Gaza – Ahlam Hammad
With a frail body worn down by illness and ravaged by hunger, twenty-something Palestinian woman Dalal Abu Asi roams the streets of Gaza’s central governorate, pushing her two sick children in a wheelchair in search of any food to ease their pain and suffering.
This 29-year-old mother begins her grueling day at sunrise. She says she leaves her tent in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp at 6 a.m., wandering aimlessly through the streets and alleys of the governorate with no specific destination, pushing a wheelchair carrying her children, 2-year-old Amany and 4-year-old Hamza, both of whom have suffered from chronic health problems since birth.
Dalal herself has been battling breast cancer for years and has lived in misery since the war on Gaza began on 7 October 2023.
A Life of Misery
In the early days of the war, Abu Asi and her children survived an airstrike on the residential tower in “Jabalia al-Balad” in the north of the Strip, where they lived. The strike completely destroyed her modest apartment and all its contents.
“We came out from under the rubble and dust with nothing but the clothes on our backs,” says Abu Asi, pointing to their worn, tattered clothes.
Divorced and with no partner to support her, she became the sole provider for her children. After the bombing of her building, she endured the hardship of displacement seven times, moving between the south and central areas of Gaza, until she ended up in her current shelter—an old, tattered tent in the courtyard of a school that has been turned into an overcrowded shelter for displaced people.
She has no breadwinner and no source of income. She says her tent contains nothing but two thin mattresses, old blankets donated by what she calls “people of goodwill,” and a plastic container she uses to fetch drinking water.
“By God, I’ve reached the point where I wish for death every moment. I feel deep helplessness and heartbreak over the cries of Amany and Hamza for food, and I have nothing to give them to ease their hunger,” she says with a trembling voice and tearful eyes.
Through sobs, she adds:
“I go out in the morning to search for food and return at the end of the day to this wretched tent, having failed to feed my children. We try to sleep with great difficulty, and every time, I lie to them, promising that I will feed them in the morning.”
Starvation to Death
Abu Asi roams with her children and two small plastic bottles hanging from the wheelchair, moving between displacement camps and shelters in search of a charity kitchen that is still operating. Her goal is to get a small portion of food, but most of the time she returns empty-handed, exhausted from walking long distances under the scorching summer sun.
Most charity kitchens and community food centers have shut down—either due to direct bombardment or because of the suffocating blockade and lack of ingredients needed to cook and prepare meals. This situation worsened after the siege tightened on March 2, with border crossings closed and humanitarian aid blocked.
According to the Government Media Office, the Israeli occupation has targeted 42 charity kitchens, 57 food distribution centers, and humanitarian aid convoys and deliveries 121 times.
“Everyone in Gaza is suffering from hunger. The sight of women and children in the streets would make stone weep, and the world still watches us die without moving to stop this mass killing,” Abu Asi says.
She recalls one particularly heartbreaking moment when she went to a tent to ask for a piece of bread to calm her children’s cries. The family inside—nine people—swore they had not eaten in two days.
No Medicine, No Food
Abu Asi says she has lost track of how many days this war has lasted. Death, bombardment, and the constant sound of explosions no longer preoccupy her mind. Her greatest fear now is that her children will die from hunger. She watches them suffer from both hunger and illness, with no food, no medicine, and even clean water being hard to find.
Running her hands over her body in anguish, she asks:
“Where is the world’s humanity when a woman like me, with cancer, has not been able to bathe in four months?”
Before the war, she was receiving treatment at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the only cancer treatment facility in Gaza, which is now out of service after being directly targeted by occupation forces. She asks bitterly:
“What kind of life is this in Gaza—no water, no food, no medicine? We are already dead, just waiting to be buried.”
Her son Hamza suffers from multiple health issues affecting his movement and speech, while her daughter Amany has a brain condition and vision problems requiring delicate eye surgery that is unavailable in Gaza hospitals.
Both children need medical diapers, which are extremely scarce and prohibitively expensive. Abu Asi says she has been forced to use plastic bags instead, which have caused them infections and severe skin complications.
The besieged enclave’s 2.3 million residents are now facing acute famine. According to the Ministry of Health, starvation has claimed the lives of 175 Palestinians so far, including 93 children.
