Front Burner - A compounding crisis in Gaza

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

After weeks of Israeli bombardment, and now a ground invasion, Gaza is in desperate need of food, water, fuel and electricity. We hear about the humanitarian crisis on the ground. Today, a first hand account of the conditions at the center of Gaza from Amjad Shawa, coordinator for the Palestinian NGO Network. Details on the UN World Food Program’s struggles to get aid to those who need it in Gaza from spokesperson Alia Zaki. And Gaza Medic Voices founder Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan shares the accounts of health workers in Gazan hospitals as fuel shortages make some care impossible.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Can you take me, I just want listeners to get a sense of when you go outside, what are you seeing? I just want listeners to get a sense of when you go outside, what are you seeing? I see darkness. Now I'm on the balcony of the apartment

that I'm living in with about four other families. About 35 people. I can see, I tell you that this full darkness, we're just the JIT fighters over, the 16 JIT fighters, I can see, I can listen. You can hear them right now? Yeah, I can see the light.

It's mixed with the stars, but the stars are beautiful. This is, this ugly JIT fighters, which get deaf. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. And that's what Amjad Shawa told me as he looked out from Deir el-Bala, a city in the center of the Gaza Strip. He saw a sky full of beautiful stars and Israeli fighter jets. Ugly, he told me, because they bring death. Just about three, four buildings from here.

There was about four homes which was completely destroyed by a strike. About 30 people and all of them from Gaza were killed. I could see the bodies in there. Oh, I'm sorry. I reached Amjad Tuesday night in Gaza over a phone line that threatened to cut out. The internet had already been dropping in and out all day. Amjad is the coordinator with the Palestinian NGO Network, an umbrella group of aid and rights organizations in the Palestinian territories. And so I asked him what the situation is like on the ground after over three weeks of bombardment. Sir, I don't know how to describe it, since it was catastrophic.

We are in the worst conditions we are since we have these intensive airstrikes all over Gaza Strip. We have about 1.5 million who are displaced from Gaza North and also in the South. There's airst are strikes where some thousands of housing units were destroyed. So they're moving these people, the rest of the people who are still alive, to the schools in very bad conditions. Now we have a shortage of drinking water. How bad is the shortage of drinking water? I can tell you that sometimes it's impossible to go back to your home with a bottle of drinking water. Gazans continue to struggle for essentials under Israel's, quote, complete siege,

which is blocking nearly all food, water, fuel, and electricity. And you could see every morning thousands of people in line to get the bread. And while some aid trucks have been coming into Gaza from Egypt for over a week now, Amjad seemed almost angry when I asked him about how much aid was actually getting through. You know how many trucks enter Gaza from December to October till now?

Tell me. It's about 130, 140 trucks. Daily, Gaza, in normal times, Tell me. It's also been almost three weeks since Israel ordered a complete evacuation of northern Gaza, and the country's escalated airstrikes ever since. Amjad mentioned his horror over a strike on the Jabalia refugee camp on Tuesday, which the Gazan health ministry said killed 50 people and injured 150 others. Israel said it had targeted and killed a senior Hamas leader and claimed the group had an underground base below the neighborhood. A witness described that it, quote, felt like the end of the world and that seven to eight holes, craters in the ground were

filled with dead people, body parts, quote, all over the place. On Wednesday, Israel hit the camp with another bombing. Amjad told me how the effects of all this devastation are piling up. Our neighbor, her cousin, he was a cancer patient. And you know that medical treatments, the hospitals were very busy. And the injured people, we have, you know, about 20,000 people were injured. And all the intensive care units are divided by the injured. We couldn't be evacuated to any place.

So he died at his home. So he died in silence, and there is no place to have a grave for him. So he died in silence, and there's no place to have a grave for him. Amjad told me everyone has stories like this. He told me his own brother-in-law died in an airstrike after returning north to his family home to get clothing for their children. And Amjad is especially worried about Gaza's children. Half the population there is under 18. I have a child, the youngest one, he's 14 years. He was born in 2008. 2008, the first big war, the ancient Gaza. Then we have 2012, another war, 2014. And then we have 2020, 2023.

The day after his family arrived in the city of Deir el-Bala, Amjad said his son had gone out to buy something when Israel bombarded the neighborhood. Just in front of him was the air strike. He laid on the ground and you cannot, you know, 30 minutes that we are looking and searching, but we find him. Thank God he's safe. You know, but every time I'm sleeping beside me, I'm hiding him. Of course. He's awake most of the time. He's in a very bad psychological state.

I'm trying to give him some support, but it will affect him for a long time, for sure. Israel's offensive has now entered a new phase with a ground invasion coming in from both the north and in the south below Gaza City. The IDF is expanding its attack, deploying more troops and tanks moving towards Gaza City on two sides. Airstrikes, flattening buildings, burying people every day with little hope of rescue. Hamjad left me with this message. the innocent people. Who? Who? These Western countries used to fund and support democracy and human rights. This is the real time.

