AP journalists visited the Abu Dgheish home on Feb. 12, hours after their return.
Nearly two dozen Palestinians interviewed across the four West Bank refugee camps this month described army units taking over civilian homes to use as a dormitories, storerooms or lookout points. The Abu Dgheish family accused Israeli soldiers of vandalizing their home, as did multiple families in Far’a.
The Israeli army blamed militants for embedding themselves in civilian infrastructure. Soldiers may be “required to operate from civilian homes for varying periods,” it said, adding that the destruction of civilian property was a violation of the military’s rules and does not conform to its values.
It said “any exceptional incidents that raise concerns regarding a deviation from these orders” are “thoroughly addressed,” without elaborating.
For Abu Dgheish, the mess was emblematic of the emotional whiplash of return. No one knows when they’ll have to flee again.
“It’s like they want us to feel that we’re never safe,” she said. ”That we have no control.”


Sudan paramilitaries launch first attack on de facto capital: army

Updated 04 May 2025
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Sudan paramilitaries launch first attack on de facto capital: army

  • The paramilitaries have expanded the scope and frequency of their drone attacks on army-held areas since losing control of areas including most of the capital Khartoum in March
  • UN agencies have also moved their offices and staff to Port Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from the war.

PORT SUDAN: Sudanese paramilitaries on Sunday struck Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, the army said, in the first attack on the seat of the army-aligned government in the country’s two-year war.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) “targeted Osman Digna Air Base, a goods warehouse and some civilian facilities in the city of Port Sudan with suicide drones,” army spokesman Nabil Abdullah said in a statement.
He reported no casualties but “limited damage.” Smoke was seen billowing from Port Sudan’s airport.
The paramilitaries have expanded the scope and frequency of their drone attacks on army-held areas since losing control of areas including most of the capital Khartoum in March.
On Saturday, a source from the army-aligned government reported a rare drone attack on Kassala, on Sudan’s eastern border with Eritrea, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the nearest RSF-held territory.
In the early days of the war, the government relocated from Khartoum to Port Sudan, which until Sunday’s attack had been spared the violence.
UN agencies have also moved their offices and staff to Port Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge from the war.
Since April 2023, the regular army, headed by Sudan’s de facto leader General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has been battling the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, in a brutal war that has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million.
The conflict has left Africa’s third largest country effectively divided.
The regular army controls the center, east and north, while the RSF holds sway in nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur and parts of the south.
In late February, the RSF and its allies signed a charter in Kenya announcing a plan to establish a rival government to the army-aligned administration.


Missile launched from Yemen lands near Israel’s main airport

Updated 8 min 14 sec ago
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Missile launched from Yemen lands near Israel’s main airport

  • Israeli military said it was working on intercepting a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel
  • Sirens were activated in Tel Aviv and other areas in the country

JERUSALEM: A missile launched from Yemen toward Israel on Sunday landed near Ben Gurion Airport, the country’s main international airport, where footage shared on social media showed a plume of smoke visible from a passenger terminal.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the fall of a projectile launched from Yemen, which landed in the vicinity of the airport.
A Reuters reporter at the airport heard sirens and saw passengers reacting by running toward safe rooms.
Several people at the airport posted videos filmed on smartphones that showed a plume of black smoke clearly visible nearby, behind parked aircraft and airport buildings. Reuters has not verified the videos.
The Israeli ambulance service said there were no reports of serious injuries. A man and a woman with light injuries were being taken to hospital and two people were being treated at the scene for the effects of panic.
Airport authorities said the projectile had landed by a road near a Terminal 3 parking lot. One photo shared on social media showed a bend in a road covered in debris.
Yemen’s Houthis have been launching missiles at Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.


Qatar rejects Netanyahu’s ‘inflammatory’ Gaza comments: foreign ministry

Updated 04 May 2025
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Qatar rejects Netanyahu’s ‘inflammatory’ Gaza comments: foreign ministry

  • Netanyahu's office earlier urged Qatar to stop its "double game" and "decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas”
  • Qatar ministry spokesman said the statement "fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility”

DOHA: Gaza mediator Qatar on Sunday rejected comments from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it needed to “stop playing both sides” in truce negotiations.
A statement released by Netanyahu's office on Saturday said Qatar needs to “decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas.”
Qatar “firmly rejects the inflammatory statements... which fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility,” foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari responded in a post on X.

Gaza mediator Qatar on Sunday rejected comments from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it needed to “stop playing both sides” in truce negotiations. A statement released by Netanyahu's office on Saturday said Qatar needs to “decide if it’s on the side of civilization or if it’s on the side of Hamas.” Qatar “firmly rejects the inflammatory statements... which fall far short of the most basic standards of political and moral responsibility,” foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari responded in a post on X.

