GAZA CITY, Palestine / ISTANBUL

Palestinians of the Gaza Strip have to travel for miles every day to get something to eat under the ongoing starvation and Israeli genocidal war for more than 19 months in the enclave.

An Anadolu correspondent captured the daily struggle and movement of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip to the south via Al-Rasheed coastal road, the only available road after the closure of the Salah al-Din Street by the Israeli army, in pursuit of some food to feed their children and themselves.

Palestinians have to use carriages or tuk-tuks (3-wheel autorickshaws) during their challenging way to the food after the Israeli army banned the movement of the vehicles and trucks on the coastal road.

Brutal Starvation

Majeed Dabbour, driver of a tuk-tuk, tells the Anadolu correspondent that he spends two hours instead of 15 minutes on his way to reach one of his relatives in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip to get flour.

During his travel “full of dust and danger,” Majeed says that “Tuk-tuks have no chairs, the smell of the fuel is stifling, and there is a great pressure (on us).”

“The coastal road is the only way open, but any car moving on it gets targeted by Israeli army shelling, that’s why we are forced to use primitive vehicles,” Dabbour says.

He says they have to take risks to get the flour to feed their children, who have been subjected to the systematic starvation imposed by the Israeli army for more than two months.

Since March 2, Israel has kept Gaza’s crossings closed to food, medical, and humanitarian aid, deepening an already humanitarian crisis, according to government, human rights, and international reports.

Last week, Jonathan Fowler, the Senior Communications Manager for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told Anadolu that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip has reached “the worst” level since the outbreak of the Israeli onslaught in Oct. 2023.

The Palestinian driver deplores the severe famine that the people of the Gaza Strip are facing, noting that “even the flour in the north is spoiled and tainted and not suitable for human consumption.”

“No humanitarian aid enters (the Gaza Strip), no food is available, people have no work or incomes, and there is nothing to eat in their homes,” Dabbour says.

Escaping from one death to another

Sitting in a primitive carriage, with no windows or comfortable seats, Gazan passengers are chased by dust and surrounded by the smoke of the fuel, in a scene that proves the harshness of the trip and lack of options.

It is not only a means of transportation but an escape from one death to another.

Abdul Hamid, one of the passengers, describes his journey from the northern Gaza Strip to the central as “a risk fraught with danger.”

“We say the shahadas (Islamic prayer for declaration of faith) before we move, the Israeli boats are behind us in the sea, and the tanks are in front of us. Above us, Israeli planes are flying. We might be bombed any moment,” says Abdul Hamid.

He adds that the coastal road has become "the only dangerous road" after the Israeli army prevented the movement of vehicles there.

“We seek help from God, and we move,” Abdul Hamid says.

An elderly Palestinian woman, Umm Eyad Al-Lehaam, describes her first-time journey on the Al-Rasheed road to Khan Younis as “exhausting and hard for elder people.”

Ahmed Al-Banna, another tuk-tuk driver taking Palestinians from the north to the central Gaza Strip, says that the journey is “exhausting for both the driver and the passengers” due to the poor engine and the hardship of the road.

“We generally need to stop more than once for rest,” says Al-Banna. “Some of them (passengers) don’t speak out of extreme fatigue or fear. But there is no other choice; they want to achieve it in any way possible.”

Last week, the director of Gaza’s government media office, Ismail Thawabteh , told Anadolu that the enclave had entered “an advanced stage of famine” due to the continued closure of border crossings and Israel’s renewed military onslaught.

Over 52,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.