Dead Horses, Scraps, Leaves: Gaza’s Hungry Get Desperate

A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)
A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)
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Dead Horses, Scraps, Leaves: Gaza’s Hungry Get Desperate

A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)
A Palestinian girl carrying a plate of lentil soup provided by volunteers in Rafah. (AFP)

At the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, Abu Gibril was so desperate for food to feed his family that he slaughtered two of his horses.

“We had no other choice but to slaughter the horses to feed the children. Hunger is killing us,” he said.

Jabalia was the biggest camp in the Palestinian territories before the war, which began after Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, leaving some 1,160 dead, based on Israeli figures.

Gibril, 60, fled there from nearby Beit Hanun when the conflict erupted. Home for him and his family is now a tent near what was a UN-run school.

Contaminated water, power cuts and overcrowding were already a problem in the densely populated camp, which was set up in 1948 and covers just 1.4 square kilometers.

Poverty, from high unemployment, was also an issue among its more than 100,000 people.

Now food is running out, with aid agencies unable to get in to the area because of the bombing — and the frenzied looting of the few trucks that try to get through.

The World Food Program this week said its teams reported “unprecedented levels of desperation” while the UN warned that 2.2 million people were on the brink of famine.

On Friday, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said a two-month-old baby died of malnutrition in hospital in Gaza City, 7 km away from Jabalia.

In the camp, bedraggled children wait expectantly, holding plastic containers and battered cooking pots for what little food is available.

With supplies dwindling, costs are rising. A kilo of rice, for example, has shot up from seven shekels ($1.90) to 55 shekels, complains one man.

“We the grown-ups can still make it but these children who are four and five years old, what did they do wrong to sleep hungry and wake up hungry?” he said angrily.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned that the alarming lack of food, surging malnutrition and disease could lead to an “explosion” in child deaths in Gaza.

One in six children aged under two in Gaza was acutely malnourished, it estimated on Feb. 19.

Residents have taken to eating scavenged scraps of rotten corn, animal fodder unfit for human consumption and even leaves to try to stave off the growing hunger pangs.

“There is no food, no wheat, no drinking water,” said one woman.

“We have started begging neighbors for money. We don’t have one shekel at home. We knock on doors and no one is giving us money.”

Tempers are rising in Jabalia about the lack of food and the consequences. On Friday, an impromptu protest was held involving dozens of people.

One child held up a sign reading: “We didn’t die from air strikes but we are dying from hunger.”

Another held aloft a placard warning “Famine eats away at our flesh,” while protesters chanted “No to starvation. No to genocide. No to blockade.”

Over the weeks and months, Israel’s relentless bombardment has left Gaza largely a place of shattered concrete and lives.

Gibril kept the radical decision to slaughter his horses to himself, boiling the meat with rice, and giving it to his unwitting family and neighbors.

Despite the necessity, he said he was still wary of their reaction. “No one knows they were in fact eating a horse.”



Israeli Raids Displaced Tens of Thousands in the West Bank. Now Few Places to Shelter Remain 

Boys sit by during the funeral of 18-year-old Palestinian Malik Hattab who was killed the previous day after succumbing to injuries sustained during an Israeli raid on the Jalazun camp for Palestinian refugees north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, at the camp on April 15, 2025. (AFP) 
Boys sit by during the funeral of 18-year-old Palestinian Malik Hattab who was killed the previous day after succumbing to injuries sustained during an Israeli raid on the Jalazun camp for Palestinian refugees north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, at the camp on April 15, 2025. (AFP) 
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Israeli Raids Displaced Tens of Thousands in the West Bank. Now Few Places to Shelter Remain 

Boys sit by during the funeral of 18-year-old Palestinian Malik Hattab who was killed the previous day after succumbing to injuries sustained during an Israeli raid on the Jalazun camp for Palestinian refugees north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, at the camp on April 15, 2025. (AFP) 
Boys sit by during the funeral of 18-year-old Palestinian Malik Hattab who was killed the previous day after succumbing to injuries sustained during an Israeli raid on the Jalazun camp for Palestinian refugees north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, at the camp on April 15, 2025. (AFP) 

For weeks, the family had been on the move. Israeli troops had forced them from home during a military operation that has displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank. After finding shelter in a wedding hall, they were told to leave again.