Despite efforts by Egyptian and Qatari mediators to restore a ceasefire, neither Israel nor Hamas has shown willingness to back down on core demands, with each side blaming the other for the failure to reach a deal.
Israel, which wants the return of 59 hostages still held in Gaza, has insisted Hamas must disarm and be excluded from any role in the future governance of the enclave, a condition that Hamas rejects.
It has insisted on agreeing a lasting end to the fighting and withdrawal of Israeli forces as a condition for a deal that would see a release of the hostages.
Al-Ansari criticized the portrayal of the Gaza conflict as a defense of civilization, likening it to historical regimes that used “false narratives to justify crimes against civilians.”
In his post, Al-Ansari questioned whether the release of 138 hostages was achieved through military operations or mediation efforts, which he said are being unjustly criticized and undermined.
He also cited the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza represented by what he called a suffocating blockade, systematic starvation, denial of medicine and shelter, and the use of humanitarian aid as a tool of political coercion. On Friday, Israel’s security cabinet approved plans for an expanded operation in the Gaza Strip, Israeli media reported on Friday, adding to signs that attempts to stop the fighting and return hostages held by Hamas have made no progress.
Israel’s campaign was triggered by the devastating Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw 251 taken hostage. It has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated Gaza where aid groups have warned the Israeli blockade risks a humanitarian disaster.


Israel calls up tens of thousands of reservists for Gaza offensive

Updated 04 May 2025
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Israel calls up tens of thousands of reservists for Gaza offensive

  • Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18 amid deadlock over how to proceed with a 2-month ceasefire
  • Security cabinet scheduled to meet on Sunday to approve the expansion of the military offensive, says public broadcaster

JERUSALEM: Israel was issuing orders to call up tens of thousands of reservists ahead of an expanded offensive in Gaza, Israeli media reported Saturday.
Several news outlets reported the military had begun sending the orders for reservists to replace conscripts and active-duty soldiers in Israel and the occupied West Bank so they can be redeployed to Gaza.
A military spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied the reports, but relatives of AFP journalists were among those who received mobilization orders.
According to Israel’s public broadcaster, the security cabinet is scheduled to meet on Sunday to approve the expansion of the military offensive in Gaza.
Israel resumed major operations across Gaza on March 18 amid deadlock over how to proceed with a two-month ceasefire that had largely halted the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

The Israeli prime minister, under pressure from his far-right supporters, without whom he would lose his governing coalition, has been increasingly vocal in his calls to continue the war since the restart of the Gaza offensive.
“Israel will win this just war with just means,” he added.
Israel has also blocked all aid deliveries to Gaza since March 2, prompting warnings from UN agencies of impending humanitarian disaster.

Hamas on Saturday released footage of an apparently wounded Israeli-Russian hostage held in Gaza as 11 Palestinians, including three infants, were killed in a strike on the territory, its civil defense agency said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 2,396 people had been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll from the war to 52,495.
Gaza militants still hold 58 hostages, 34 of whom the army says are dead. Hamas is also holding the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a previous war in Gaza in 2014.
The militant group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, released a video on Saturday showing a hostage AFP and Israeli media identified as Russian-Israeli Maxim Herkin.
In the undated four-minute video, Herkin, who turns 37 this month, was shown wearing bandages on his head and left arm.
Speaking in Hebrew in the video, which his family urged media to disseminate, he implied he had been wounded in a recent Israeli bombardment.
AFP was unable to determine the health of Herkin, who gave a similar message to other hostages shown in videos released by Hamas, urging pressure on the Israeli government to free the remaining captives.

Several thousand Israelis demonstrated outside the defense ministry in Tel Aviv on Saturday, demanding action from the government to secure the hostages’ release.
“We’re here because we want the hostages home. We’re here because we don’t believe that the war in Gaza today, currently, is justified at all,” Arona Maskil, a 64-year-old demonstrator, told AFP.
The government says its renewed offensive is aimed at forcing Hamas to free its remaining captives, although critics charge that it puts them in mortal danger.
A statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum argued that “any escalation in the fighting will put the hostages... in immediate danger.”
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said on Saturday that an overnight Israeli strike on the Khan Yunis refugee camp killed at least 11 people, including three infants.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal say they were killed in the “bombardment of the Al-Bayram family home in Khan Yunis camp” at around 3:00 am (0000 GMT).
Bassal told AFP that eight of the dead had been identified and were all from the same extended family, including a boy and girl, both one, and a month-old baby.
An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed the strike, saying it targeted a “Hamas member.”
Rescue workers and residents combed the rubble for survivors with their bare hands, under the light of hand-held torches, an AFP journalist reported.
Neighbour Fayka Abu Hatab said she “saw a bright light, then there was an explosion, and dust covered the entire area.”
“We couldn’t see anything, it all went dark,” she said.
 


