00:00Six more people killed through starvation in just one day, with dozens of others killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on Sunday.
00:18Many of them shot while trying to secure some food.
00:21Officially, nearly 100 children have now been killed by a lack of food in Gaza, supplies cut off by Israel.
00:26On Sunday, Israel decided to allow some trucks of fuel to enter the enclave, another vital resource that has been withheld, leaving hospitals and other essential services at a standstill.
00:37A few countries have also started to airdrop some food, a dangerous and inefficient answer to a man-made famine, according to most NGOs, and indeed Gazans, so desperately in need.
00:50I'm the oldest of my siblings. My father was killed in an airstrike yesterday.
00:54I'm asking people here to give me a plate of flour or a meal from the aid that arrived today.
00:59This is the first time we're seeing it.
01:03I'm a widow and the mother of six children, one of whom is injured.
01:07I go out every day amid death to bring them food.
01:11I see the dead and wounded.
01:13Why can't the aid be delivered to warehouses and distributed via text messages?
01:18If I'm killed, who will take care of my children?
01:21My husband is paralysed and there are widows and women like me who can't secure food for their children.
01:30Some young men take the aid and sell it at high prices.
01:34I'm helpless and I cannot afford to buy it.
01:36We can cross now live to Gamala in the West Bank to talk with the spokesperson for Oxfam International, Dr. Haddil Hadzaz.
01:47Thanks so much for your time.
01:49Dr. Hadzaz, we're seeing the pictures there.
01:52We're hearing from the people.
01:54We're getting an idea of some of the figures of the people being killed through starvation.
01:57But what is the latest you are hearing on that situation in Gaza?
02:00What more can you tell us?
02:01Actually, the situation is disparate.
02:07And the little aid that entered Gaza in the last few days didn't really change the reality in the Gaza Strip.
02:13People are still starving.
02:15People, families, especially families of certain vulnerability, like widowers or women who are taking care of children or elderly or families with many children with special needs.
02:30All of them cannot access the food as they should and as it is available in the market.
02:35Also, the fuel that entered Gaza, two trucks that are barely needed for the hospitals.
02:41And as you rightly said, it's very, it's much needed for many, many other things, including, for example, the purification of water.
02:49Many people are in desperate need for clean water for drinking and for cooking if they can find anything to cook.
02:57And there is no cooking fuel at all in the Gaza Strip.
03:02People are basically burning anything they can find.
03:06It could be wood.
03:07It could be clothes.
03:08It could be old furniture, anything.
03:10So they can heat a little bit of water and they cook the little food they can have access to.
03:17We hear that the situation is the same.
03:19Nothing is changing much.
03:21And the prices are still very high.
03:23And our colleagues are really in bad shape and they suffer fatigue because of lack of food.
03:30That's what we hear constantly from them.
03:32Now, you mentioned there that there has been a tiny trickle of aid being allowed in in recent days.
03:38Can you give us just an idea of what is needed compared to what is getting in and what, in fact, is happening to that aid because of the way it is currently being distributed?
03:48In fact, what's coming in is only, as many people say, as we say, it's a drop in the ocean because the needs have been accumulating for more than 22 months.
04:01The needs have been increasing.
04:03The needs are not only for food.
04:05What has been distributed so far is mainly flour and some canned food.
04:11We say that there are a huge need for other things, including vegetables, meat, dairy products, other things.
04:20And this didn't enter at all to the Gaza Strip.
04:23The mechanism, the way that the aid is distributed is not working.
04:29And it's obvious because there are only four locations for distribution that are guarded by military that people get shot at when they go to seek food.
04:42There are some airdrops.
04:44In many cases, what falls from the air doesn't end up with Palestinians.
04:49Actually, it is swayed with air and with the way it's dropped.
04:56It's swayed to what's known as red area.
04:59Red areas are controlled by the Israeli army, and it's no man's own.
05:03Nobody can go there.
05:05Anyone who tries to go and retrieve the things that dropped from the air will be shot and killed.
05:11Many people are very desperate, and they just want to go and access food.
05:16And therefore, that's why there are alarming numbers of killed and injured people.
05:21The injured will end up dead because the hospitals are struggling with lack of supplies and lack of manpower and human power to operate the hospitals.
05:31Our colleagues are suffering fatigue, and so are the doctors.
05:36Some of them are working three days maybe without eating anything.
05:40And therefore, that's why we keep asking and demanding for returning to the initial mechanism, which is tested and proven that it's functioning.
05:50And that's what the Woodward you interviewed is talking about.
05:55People used to go to identified warehouses after receiving a text message without the crowds, without anyone struggling to reach to the distribution point or pushing each other or even stamping on each other.
06:09They will receive a text, they will come and receive a parcel that contains what they really need.
06:15What they really need is much more.
06:17They need many things, cleaning materials, soap.
06:21Women need some dignity kits.
