Amid Israeli airstrikes on Iran, Iranian missile barrages against Israel, and rising speculation over the U.S. role in their deepening conflict, residents of the Gaza Strip fear they are being forgotten, as Israel’s other war rages on in the background.
Starvation in the enclave is worsening, residents say. Communication networks and humanitarian services are being cut due to dwindling fuel.
Reports continue of Israeli forces firing on crowds gathering near food distribution sites. Dozens of Palestinians are being killed daily, eyewitnesses and United Nations and Gaza health officials say.
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Palestinians in Gaza say they are contending daily with deadly air strikes and widespread hunger. But they fear the world is looking away, as the Israel-Iran war has pushed the Israel-Hamas war from front pages.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza continue. In a 24-hour period last week, airstrikes and gunfire killed 120 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
But, say beleaguered Palestinians, you would not know this from following international news, where Gaza is being pushed from front pages and news packages in favor of the Israel-Iran war.
Gaza residents say their deepest fear is being realized: global silence over their suffering.
“If the war between Iran and Israel continues, we might be forgotten,” says Nasser Abu Shalouf, a former farmer who recently survived chaos and shooting at an aid distribution center. “And if we are forgotten, we will die and nobody will help us.”
“Starvation is killing us,” he says flatly, noting that a child from his displacement camp was recently killed waiting for aid. “I used to grow everything we ate. Now I stand in line and pray we don’t die trying to feed our children.”
Palestinians liken the current struggle for the world’s attention to what happened at the onset of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
“It will now all be ‘Iran and Israel, Iran and Israel.’ Just like at the beginning of the [Israel-Hamas] war, people forgot about the war between Russia and Ukraine, and Gaza was in the headlines,” Mr. Abu Shalouf says.
In Gaza, Israel hasn’t slowed
Across Gaza, people note that the Israel-Iran conflict has not slowed Israel’s ongoing offensive in the enclave.
“I thought the war between Iran and Israel would distract Israel from bombing us,” says Makka al-Omary, a mother of seven sheltering in central Gaza. “But that is not the case. They keep bombing. We keep dying.”
Ms. Omary has lost six family members since the war began, she says: brothers, a son-in-law, a nephew. Now she fears the losses will continue without witness.
“All our lives have been turned upside down: our minds, our money, our homes, our sources of income – all gone. And now the world looks away.”
Mustafa Ibrahim, a writer and political analyst, notes how international attention has shifted.
“At the beginning there was great media coverage of the war. Now we are a passing news item in the Arab world,” Mr. Ibrahim says, “so what are we to the rest of the world?”
Ms. Omary dismisses Iran’s missile barrages into Israel as serving only Tehran’s interests.
“Iran doesn’t strike Israel for our interest. It does it for their own; no one is doing anything for us,” she says. “If they wanted to solve our issue, why did they wait so long?”
Mr. Ibrahim criticizes the polarization and stances of Arab governments and populations.
“Some in the region who hate Israel want rockets to fall there; other Arab countries who hate Iran want it wiped out. As Palestinians, we pay the price,” he says.
Mr. Ibrahim believes the Iran-Israel conflict is a continuation of the collapse of the post-World War II international order.
“The international community is complicit. They write the laws and break them. Palestinians are not granted the right to live or even to be seen,” he says.
“A chilling pattern”
The struggle for life-saving aid is ongoing in Gaza, with people faced with the difficult choice between going hungry and risking their lives to secure some food.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says 397 Palestinians have been killed trying to collect aid and more than 3,000 have been wounded since aid deliveries restarted in late May.
In one incident June 17, some 56 people were reported killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike near a distribution hub located between Deir al-Balah and Gaza City. The incident was barely mentioned on Arab news networks.
“It’s a chilling pattern,” Jonathan Whittall, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement following the incident. “Repeatedly, survivors recount being attacked as they try to reach the aid that they need to survive.”
The controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation continues to release daily statements in which it claims to deliver millions of meals to Palestinians. It also denies security violations at its distribution sites and accuses Hamas of disinformation.
Few Palestinians in Gaza believe these mass casualty incidents are “accidents.” Even so, hunger leaves Gaza residents no choice.
“I swore I would never go back,” says Mr. Abu Shalouf, the former farmer, recently returned from an aid site. “But starvation pushed me. Hunger forced me to risk my life.”
Palestinians in Gaza say they do not ask for pity; they ask only for peace.
“We don’t raise our children for war,” says Mr. Abu Shalouf. “We want to live like the rest of the world, with dignity, not in tents. We love life.”
“The international community must act now. Stop the war. Stop the killing,” Mr. Ibrahim adds. “Stop forgetting Gaza.”
