The gas has something worse than hunger | Israel-Palestinian conflict

I woke up one morning in July to a flurry of messages that illuminated my phone. Each news channel, every post in social media, each conversation buzzed with careful optimism. “Negotiations progress well,” the headlines said. “The truce is inevitable”, “massive assistance that is preparing for the entrance.”

At that moment we were deep in the suffering of hunger; For a few days we ate nothing at all. You can imagine the careful joy that flickered in our hearts, as Hope went through our messages. Friends wrote to me, their words trembled from the previous relief. “Can it really be the end?” one asked. “Do we remember how security feels? Will it finally be bread?”

We dared to dream. We imagined the silence of ceasefire, the taste of warm bread, the comfort of full. Some stores have opened orientated. Prices have slightly dropped. For the first time in a few months, the bread seemed almost within reach. For a passing moment, life seemed to be back on the street.

Even the most broken communities breathe in the same way when hope appears – even if it is for a few hours.

My neighbor is a widow of a war that raises seven children, including an infant who is crying infinitely starving – she told how her children were crying from empty stomachs while she was crying from helplessness. When rumors of the truce spread, she dreamed of feeding them properly, stopping her suffering. Like all of us, she watched the hope of breaking.

The next morning, everything fell apart. The new headline, cold and final, sealed our fate: “Negotiations have failed. Not a truce.”

The shops that barely recovered were closed. The flour disappeared again. Prices flew outside reach. Outside the Gaza, the media was still talking about the auxiliary convoys “on the way”, but there was nothing on the ground. Empty words. Empty trucks. Empty hands.

You can imagine how your heart crashed this day. As the spirit of the people who dreamed of bread was crushed. How the mothers felt that they were desperately looking for food for their children.

The gentle hope that our eyes lit up disappeared, leaving only hunger, fear and silence.

It was not the first time it happened. This happened many times earlier. And it happened after that.

Last week, we were waiting, this time, one word of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Hamas reportedly accepted the ceasefire. The uncertainty was unbearable. After a few days of silence, the Israeli government made impossible requirements, effectively killing the latest negotiation. This news loaded us back into another despair, when hunger, displacement, loss and sadness take their losses.

I believe that these repeated attacks of ceasefire headlines are not unintentional – this is another form of punishment for gas residents. Another form of torture. We are bombed, hungry, moved, and then the news achieves us.

Hope hangs in front of us, just to be thwarted, leaving us weaker every time.

It is a deliberate, systematic policy aimed at demolishing the defenseless population. It is intended to destroy our spirit to force us to live in constant uncertainty, to save us from the fundamental human right for tomorrow. This cycle – hope then rose broken – leaves deeper scars than hunger.

While we are waiting for the news, the hunger pulls out its clutch. Go out and you see how it is cut on the faces: men wipe tears, women who fell on the streets from exhaustion, children are too weak to play. Hunger is not just a physical condition – it is an unbearable weight that inflames the soul.

The mothers stop planing the food because they can’t promise that they can put something on the table. Children will learn early that good news often in the morning. Families sell their latest possessions when the help is announced, only nothing left if it does not come.

This repeated destruction multiplies more than distrust of governments and media; This destroys the concept of hope itself. Many no longer ask: “When will it end?” But “How worse can it get?”

According to the World Nutrition Program, 100 percent of people in gas is now suffering from acute food security, with all children under the age of five facing acute malnutrition. Hunger was officially announced.

Israel still claims that its blockade measures hinder Hamas supplies, although the US government is its largest ally – and Israeli officials themselves say there is no evidence that the confrontation fighters were robbing.

Amnesty International calls the Israeli siege of Gaza “collective punishment” and “war crime”. General conventions clearly prohibit the collective punishment and forced fasting.

And so I can’t help but ask: where is the world in all this? How can the whole planet watch the hunger strike, two million people were bombed, and they are dignified and still do nothing?

This silence is heavy; It is a crushing spirit as much as hunger. This tells us that our suffering is acceptable, that our lives can disappear without consequences.

The story will condemn those who committed these crimes, but also those who stood nearby and allowed them to happen.

The views expressed in this article are their own author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of al -Jazeera.