It’s been a bad year for aid workers trying to help Gazans caught in the middle between Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). And the horizon remains dark for Gazans looking ahead into 2025. Their last major soup kitchen has been crippled in a drone attack…
What remains of Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza following raid, destruction
and burning by IDF troops last week. Local Soup Kitchen also displaced by raid.
Israel continues to ignore international outrage and demands that it stand down its efforts to era-dicate the Hamas movement. Meanwhile more damage has been inflicted on Gaza’s civilian infra-structure and aid workers’ efforts…
Last stand?
A few days ago, the mainstream media reported that the last major medical facility operating in Gaza – Kamal Adwan Hospital – had been ‘evacuated’ at gunpoint by the IDF after weeks of unheeded poking and prodding aimed at getting it to shut down. And claims it was sheltering Hamas fighters.
However, it was not only the hospital but groups who had been trying to help the facility stay open that were being pressed to abandon their efforts. Notably, a Gazan-run soup kitchen, that had been feeding more than 3,000 civillians as well as hospital patients and staff every day, had to temporarily shut down.
The Gaza Soup Kitchen in Beit Lahiya was forced to fall back and regroup after its co-founder and leader Chef Mahmoud Almadhoun was killed in an Israeli drone attack December 13.
“We believe he was killed because of his unwavering dedication to solving problems for Kamal Adwan Hospital and ensuring they had whatever they needed,” Mahmoud’s brother Hani alleged in an Instagram post. “Mahmoud was a lifeline, standing in the way of the ethnic cleansing they are determined to carry out—and they would not allow that to continue.”
Down but not out
The Soup Kitchen is now open again, but at much-reduced capacity, serving only about 800 meals a day. However it’s operating at three separate locations spread over a broader area north of Gaza City.
Meanwhile, the aid program being run by World Central Kitchen was stood down as unsustainable earlier in the fall. Its last supply line was totally cut when the floating pier and freight unloading facility on the Gazan coast, provided and run by the US Navy, was permanently removed. That move was occasioned by bad weather, rather than any action by the IDF.
My take
What will become of the nearly 1 million Gazans currently facing a level-5 starvation emergency remains to be seen…
~ Maggie J.