The issue is not funding. The issue, we need to see it on the ground and voting and pressuring to stop massacres. I want to take a deeper look at some of the concerns Amjad raised about life in Gaza, the desperate lack of water and food, and some of the factors behind that. So I'm joined now by Alia Zaki in Jerusalem.

She's the spokesperson for the Palestine Office of the World Food Program. The WFP has been distributing emergency food items to Gazans and has trucks full of supplies waiting to enter from Egypt. Alia, thanks so much for coming on FrontBurner. I really appreciate it. Thank you. So we recently spoke with Amjad Shawa with the Palestinian NGO Network, and he's currently in the city of Deir el-Bala, which is in the middle of Gaza. And he mentioned that finding drinking water was becoming a real struggle for him and his family. I want to get a sense from you, how much clean water is available in Gaza right now? Well, I mean, the main water salination plants of Gaza have either been destroyed or are no longer

operational because of the lack of fuel. So people are having very limited access to clean water. having very limited access to clean water. On average, in some European countries, people consume around 140 to 180 liters of water a day. And this is for everything, you know, for drinking, for wash, for all the purposes. But right now, it's estimated that on average, people in Gaza only have access to three liters of water per day per person. And these are the lucky ones, because in some cases, it's down to even just one liter. So it's really a catastrophic situation in the sense we're hearing not just from the people that we serve,

but also from our colleagues and our team on the ground that they're resorting to drinking water from wells that are unsafe and unclean to drink. They're now in Khan Yunis where there was a major strike today. And he says they're drinking water meant for toilets now, but that's what it has come to. So what's the concern there

for health if they're drinking from these sources that aren't clean? Well, of course, there's a really increased risk of the infectious diseases and of malnutrition coming from this because the body is not adjusted to drinking water that's not safe. And so, of course, with the hospitals and the healthcare facilities shutting down one by one and not having the ability to operate, there won't even be a mechanism in place to make sure that any diseases that can come out can be treated. One of the things that Amjad mentioned when I spoke with him too was the difficulty getting bread and I guess more generally food. His family had been living on rice that they found, some potatoes. So I wanted to ask you when it comes to food,

how little are some people being forced to live on? Well, I can tell you from the distributions that we're doing and WFP has been trying and planning to provide at least fresh bread and canned food to all the displaced people in shelters. And I can tell you that sometimes when the bread reaches these people, they would say that it's the only thing that they have had to eat during that day. And we were doing our monitoring and trying to understand the accessibility of the markets and all of this. And every day we're warning that whatever food stocks were available in Gaza, which were already not enough, because, of course, there was, I think, more than 500 commercial and aid trucks coming into Gaza every day to meet the needs of the people.

And for the longest time, it was cut off. So even this pre-existing stock was running out. But even this pre-existing stock was not available for shops, for the regular people. They can't move from where they are to go to where the food is. And so this was a major issue, primarily for the markets that are functioning. And then we started seeing at the shop level.

So there are shops that are still operating, but they're running out of the basic food commodities. So things like sunflower oil or wheat flour or pasta or things that are just basic commodities for people to just basically have a meal, they're running out and they could be completely gone within a few days. And if we look at the people

in shelters, it's even harder for them because they don't even have the resources to prepare the food. There's no water, there's no electricity, there's no cooking gas for them. They're fully just relying on ready to eat canned food or bread when it becomes available. And even that bread is the ability of it to become available is decreasing day by day. Initially, when we started the operation, we were working with around 23 bakeries to deliver fresh bread to more than 200,000 people in shelters every day. Today, only one of the bakeries we're working with is able to operate. And we were only able to reach around 20,000 people. And is that just because of the lack of commodities and I guess the general infrastructure?

Well, majority of bakeries have run out of fuel to be able to operate their machinery and to be able to actually produce the bread, which is one of the biggest challenges that we're having in running this operation or in trying to ensure that people are still getting this aid. Because without fuel, the machines aren't running. The bread can't be made. And let's say a bakery has a fuel supply or even is not relying on machinery and they can get the bread out. It's not safe. They don't have safe access for them to deliver from the bakery to the shelter. And even bakeries themselves, we're receiving reports almost every day of bakeries being directly hit.

One of the bakeries we were working with was also directly hit. And so with the damage of infrastructure, with the violence, with the lack of safety, with the lack of fuel, it's becoming increasingly more challenging to make sure that the little aid that is available is going to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is

confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. This weekend, the UN said thousands of people broke into its warehouses in Gaza taking food, including from your organization, the World Food Program. What do those break-ins signal to you? It's the sense of desperation. People aren't just going hungry. They're becoming more and more desperate.

