The conditions in Gaza affect us all

This photo from the war in Gaza shows a bombed out building and a car that crashed into it. Photo credited to Emad El Byed on unsplash.com

The article below is written in conjunction with a fellowship program sponsored by American Community Media, a partner of the East Palo Alto Center for Community Media and East Palo Alto Today.

After nearly two years of war between Israel and Hamas, 60,000 people, of whom 16,000 were children, have been killed. (That’s more than twice the population of East Palo Alto (29,300) in less than two years.) Gaza is now in ruins and the remaining two million residents have been left without shelter, clean water, consistent access to food, medical care and other basic services.

These conditions have caused dismay around the world and have motivated many to add their voices to the calls for action to find remedies for this situation.

At an American Community Media national briefing on August 8, 2025, three speakers -- Alex DeWaal, Afif Nizuli and Boudour Hassan discussed the pre-and post-war conditions of Gaza’s residents.

Food, hunger and famine

Alex DeWaal, an expert on famine and mass atrocity, noted that before 2023, the availability of food and medical care in Gaza was generally good, but almost entirely dependent on and controlled by Israel. “There was very little food that was actually produced within Gaza,” he said.

At the start of the war, access to food was limited and the lack of food has steadily increased to catastrophic levels of hunger, malnutrition, and starvation. DeWaal continued, “After October 7th, Israel did two things: It put a complete siege on Gaza, not allowing anything in for the first seven weeks, and then launched a military campaign from the air and on the ground that destroyed basic vital survival needs.” Famine was declared in northern Gaza on August 22, 2025, by IPC Acute Food Insecurity, also known as the IPC.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has called for more food and supplies despite Israel’s blockades, which Israel says are in place to prevent alleged theft by Hamas. However, even if more supplies were available, access remains dangerous and sometimes deadly.

Life on the ground

Afif Nizuli, a journalist and aid worker with Glia (a medical solidarity organization), spent nine weeks in Gaza. He describes witnessing profound hunger, skyrocketing prices, and the closure of community kitchens -- when he arrived in March there were 170 community kitchens, which dwindled to only dozens by May.

“A big loss is that these community kitchens now have no supplies to work with. On June 1st, I was at a community kitchen that had just recently shut down and had let another NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) sort of take over the kitchen, and all they had to work with were potatoes. People everywhere were begging all the time.”

Psychological impact of starvation

As if the lack of available food through safe and secure locations were not enough, the psychological effects of starvation are equally devastating. The people of Gaza are a close-knit culture - many haven’t been outside of Gaza and know one another or one another’s families, but hunger takes a tremendous toll on people’s ability to remain sane.

For people going hungry for nearly a year and a half, many are willing to do anything to get food for their children, even if it means violating lifelong values. Mr. DeWaal said, “The moment when you really see famine is when instead of a family being able to share bread, break bread together, they fight for bread.”  

Starvation and illness

Boudour Hassan, Amnesty International's researcher on Israel and Palestine, has been investigating and documenting the food and healthcare situation in Palestine. He said, “I want to amplify how desperate the situation is and how we're not talking about something that's going to end now, because starvation doesn't end the moment more food is allowed -- we're talking about a completely devastated health sector system as well.”

Starvation, overcrowding, and the inability to recover or rebuild even minimally is causing a variety of illnesses: Meningitis is spreading, as is the Guillain-Barré syndrome (a condition where the body’s immune system attacks the nerves). Hassan said that diarrhea and other illnesses need to be addressed in addition to providing more food.

What we can do

Rebuilding in Gaza is much more than just food. Ms. Hassan cited a woman in Gaza, who said “We don't feel like the world sees us as human.”

It’s crucial to remember and respect people’s humanity, which is easy to unintentionally dismiss when it’s not happening to us.

There must be a coordinated effort by the entire world to flood Gaza with money, food and medical supplies.

All of the speakers seemed to agree that there is no quick recovery in sight, that a slow and consistent application of physical, emotional and spiritual support and respect will be necessary and the needed recovery is going to take time.

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