A Family in Gaza Struggles to Get By
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You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We bring you the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Friday, June 6th. I'm Greg Dixon. As Israel expands its war in Gaza and places restrictions on the aid entering the territory, people there are finding it harder and harder to get enough to eat. A UN-backed report warns that half a million people are facing starvation in Gaza.

Experts describe the level of hunger there as catastrophic. We're going to hear what that's like for one family in Gaza, a single mother with eight children. NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, met them. And Aya Batraoui in Dubai brings us this report. Good day, friends. Good day.

Yeah. That's Hassan Al-Zanin, five years old. He's the youngest of eight kids in the family and the only boy. He's spoiled with love and makes his older sisters laugh.

The matriarch of this family is 39-year-old Mahassan Al-Zaneen. She tells Hassan he shouldn't keep talking about how hungry he feels. Her husband, a school principal, died from COVID-19 in 2021. It was hard then, but she had a roof over her head and work. She trained teachers.

and once ran in local elections as an independent, one of the first women in Gaza to do so. She describes herself like this. As a burning candle that lights the way for others. NPR's producer Anas Baba met Al-Zanin, who also goes by Umm Hassan and her children in their tent in Gaza City. They introduced themselves. Umm Hassan. Rana. Ruba. Aya. Asil. Hala.

They've been displaced 10 times in nearly 20 months of war. Their home in the north is a pile of rubble, destroyed in an Israeli airstrike.

Even in their tent now, an Israeli drone buzzes overhead, and Israeli tank shelling is heard in the distance. To feed her eight kids, Elzanine has leaned on friends and relatives for money, but they too are struggling to survive. So about a month ago, she turned to her 70-year-old mother. She gave Elzanine her gold wedding band to sell. It

It bought them food to last a few days.

Markets have dried up and aid warehouses are empty after what had been weeks of Israeli blockade. Despite some U.N. aid that's entered in recent weeks, no food has reached Gaza City. It's been taken off trucks by hungry crowds in other parts of Gaza. A U.N.-backed report by dozens of experts says one in five people in Gaza now face catastrophic hunger and the territory is at risk of famine. And Zanin says her family is starving. I'm eating a piece of bread, a piece of tree.

She says they resorted to eating the leaves of berries and trees. She laughs at how maddening it is, but says it's the reality. Between

Between the rows of makeshift tents in Gaza City where the family lives, her daughters grow basil in the dirt. Sometimes, charities pass by, handing out bread. They wrap the basil in it. Her daughters feel dizzy. They faint. One daughter lost teeth because she doesn't have enough calcium. Her eldest daughter, Rana, a 20-year-old medical student before the war, weighs under 90 pounds.

Rana's role in the family last year was getting bread from overcrowded bakeries where she saw a woman and two girls crushed to death in a crowd. She says it was famine then, but not like this. Now, there aren't even bakeries. Hunger is ravaging the family. Hunger is the problem. Hunger is the problem.

Al-Zanin says hunger is grief. It is loss of control. It's all-consuming, she says. The family wakes up and goes to sleep hungry. When lunch is available, they eat lentils, boiled plain and provided by a charity kitchen. And many have shut down because they've run out of food.

Israel says its aid restrictions are aimed at pressuring Hamas, which still holds Israeli hostages. Israel's new aid distribution system, run by American contractors, has been chaotic and plagued by deadly shootings. Al-Zanin says her little boy worries about dying of hunger. He wants eggs and milk. She takes him to the market to show him there is none.

And on days when there's not even lentils, she says her girls just drink water from a truck that comes by the tents every morning. Water for breakfast, lentils for lunch, some days, water for dinner. This, she says, is their life. Aya Batraoui, NPR News Dubai, with Anas Baba in Gaza City. That's the state of the world from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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