Palestinians are counting lentils, as Gaza food crisis worsens
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4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
For more than ten weeks, Israel has halted the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages. Israel accuses Hamas of seizing aid, selling it on the black market and using aid distribution to reinforce its control of Gaza.
The UN says hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting at the border. Meanwhile, inside Gaza, food is scarce. Humanitarian groups like the UN World Food Programme (WFP) exhausted supplies of basic staples weeks ago, forcing them to shut down their kitchens and bakeries, and everyday Palestinians are grinding up pasta and lentils to make flour for bread. Antoine Renard of the WFP says when he was in Gaza last week, wheat flour was selling for $10 a pound.
Juana Summers talks with Renard about what he's seen in Gaza, and what's next for the people there.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For a lot of people living in Gaza, each day is centered on one thing, getting something in their |
| 0:06.2 | stomachs to keep hunger at bay. Right now, that means stretching dwindling supplies, because Israel |
| 0:12.2 | is enforcing a total blockade on aid coming into Gaza. In Jabalia, in northern Gaza, NPR's Anasbaba, |
| 0:20.4 | talked to families waiting to grind small bags of lentils and beans into flour to make bread. |
| 0:26.9 | There's barely any wheat flour left in Gaza. |
| 0:30.1 | This is not how Palestinians eat in peacetime. |
| 0:33.1 | Lenthal soup is more common. |
| 0:35.2 | But it doesn't last long in the stomach, Mustafa Shalail tells Anas. |
| 0:43.0 | Bread made from lentil flour helps the hunger stay away longer, he says. Israel imposed the |
| 0:48.5 | blockade 10 weeks ago to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages. It accuses Hamas of seizing aid, selling it on the |
| 0:56.3 | black market, and using aid distribution to reinforce its control of Gaza. Here's Israeli finance |
| 1:03.2 | minister Betzal Smutritch speaking at a conference last month. |
| 1:11.5 | Read my lips, not a gregniz of gregers of chita in a way to getia to Hamas. |
| 1:16.9 | Read my lips, not a single grain of wheat will enter if it ends up in Hamas's hands. |
| 1:28.9 | In Gaza, 60-year-old Nadia al-Masri needs balls of a cranny dough made from lentil flour, |
| 1:30.6 | soaked pasta, and water. |
| 1:34.3 | Her family of 12 lives in one classroom in a packed school, |
| 1:39.0 | housing hundreds of families with worn tarps serving as makeshift walls. |
| 1:44.7 | She tells Anas Baba that this is the worst hunger her family has faced since the start of the war. |
| 1:54.2 | Hunger, she says, is when your children cry themselves to sleep. They're too hungry. |
| 2:02.1 | Why are you punishing everyone, she asks? |
| 2:04.2 | What do we have to do with Hamas? |
... |
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