AT least 74 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn on Monday, including 36 aid seekers, as the United Nations warns that 28 children are dying a day from Israeli bombardment and lack of aid.
Israeli media has reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold a security cabinet meeting tomorrow, as he weighs possibility of launching operation to take full control of Gaza.
Hamas says it is open to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering aid to Israeli captives in Gaza if Israel opens “humanitarian corridors” to deliver aid to all people in Gaza.
That comes as authorities in Gaza say an average of 84 trucks have entered the besieged enclave a day since Israel somewhat eased restrictions on July 27. Aid organisations say at least 600 aid trucks are needed per day to meet the territory’s basic needs.
Meanwhile, as Israel’s forced starvation tightens its grip on Gaza’s entire population, an increasing number of Palestinian families are frantically searching for news of relatives who undertook perilous journeys to get food from aid distribution points, never to return.
Khaled Obaid has been searching for his beloved son, Ahmed, for two months, scanning every passing vehicle on the coastal road in Deir-el-Balah, hoping against all odds that one of them might bring him home.
The boy had left the displaced family’s tent in the central town to find food for his parents and sister, who had lost her husband during the war, and headed to the Zikim crossing point, where aid trucks enter northern Gaza.
“He hasn’t returned until now. He went because he was hungry. We have nothing to eat,” the distraught father told Al Jazeera, breaking down in tears with his wife under the blue tarpaulin where they are sheltering.
Khaled reported his son’s disappearance to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and every official body he could reach, to radio silence. To this day, he has received no answers on Ahmed’s whereabouts.
Khaled’s story is all too common under Israel’s ongoing punishing blockade of Gaza, where the largely displaced population faces a stark choice between starvation and braving the bullets fired by Israeli soldiers and United States security contractors in a bid to get food from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. These distribution points have been dubbed “death traps” and “human slaughterhouses” by the United Nations and rights groups.
It is a life-or-death gamble that has taken the lives of nearly 1,400 people, shot dead mainly by the Israeli army, at the aid sites since they started operations in late May and along food convoy routes, according to figures released by the UN last week. That is, without counting the untold numbers of missing aid seekers, like Ahmed.
Human rights monitors have been collecting harrowing firsthand accounts of people who have gone missing in Gaza, only to be found later, killed by Israeli forces.
“In many cases, those who went missing are apparently killed near the aid distribution points, but due to the Israeli targeting, their bodies remained unreachable,” Maha Hussaini, the head of media at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera.
“Many Palestinians left home with empty hands, hoping to return with a bag of flour. But many never came back,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir-el-Balah. “In Gaza, the line between survival and disappearance is now heartbreakingly thin.”
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 60,933 people and wounded 150,027. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023 attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.