Whether she would be one of the fortunate few to get any bread was an open question.  The bakery owner had used the last of his flour that day and was rationing the amount of bread sold to each customer, trying to serve as many as possible before closing his doors.

For several weeks now, Palestinian officials, UNRWA, various NGOs and the flour mill owners themselves had been telling anyone who would listen that the prolonged closure of the Karni commercial crossing between Gaza and Israel, had put the Gaza Strip on a collision course with a humanitarian crisis.  Normally, Gaza's seven flour mills keep an emergency stock of 30 to 60 days' supply of wheat.  Most bakery owners keep a similar stock of flour.  The mills were using up their critical emergency inventory, but the Israeli government kept the Karni crossing closed, as it had been for over six weeks, citing security reasons.

The alarm has been sounded for weeks of growing shortages of items normally imported from Israel—dairy products, powdered milk, rice and sugar.  Finally, all those items were gone.  Then, worst of all, wheat, flour, and bread were nowhere to be found.  By the afternoon on Saturday, March 18, you could walk for hours around Gaza City, checking bakery after bakery, and finding nothing at all.  That did not prevent long lines forming on the streets by each bakery, hoping against hope to find bread.

As always, the most vulnerable are most severely affected.  Even middle-class Gazans have trouble imagining a meal without bread, but for the poorest citizens, very often bread is not just their main foodstuff, but their only food.  Forty percent of  Palestinian children are already malnourished—missing meals entirely for a few days can easily send them into serious illness.  Right now, Gaza's doctors and hospitals can do little to help them, as regular delivery of vital drugs and medical supplies have been choked off  as well by the prolonged closure of the Karni commercial terminal.  The Gaza agricultural sector has also been devastated, as farmers have watched their harvest of vegetables, strawberries and cut flowers, packed on trucks for export to European markets, rot in the sun as they waited in vain for the border to open.  Gaza's economy has been losing between US$500,000 and US$600,000 daily during the closure.

Mustapha Shurab, general director of the Palestinian Flour Mill Company in north Gaza, normally supplies flour for more than half the bakeries in the Gaza Strip. His company also has contracts to supply all the flour for the World Food Program in Gaza and half the flour supply for UNRWA's food distribution program.  On Monday, Shurab said, "We are now completely out of wheat.  I had to close when the very last of my inventory was gone.  The World Food distribution and UNRWA's normal aid programs are halted.   I personally know 20 bakeries who have had to close, and others will use the last of their emergency supplies in a matter of hours."

Asked if this constituted a crisis, Shurab replied, "It is very painful to say yes.  Even worse when hungry people have come directly to my mill and I cannot help them. I know many families in Gaza who depend on the charity of bakery owners—many small neighborhood shops quietly help the poorest people.  But what will those people do now?"

The Israeli government is fond of pointing out it has repeatedly offered to send food and medicine through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the far south of Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority has refused.  Cynical observers speculate that the PA refusal is based on the fact it cannot charge its usual inflated fees at Kerem Shalom, but it is irrefutable that the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing is only a fraction of the size of the Karni cargo terminal.  Even if Kerem Shalom operated at peak capacity and efficiency, sufficient food and medicine to meet the minimal needs of Gaza's 1.3 million people could never be processed through the small facility.

In a surprising but welcome move, the American Ambassador to Israel called an emergency meeting for Israeli, Palestinian, EU and UN representatives in his Tel Aviv home Sunday evening in which the Palestinian side agreed to an emergency opening of Kerem Shalom while pressing for continuing talks on a reliable re-opening of the Karmi crossing.

The word early Monday was that Karni would re-open for two hours that afternoon to admit trucks of flour and sugar.  Mustapha Shurab, and his UNRWA contacts all agreed this concession was more cosmetic than practical.  "This does not begin to normalize the situation," he said.  "With our stocks totally depleted, operating Karni at peak capacity around the clock for a week would not bring things back to normal."

In fact, while the Karni crossing did open Monday, the Israelis closed the border after only 30 minutes, citing a security alert.   Only a few trucks loaded with flour actually made it into Palestine, "Not even enough to feed five hundred families!" exclaimed Mr. Shurab.  He pointed out that the average family of eight uses about 50 kilos of flour in a month.  The Israeli authorities said they might re-open Karni at 8am Tuesday, "depending on the security situation."

