Israel’s total blockade of Gaza has created ‘catastrophic’ conditions, doctors say

It is more than 60 days ago that Israel is one Stop until all humanitarian aid Gaza coming in – no food, fuel or even medicines.

While the phone calls flow in, Muneer Alboursh, the director -general of the Health Minister of Gaza, has no more answers.

The longer the total siege of Israel grinds from the enclave, the more doctors call to ask where they can find medicines to keep patients alive. Some patients call on him themselves – people with treatable heart problems or kidney failure – to ask: if there is no medicine, what else can they try?

“There is no advice I can give them,” he said. “In most cases those patients die.”

Israel says it will not allocate until Hamas releases the hostages who still take it after a two months Cease-fire collapsed in In March. It has argued that the blockade is legal and that Gaza still has sufficient available provisions.

But humanitarian groups and European officials accuse Israel of using help as a “political tool” – and warning that the total blockade Violates international law.

The seriousness of the siege means that it now influences almost every part of the lives of about two million people in Gaza, so that the struggles of a population are compiled that almost two decades among the Partial blockage Pointed by Israel and supported by Egypt after Hamas seized control of the enclave in 2007.

While stocks of clean water, food and medicines are declining, diseases and diseases can be prevented – as well as the chance of dying to them, doctors say.

Auxiliary groups are increasingly increasing the alarm drastic messagesWarning that the humanitarian support for Gazanen ‘is about to be a total collapse’.

“To the Israeli authorities, and those who can still reason with them, we say again: lift this brutal blockade,” said Tom FletcherThe UN Humanitarian Chef. He added: “The citizens remained unprotected, no apology can be sufficient. But I am really sorry that we cannot move the international community to prevent this injustice.”

Every morning, Gazans harms a day -long struggle to obtain the needs of life.

Bakeries are forced to close. At the end of last month, the UN agency said that Palestinian refugees helps the flour supplies had been touched, and the World Food Program said it had supplied the last of his supplies to food kitchens.

The only food that is available for many Gazans – in particular those of the 90 percent of the population that lives displaced and usually lives in tents – comes from local charity kitchens, some of which are looted as the hunger crisis becomes deeper.

Ahmed Mohsen, 30, a construction worker, spends about two hours a day in line to fill his pot. On the day he spoke with the New York Times, he was only normal rice.

The prices of food that is still available in markets quoted by the local population are astronomical for an impoverished population that is largely unable to work in the midst of the war: canned vegetables are now about $ 8 or 10 times as much as for the siege; And a pocket flour that cost about $ 5 earlier is now around $ 300.

“Imagine that you have not tasted meat, a cooked egg or even an apple in months,” said Mr. Mohsen.

Ahmed Al-Nems, 32, a grocer who is displaced to Gaza City, lives on an occasional can of food and a supply of flower, lentils and traffic beans that his family hopes to stretch for a few weeks by eating a single meal a day. His mother cooks on a fire fed with torn shoes because there is no fuel.

“We eat once a day, in the afternoon, and that’s it,” he said. “I feel that I can’t breathe when I see that my brothers and sisters are still hungry.”

A monitoring system for malnutrition supported by the UN, the integrated classification of the food safety phase, recently started with a new assessment to determine whether the conditions in Gaza amount to Hunger Nood.

All, the Said the United Nations91 percent of the population analyzed – just below the approximately two million in Gaza – is estimated at ‘food insecurity’, with the most sustainable ’emergency case’ or ‘catastrophic’ levels.

The Israeli authority that supervises auxiliary access to Gaza has repeatedly that argued This report supported by the UN contains “factual and methodological defects, some seriously.”

In recent days, local journalists and Palestinian health authorities have uploaded multiple videos from sickly, skeleton- children.

Malnutrition has had knockdown effects on the entire medical system.

Burn -victims from the Israeli bombing cannot obtain enough food for skin transplants to cure.

In the Al-Shifa Hospital, the head of Nephrology, Dr. Ghazi al-Yazji, watches sheaths in patients.

“Dialysis patients need a balanced diet, but everyone mainly survives canned food,” he said.

Medication shortages mean that he has reduced the weekly dialysis sessions of his patients to three times a week from three and she has shortened. The rationing will gradually cause toxins to build up in their bodies, he said.

But he has no choice: “Otherwise, patients would go completely without dialysis, which would be fatal.”

Medications to treat blood pressure and diabetes gradually decrease, he added, while heart catheters are almost exhausted and everyone she needs will probably die.

The Ministry of Health of Gaza says that his warehouses are now from the 37 percent of the ‘essential medicines’.

The Israeli authorities say that the United Nations, auxiliary groups and private companies have introduced enormous stocks during the ceasefire that must ensure that the population can still meet its needs. It accuses Hamas of hoarding supplies and depriving his own population.

But auxiliary prospools contacted by the Times insist that some supplies – in particular produce, some medicines, cooking gas and the type of fuel used by ambulances – are simply on.

And although some warehouses stay in Gaza, they often can’t just reach them.

Because the new bombing of Israel has collapsed after the ceasefire has collapsed, it has declared more and more evacuation and no-go zones, as a result of which approximately 420,000 Gazans flee again and block access to around 70 percent of the enclave, according to the UN estimates.

Gaining access to warehouses in these areas requires coordination with the Israeli army, which, according to various care providers, was a long, bureaucratic process, often refused with permission.

The Israeli authorities who are responsible for responsible access to Gaza have not commented on specific questions about the help situation in Gaza and referred the questions to the Prime Minister’s office. The Prime Minister’s office did not comment.

The blockade has even influenced the production of clean water, said Paula Navarro, the water and sanitation coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza.

Generators in the most important desalination installation of Gaza produce drinking water with only 10 percent of the usual capacity, she said, after Israel had also cut off electricity in the blockade.

Now even that production is in danger, with fuel shops inaccessible.

“The estimate is that 90 percent of the fuel nowadays in Gaza is in storage is inaccessible as a result of evacuation orders,” she said.

Most Gazans cannot pick up clean water anyway, she said, due to major damage to water pipelines and long waiting lines at water trucks.

Instead, many turn to drill holes with unsanitary water or use Israeli water pipes that reach Gaza, but are damaged in the war. The use of unclean water has led to a peak in jaundice, diarrhea and scab cases, Mrs. Navarro said.

“Drinkable water has become increasingly rare, so people have adapted,” said Ahmed al-I-AJA, a father of three who, like most others in Gaza City, now drink salt water. “The effect of the blockade is now visible on the faces of people – everyone is pale. Their nerves have been shot.”

Dr. Al-Yazji, in the Al-Shifa Hospital, says that he is still trying to advise his patients on how to retain a healthy lifestyle. But every day it seems pointless.

“Without urgent intervention and resumption of help, we will lose more patients,” he said. “We are confronted with a catastrophic situation.”

Iyad Abuheweila contributed report from Istanbul, and Farnaz Fassihi from New York.