Haaretz
Adar 14, 5767
Eighty
percent of Gazans receive food aid from the World Food Program or from
UNRWA, WFP spokesperson Kirstie Campbell says, "and without it they are
liable to starve."
The dozens of laborers who used to cross into
Israel every day to work also found themselves unemployed as a result of
laws prohibiting them from working and the construction of the separation
barrier.
WFP officials refer to the people affected by these
developments "the new poor," former members of the middle class who lost
their source of income. Some were able to find other jobs, but the case of
the Hassein family is particularly complex.
The father, Yusuf,
suffered a mild stroke about three years ago that affects his daily
functioning. There is no unemployment insurance, his extended family is
unable to help out with either money or food, and the family is completely
dependent on the WFP.
The Hasseins are not an exception in the
territories. According to WFP figures, 34 percent of residents of the
territories suffer from food insecurity, which the UN food agency defines
as the inability of a household to produce and/or access at all times the
minimum food needed for a healthy and active life. In the Gaza Strip,
where four out of five Palestinians are below the poverty line, the figure
is 54 percent.
"We are seeing more and more children who come to
school without eating breakfast and without the ability to buy breakfast,"
Campbell says. "Many families can only give their children one meal a day.
The problem is particularly severe in Gaza, but it occurs in the West Bank
as well."
Campbell says that while in the past food shortages were
generally limited to rural areas, it now affects urban residents, traders
and people who own small workshops, among others.
"The Palestinian
economy is becoming an 'island' economy," Campbell explains, "small areas
where residents trade among themselves." The WFP defines food insecurity
as income of less than $1.60 per person per day, since this is the minimum
required to obtain a nutritionally adequate diet. In Gaza, many people eat
nothing but tomatoes and bread. Their neighbors and relatives may try to
help, but it is not enough.
Dana Hassein, 3, and Abdu, 6, observe
their houseguests with suspicion. They are hesitant at first to answer the
questions posed by workers for WFP, but Majidi, one of the WFP's field
workers, manages to penetrate the children's shyness. They do not ask for
food or a handout, and Abdu proudly announces that he is "the most
diligent student in his class."
Hunger, however, lurks in every
corner of their home. Here, on the northern edge of Bidiya, not far from
Ariel, the Israeli claim that there is no hunger in the West Bank rings
hollow. As they do every day, Abdu, Dana, their seven siblings, their
mother Basma and their father Yusuf, eat only pita and hummus, morning,
noon and night. Occasionally there is tehina instead. In the morning, each
child drinks a cup of tea. Once a week they eat chicken or red meat.
Since 2004, Basma relates, she and her husband have been unable to
afford even the most basic staples, and the children's daily diet has
become monotonous. No dairy products, no fruits or vegetables, no rice or
even pasta. Occasionally Basma cooks up khubeiza or other wild greens
picked in the yard, but mainly they rely on the food supplied by WFP:
flour, salt, cooking oil, chickpeas and tehina.
The Hasseins' home
is only a few hundred meters from Bidiya's main road, formerly the
Trans-Samarian Highway. Like everyone else in the region, they remember
the weekends when Israelis came to Bidiya to do their shopping, leaving
sufficient cash behind to support the village and its environs. Then the
second intifada broke out. The Israelis stopped coming, the highway was
rebuilt about two kilometers away and thousands of families were left
without livelihoods.