GAZA/DOHA: In the northern Gaza regions, where humanitarian organizations warn that famine persists despite improving supplies, Asmaa al-Belbasi treks an hour each day to the closest bakery to buy bread for her children and other family members.
The route can be hazardous because to the intermittent fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists and the streets being littered with debris from bombed houses that are unusable by cars. Her trip demonstrates the extreme need for bread in Gaza in order to prevent fatal starvation.
We would acquire corn flour, which you couldn’t knead, before the bakeries opened. It had the consistency of a log and would emerge like a biscuit. It would be hard to eat after a day or two,” she remarked, referring to the Gazan flour people.
After the World Food Programme supplied flour and fuel for the first bakery to open, hundreds of people crowded into the neighboring streets between the abandoned houses in disorderly lines. To keep everything in order, the bakers had to hire dozens of stewards.
Though the lines are shorter now that a few more bakeries have opened, some of them are open around-the-clock, Belbasi claims she still has to wait at least 20 minutes every day to get the two bags of flat pitta bread she requires for her huge family.
It will be imperative to reopen Gaza’s bakeries and provide a consistent flow of fuel, water, and wheat to prevent starvation from spreading throughout the small, densely populated territory almost seven months into the battle.