The Tel Aviv government insists this extended border closure and the resulting impending famine in Gaza is purely due to security concerns.  However, in Gaza, the border closure is widely seen as collective punishment for the January election results that gave the Islamist Hamas party a solid majority in the Palestinian Parliament.  One wonders, though, how to parse out the nuances—should we call it a "crisis" now when hungry people are lining up outside bakeries throughout Gaza, and save the term "disaster" for the day when Gazans die of starvation?  These fine points of reporting, however, probably matter little to Mrs. Abdelal and hundreds of thousands like her who, if not Saturday night, then on Sunday, had to explain to her little boy why he had to go to bed hungry.

Mohammed Omer is a freelance journalist based in Rafah, Gaza Strip.  He's a regular contributor to The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs and the BBC.  His website is http://www.rafahtoday.org
 

Couples Company also received the following plea today from the Middle East Children's Alliance, based in Berkley, California.  If you'd like to help get food to those starving in Gaza, here's how: As you probably know, families throughout the Gaza Strip are suffering from a terrible lack of food. It started after last year’s “disengagement” and has become critical since the Palestinian Legislative Election two months ago. Israel controls the Karni crossing, through which goods go in and out of Gaza, and has kept it closed almost constantly. Just this morning I spoke with my dear friend Dr. Mona Elfarra in Gaza. I called to ask her about the crisis and what MECA and our supporters could do to help. She told me that last month there was no baby formula. Now there is no flour. All the bakeries in Gaza are closed. Normally, bread is a staple of the Palestinian diet, and often the only food families can afford. Due to recent international pressure, the Israeli government is opening the Karni crossing sporadically and some food is getting through. With your immediate help we can get this food to hungry children in Gaza. Our goal is to raise $10,000 by this coming Friday, March 24, to feed 200 families. We will wire your contribution, along with hundreds of others, directly to Dr. Mona. She’s working with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to put together and distribute parcels of milk, cheese and other staples for families in Gaza. The children are hungry and they are counting on you and me – as they have many times before – for help. Please don’t delay. Send an online contribution to the Middle East Children's Alliance right now, and please be as generous as you possibly can. The callousness of the Israeli government—which is legally bound to let humanitarian aid through—is alarming. After the Palestinians elected members of Hamas, a leading advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister said that cutting aid is “like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die." Today an Israeli official (speaking anonymously) confirmed that the Karni closure was in part to send a message to Hamas. Meanwhile, outside the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, a demonstration that included 30 Palestinian children urged Israel to let food through. Please stand with these brave children—and hundreds of thousands of others who are going to bed hungry night after night—by making an online contribution right now. Thank you for helping us feed the children. Sincerely, Barbara Lubin Founder and Executive Director Click here to make an online donation!   Situation Background In early February, Israel moved quickly to punish the Palestinians for exercising their right to vote and withheld $ 50 million in Palestinian tax revenues. In a move to deflect any criticism of its punitive decision to freeze the reimbursements, Israel said it would do nothing to hamper humanitarian aid missions to the West Bank and Gaza and that it would uphold its November agreement that it would not prohibit goods from leaving or entering Gaza. It has done just the opposite. For the past two months Israel has stopped regular foodstuffs and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, including desperately needed anesthetics and life saving nutritional supplements like baby formula. It also stopped all Palestinian exports from Gaza so that Gaza’s farmers have suffered losses that they will never recoup. By March 19, Israel’s two-part, 60 day closure of the al-Mintar Crossing (Karni Crossing) in the Gaza strip had caused an unprecedented food shortage and cost Palestinians more than $50 million dollars in economic losses, especially in agriculture. For weeks, Palestinian Human Rights Organizations, the UN and international aid and economic bodies were warning of major humanitarian crisis and called on Israel to end the siege. The national news reported that on March 20, Israel re-opened the crossing for a few hours allowing several trucks to enter and deliver several loads of non-essential goods like soda pop. Today, Israel again opened the crossing and allowed some wheat flour, cooking oil and other emergency items to enter. Israel did not say, however, that today’s opening was to be permanent. It will take more than just a few shipments today to get UN distribution centers back up to capacity and Gazan bread shops up and running again.   email: meca@mecaforpeace.org phone: 510-548-0542 web: http://www.mecaforpeace.org