06:23They need clothes.
06:24They need shelter.
06:25Many things.
06:26And therefore, that's what we keep asking for, to go to the regular and normal humanitarian setting, as in any country around the world, where the UN organizes a mechanism and distributes roles and responsibilities, including to international NGOs and local NGOs, who have been trying their best to work and to help their population.
06:49Sorry, there's a clear system that would work in place, I'm hearing you say, that can get back up and running as soon as Israel would allow it to.
07:00But you mentioned there a little bit earlier the water supplies.
07:02We don't talk about it as much.
07:03But can you give us an idea of what the situation is like there and how widespread it is across Gaza?
07:07Yeah, it is an area that Oxfam is specialized and we are concerned about people reaching to safe water, drinking water.
07:18And so far, our aid, which contains the tablets for beautification of water, is not entering.
07:25Not also the pipes and the materials that are needed for fixing the bumps for the water are not there.
07:32What we hear is that very widespread of waterborne diseases, including 300 percent increase in bloody diarrhea and 150 percent increase in diarrhea.
07:44And it's things that happen because people drink contaminated water.
07:49And the water is also contaminated because of the amount of garbage that is spreading around,
07:54where almost 2 million people are crowded in 12 percent of the area of the Gaza Strip,
08:02which was, even before the world, the highest populated area in the world.
08:07And we are talking about population that almost 60 percent of our children.
08:13It means that children are actually living on garbage and drinking contaminated water and not eating proper food and suffering from all areas.
08:23And this is all a cause of death, which is very imminent, actually.
08:29The World Food Programme today said that one out of three people actually in the Gaza Strip now go days without eating anything or drinking clean water or even sleeping
08:39because of the continuous bombardment and the military operations around them.
08:44The level of suffering is hard to, we have to face that reality and accept the reality.
08:51But you've also talked briefly about the hospitals there.
08:54I mean, what is left running in Gaza?
08:56So many of them have been directly targeted and the doctors indeed as well.
08:59Before the war, there were 36 hospitals.
09:04Now there is only two big hospitals operating in the Gaza Strip.
09:08And most of them are crowded to the degree that people are laying on the ground because there are no beds available for them.
09:17Most of their machines are destroyed.
09:20There is no electricity, so they totally depend on generators, which means that any medical instruments that need electricity actually will stop as soon as the fuel stops reaching the hospitals.
09:35This means heart machines, dialysis machines, incubators for babies, anything that is related to the health that needs any electricity basically is not functioning.
09:51Doctors, I heard real stories about doctors in these hospitals who actually use some of the supplies,
09:59like the infusion to feed themselves, to give themselves some energy to keep them going because they are operating on tens and tens of injured people every day.
10:18And they have to lose patients and to choose which patient to actually help because they have a higher survival rate.
10:29Many of the people who work also in the, what we call civil service, the ambulances, the fire brigades, they are functioning basically without any tools.
10:42Most of their trucks were destroyed and they have to, sometimes families have to deliver the patients to the hospitals,
10:50carrying them on donkey carts or on their bicycles or anything that they can carry them on.
10:59So this hospital situation is very, very dire and it's very scary.
11:06The doctors and the nurses who are working there, some of them work shifts for weeks and without any stop because of the lack of personal power in the hospitals.
11:17And finally, Dr. Hadzadz, before we leave you, I mean, we are, of course, focusing on that hellish, unbearable situation in Gaza, but you're coming to us from the West Bank.
11:27What's the latest there? Because we have seen a sharp rise in the violence and attacks in the West Bank since the war in Gaza began as well.
11:33Absolutely. First of all, the different areas in the West Bank are disconnected almost totally with checkpoints and gates, iron gates that doesn't allow people to move freely.
11:46But since a week, actually, every day, at least one person is killed by settlers.
11:53And some, in one case, at least the settler was filmed while shooting a person and a teacher, a school teacher with four children, father of four children, was killed by gunshots by a settler who was filmed.
12:08And this is happening in many places. I live in Ramallah. Around Ramallah, there is always continuous attacks from settlers.
12:17The life is controlled totally by the checkpoints and the gates and restriction of movements, which is also very alarming.
12:27I think people are worried because also they watched what happened in the northern of the West Bank refugee camps, Janine, Tulkarem and Nablus, where they were basically totally destroyed.
12:40Same as in the Gaza Strip buildings where bulldozers, people were not allowed to take, retrieve their stuff.
12:48They were not allowed to take their things and they were evacuated in a hurry and ended up forcibly displaced in other villages surrounding the refugee camps.
13:00So I think there's a general environment of fear and intimidation and worry of what's going to happen next, also in the West Bank.
13:09Dr. Hadid Al-Hadzadz, we'll have to leave it there, but thank you so much for joining us with your time and bringing us more on the inside of those hellish situations in the Palestinian territories.