Hunger and malnutrition are rising across Gaza as Israel’s blockade leaves mothers with few options

Updated 04 May 2025
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Hunger and malnutrition are rising across Gaza as Israel’s blockade leaves mothers with few options

  • Residents and humanitarians warn that acute malnutrition among children is spiraling

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: The little boy is in tears and, understandably, irritable. Diarrhea has plagued him for half of his brief life. He is dehydrated and so weak. Attached to his tiny left hand is a yellow tube that carries liquid food to his frail little system.
At 9 months old, Khaled is barely 11 pounds (5 kilos) — half of what a healthy baby his age should be. And in Gaza’s main pediatric hospital ward, as doctors try to save her son, Wedad Abdelaal can only watch.
After back-to-back emergency visits, the doctors decided to admit Khaled last weekend. For nearly a week, he was tube-fed and then given supplements and bottled milk, which is distributed every three hours or more. His mother, nervous and helpless, says that’s not enough.
“I wish they would give it to us every hour. He waits for it impatiently ... but they too are short on supplies,” Abdelaal says. ” This border closure is destroying us.”
The longer they stay in the hospital, the better Khaled will get. But Abdelaal is agonizing over her other children, back in their tent, with empty pots and nothing to eat as Israel’s blockade of Gaza enters its third month, the longest since the war started.
Locked, sealed and devastated by Israeli bombings, Gaza is facing starvation. Thousands of children have already been treated for malnutrition. Exhausted, displaced and surviving on basics for over a year and half of war, parents like Abdelaal watch their children waste away and find there is little they can do.
They are out of options.
Acute malnutrition among children is spiking
Hospitals are hanging by a thread, dealing with mass casualty attacks that prioritize deadly emergencies. Food stocks at UN warehouses have run out. Markets are emptying. What is still available is sold at exorbitant prices, unaffordable for most in Gaza where more than 80 percent are reliant on aid, according to the United Nations.
Community kitchens distributing meals for thousands are shuttering. Farmland is mostly inaccessible. Bakeries have closed. Water distribution is grinding to a halt, largely because of lack of fuel. In desperate scenes, thousands, many of them kids, crowd outside community kitchens, fighting over food. Warehouses with few supplies have been looted.
The longest blockade on Gaza has sparked a growing international outcry, but it has failed to persuade Israel to break open the borders. More groups accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war. Residents and humanitarians warn that acute malnutrition among children is spiraling.
“We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza,” Michael Ryan, executive director of emergencies at the World Health Organization, told reporters in Geneva. “Because if we don’t do something about it, we are complicit in what is happening before our very eyes. ... The children should not have to pay the price.”
Israel imposed the blockade March 2, then ended a two-month ceasefire by resuming military operations on March 18, saying both steps were necessary to pressure Hamas into releasing the hostages. Before the ceasefire collapsed, Israel believed 59 hostages were still inside Gaza, 24 of them alive and still in captivity.
It hasn’t responded to accusations that it uses starvation as a war tactic. But Israeli officials have previously said Gaza had enough aid after a surge in distribution during the ceasefire, and accused Hamas of diverting aid for its purposes. Humanitarian workers deny there is significant diversion, saying the UN monitors distribution strictly.
A mother wants to help her son — but can’t
Khaled has suffered from malnutrition since he was 2 months old. His mother managed it through outpatient visits and supplements distributed at feeding centers. But for the past seven months, Abdelaal, 31, has been watching him slowly shrivel. She, too, is malnourished and has had hardly any protein in recent months.
After an exhausting pregnancy and two days of labor, Khaled was born — a low-weight baby at 4 1/2 pounds (2 kilos) but otherwise healthy. Abdelaal began nursing him. But because of lack of calcium, she is losing her teeth — and producing too little milk.
“Breastfeeding needs food, and I am not able to give him enough,” she says.
Khaled has four other siblings, aged between 9 and 4. The family has been displaced from Rafah and now lives in a tent further north in Mawasi Khan Younis.
As food ran out under the blockade, the family grew dependent on community kitchens that serve rice, pasta and cooked beans. Cooking in the tent is a struggle: There is no gas, and finding wood or plastic to burn is exhausting and risky.
