Antoine Renard is director of the World Food Program (PAM) in Palestine. The world joined him while he is on a mission in Gaza.
You have been in Gaza since Monday, July 28. What signs of famine do you see?
The very emaciated faces that we see are an index of the wave of hunger in progress. A deir al-Balah, a mother told me to spend sometimes two days without eating in order to feed her three children, to whom she is unable to give only a little pita bread, and have lost 20 pounds since the start of the war [en octobre 2023]. The individuals who were able to help, during the twenty-two months spent, this family, already very poor before the conflict, can no longer afford it: each home in Gaza is at a survival stage.
Near Khan Younès, a father of three, with very fine faces, told me that he had gone, for the first time, close to help convoys, because food distribution systems are unable to work and there are only sixty collective kitchens throughout the Gaza Strip. He managed to get a bag of flour. He was crying by talking to me: a man, whom he had seen on the spot with his child, died after receiving a lost bullet. That is to tell you the level of despair: the Gazaouis risk their lives for a kilo of flour.
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