"We don’t know where we’ll go," said the family's 52-year-old matriarch, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal. She buried her face in her hands.

The grandmother is one of more than 1,500 displaced people in and around the northern city of Tulkarem who are being pushed from schools, youth centers and other venues because the people who run them need them back. It was not clear how many displaced in other areas like Jenin face the same pressure.

Many say they have nowhere else to go. Israeli forces destroyed some homes.

The cash-strapped Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, has little to offer. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest aid provider in the occupied territories, struggles to meet greater needs in the Gaza Strip while facing Israeli restrictions on its operations.

Approximately 40,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in January and February in the largest displacement in the West Bank since Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Mideast war.

Israel says the operations are needed to stamp out militancy as violence by all sides has surged since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in Gaza.

Fears of long-term displacement Israel's raids have emptied out and largely destroyed several urban refugee camps in the northern West Bank, like Tulkarem and nearby Nur Shams, that housed the descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in previous wars.

Israel says troops will stay in some camps for a year.

People with means are living with relatives or renting apartments, while the impoverished have sought refuge in public buildings. Now that the Muslim holy month of Ramadan has ended, many are being told to leave.

"This is a big problem for us, as the schools cannot be used for the displaced because there are students in them, and at the same time, we have a shortage of financial resources," said Abdallah Kmeil, the governor of Tulkarem.

He said the Palestinian Authority is looking for empty homes to rent to families and plans to bring prefabricated containers for some 20,000 displaced. But it’s unclear when they will arrive.

Seven minutes to pack

The matriarch said Israeli troops gave the family seven minutes to pack when they evicted them from the Nur Shams camp in early February. They left with backpacks and a white flag to signal they weren't a threat.

Shelters were overcrowded. People slept on floor mats with little privacy, and dozens at times shared a few toilets and a shower.

The family tried to return home when soldiers allowed people to go back and get their belongings. Days later, they were forced to leave again, and soldiers warned that their house would be burned if they didn’t, the woman said.

The family found a charity center that doubles as a wedding hall in a nearby town. Now, with the onset of wedding season, they have had to leave.

When the family feels homesick, they walk to a hilltop overlooking Nur Shams.

Palestinians sheltering in and around Tulkarem say they feel abandoned. Much of the aid they were receiving, such as food and clothes, came from the community during Ramadan, a time of increased charity. Now that has dried up.

Israel's crackdown in the West Bank has also left tens of thousands unemployed. They can no longer work the mostly menial jobs in Israel that paid higher wages, making it harder to rent scarce places to stay.

Iman Basher used to work on a Palestinian farm near her house in Nur Shams. Since fleeing, the day's walk there is too far to travel, she said. The 64-year-old was among dozens of people recently forced from another wedding hall. She now sleeps on a mat in another packed building.

Basher said soldiers raiding her house stole about $2,000, money she had been saving for more than a decade for her children’s education.

An Israeli military spokesperson said the army prohibits the theft or wanton destruction of civilian property and holds soldiers accountable for what it called "exceptional" violations. The army said gunmen fight and plant explosives in residential areas, and soldiers sometimes occupy homes to combat them.

‘The scale of the displacement is beyond us’

Aid groups said some displaced people are living in unfinished buildings, without proper clothes, hygiene, bedding or access to healthcare.

"It’s hard to find where the need is ... The scale of the displacement is beyond us," said Nicholas Papachrysostomou, emergency coordinator in the northern West Bank for Doctors Without Borders.

The charity's mobile clinics provide primary healthcare, but there’s a shortage of medicine and it’s hard to get supplies because of Israeli restrictions and financial constraints by the West Bank's health ministry, he said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, plans to disburse $265 a month to about 30,000 of the most vulnerable displaced people, but there is enough money for only three months, said Hanadi Jaber Abu Taqa, head of UNRWA in the northern West Bank.

The agency's money mostly goes to Gaza. Just over 12% of the funds it seeks from donors for this year will be allocated to the West Bank.

Portable housing for the many displaced would only be a temporary fix. Some Palestinians said they wouldn't accept it, worrying it would feel like giving up their right to return home.

Isam Sadooq had been helping 60 displaced people staying at a youth center in Tulkarem. Last month, he was told, by the people who run the center, that they should consider evacuating so children can resume sports.

"If we cannot find them another place to live, what will be their fate?" he said. "They will find themselves in the street, and this is something we do not accept."