Ahmed, 7 and Maria, 4, are already showing signs of malnutrition. Ahmed, 7, weighs 17 pounds (8 kilos); his bones are piercing his skin. He gets no supplements at feeding centers, which serve only kids under 6. Maria, 4, has also lost weight, but there is no scale to weigh her.
“My kids have become so frail,” Abdelaal laments. “They are like chicks.”
Nutrition centers around Gaza are shutting down
Since March 2, UN agencies have documented a rise in acute malnutrition among children. They are finding low immunity, frequent illness, weight and muscle mass loss, protruding bones or bellies, and brittle hair. Since the start of the year, more than 9,000 children have been admitted or treated for acute malnutrition, UNICEF said.
The increase was dramatic in March, with 3,600 cases or an 80 percent increase compared to the 2,000 children treated in February.
Since then, conditions have only worsened. Supplies used to prevent malnutrition, such as supplements and biscuits, have been depleted, according to UNICEF. Therapeutic food used to treat acute malnutrition is running out.
Parents and caregivers are sharing malnutrition treatments to make up for shortages, which undermines treatment. Nearly half of the 200 nutrition centers around Gaza shut down because of displacement and bombardment.
Meanwhile, supplies are languishing at the borders, prevented by Israel from entering Gaza.
“It is absolutely clear that we are going to have more cases of wasting, which is the most dangerous form of malnutrition. It is also clear we are going to have more children dying from these preventable causes,” UNICEF spokesperson Jonathan Crickx says.
Suad Obaid, a nutritionist in Gaza, says parents are frequenting feeding centers more because they have nothing to feed their children. “No one can rely on canned food and emergency feeding for nearly two years.”
At Nasser Hospital, four critical cases were receiving treatment last week for acute malnutrition, including Khaled. Only critical cases are admitted — and only for short periods so more children can be treated.
“If we admit all those who have acute malnutrition, we will need hundreds of beds,” says Dr. Yasser Abu Ghaly, acknowledging: “We can’t help many, anyway ... There is nothing in our hands.”
The system for managing diseases has buckled
Before the war, hundreds of families in Gaza were registered and treated for congenital defects, genetic or autoimmune disorders, a system that has broken down mostly because food, formulasor tablets that helped manage the diseases quickly ran out.
Dr. Ahmed Al-Farrah, head of the pediatrics and obstetrics ward at Nasser Hospital, says hundreds of children with genetic disorders could suffer cognitive disorders as well, if not worse.
“They are sentenced to death,” he says.
Osama Al-Raqqab’s cystic fibrosis has worsened since the start of the war. Lack of meat, fish and enzyme tablets to help him digest food meant repeated hospital visits and long bouts of chest infections and acute diarrhea, says his mother, Mona. His bones poke through his skin. Osama, 5, weighs 20 pounds (9 kilos) and can hardly move or speak. Canned food offers him no nutrition.
“With starvation in Gaza, we only eat canned lentils,” his mother says. “If the borders remain closed, we will lose that too.”
Rahma Al-Qadi’s baby was born with Down syndrome seven months ago. Since then, Sama gained little more than half a pound (300 grams) and was hospitalized multiple times with fever. Her mother, also malnourished and still suffering from infection to her wound after birth, continues to breastfeed her. Again, it is not enough.
Sama is restless, doesn’t sleep and is always demanding more food. Doctors ask her mother to eat better to produce more milk.
Lifting Sama’s scrawny legs up, her mother says: “I can’t believe this is the leg of a 7-month-old.”
A father’s lament: ‘Waiting for death’
Abdelaal’s kids fetch water and wait in line at soup kitchens because she cannot. To get there, they must climb a small hill. When she can, she waits for them at the bottom, fearing they may fall or drop the food.
When they do bring back food, the family divides it over several meals and days. When they get nothing, they share beans out of a can. Abdelaal often surrenders her share. “My kids,” she says, “are more deserving.”
Her husband, Ammar, has a heart condition that limits his movement, so he cannot help either. “Because of lack of healthy food, even as adults, we have no energy to move or exert any effort,” Ammar says. “We are sitting in our tents, waiting for death.”
The kids plead for fried tomatoes or cooked potatoes. But produce is unavailable or too expensive. A kilo of each would cost her $21. A bar of biscuits costs $2. Canned sardines cost nearly $10 — a fortune.
“In two years, my child won’t be able to walk because of lack of food,” Abdelaal says.
Smiling through her helplessness, Abdelaal brought Khaled out of the hospital for a few hours to visit his family on Friday. They gathered around a can of cold beans. She wishes Khaled’s doctors could give her the treatment to take back to the tent, so she could be with her family.
“I am exhausted before birth and after birth from lack of food,” she says. “We are not able to live.”