This food was meant to reach them safely. So this food had arrived in the day before through the Rafah crossing, and it was meant to be distributed immediately. But then there was a telecommunications cut. And with the lack of connectivity, which is another challenge that is making it harder for our operations to run, we were not able to distribute it to the people on that day. And also, as other UN colleagues mentioned, it's a sign that the civil order is collapsing, and this is really a catastrophe. And are you seeing signs of malnutrition? Are you concerned about starvation? We're very concerned about the threat of starvation that could ensue before this crisis started. So before October 7, already 1.2 million people in Gaza were considered food insecure. So, you know, they don't know where their next meal is coming from.

That was more than half the population. Right now, we're looking at almost all the population being at a threat of being food insecure, of not knowing where their next meal is coming from. And of course, large, large numbers. Everybody who has been displaced, it's been 1.4 million people have been displaced. The numbers are increasing at a very, very rapid scale, but the needs and the humanitarian aid coming in and the resources for us to be able to operate are not matching. Let's talk about that. So there have been some aid trucks coming in through the Rafah border,

crossing with Egypt for about a week or so. When we spoke with Amjad on Tuesday, he said he had heard of maybe 140 trucks getting in. Can you give me a sense of what's coming in? How many trucks of aid are coming through? So the last figure that has been reported as of last night, so October 31 31st was that 217 trucks have entered so far yesterday had the highest number of trucks coming in in one day i know that a hundred of these trucks were carrying food supplies 20 of these trucks are wfp trucks we said we've been saying this from the first day on 21st of october when the first convoy went in, we welcome this step.

It's a good first step, but it's nowhere near enough. So even with this scale up in the number of trucks that were able to go in yesterday, let's look at what happens after they cross. And this is where things get very challenging. get very challenging and without securing the right resources and right circumstances for the humanitarian operations to take place the number of trucks coming in it's not going to be functional just to give you a very very brief example you know yesterday we were trying to move the trucks so some trucks have have come into g, bringing in food supplies. Well, we need to move these trucks from after they come into the distribution sites, but there's no fuel. Next step, we need to make sure that we have a place that is safe for distribution to take place,

and not just for our humanitarian workers to be safe, but for the people that we're trying to reach, because we cannot risk putting people also at risk. Well, that cannot be secured. There's no safe access. And then to top it all off, there was another telecommunications cut this morning. And so again, we were out of reach with our colleagues and the teams on the ground. Okay, so multiple news outlets cited US officials on Monday saying Israel had agreed to allow 100 trucks through a day across the border. I know you said that there's other problems, logistical problems once the aid enters the Gaza Strip. But in terms of just the supply, is 100 trucks enough? Is that a solution?

100 trucks a day of what? Because for food, we would need 100 trucks a day of food to be able to meet the food needs. And I can't speak on behalf of the other sectors, but I know that each sector would probably need the same amount. So 100 trucks of medicine, 100 trucks of water. WFP needs alone 40 trucks a day of food supplies to be able to do the planned response of reaching a million people who are in need of food. The WFP, it's been providing aid to Gaza through a number of conflicts. This isn't the first, obviously, but has it ever had this kind of prolonged or difficult a time providing aid? Everyone I'm working with is saying that even though they've worked through several of these conflicts in Gaza, the challenges here are immense and unprecedented.

So if more aid doesn't make its way in, what do you fear could happen in Gaza? Well, we really fear about the fate of these people. I can't even imagine, you know, because we as humanitarian workers, we try to do what we can to alleviate some of the suffering. And this is something immediate that can be done. At least make sure that the people have something to eat at the end of the day, that they're not turning to their families and saying, I can't provide for you.

And this is something that we're seeing even with our own colleagues who are in Gaza. We're receiving messages from them that they're saying, we don't have food. We're worried about not being able to feed our children. And I can't imagine how much that would be if on a much bigger scale, if an entire population is not able to get the food it needs to survive. All right, Alia, thank you so much for speaking with us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. At the beginning of the show, Amjad also mentioned how many thousands of injuries have overwhelmed Gaza's hospitals at a time when a lack of fuel and supplies is limiting patient

care. So I want to bring you one last update today about what the doctors inside these hospitals are saying about the conditions. Dr. Omar Abdel-Manan is a pediatric neurologist who's worked extensively in Gaza for more than a decade. And he's the founder of Gaza Medic Voices, which collects the firsthand accounts of healthcare workers there. We reached him in London. Hi, Dr. Abdel-Manan. Thanks so much for coming on FrontBurner. Thank you for having me.

So doctors in Gaza have been operating in damaged buildings packed full of patients with tremendous shortages of power and essential medical supplies for weeks now. What have you been hearing about how your colleagues in Gaza are doing right now? How are they coping with their work? Sure. So we have been in contact with doctors, surgeons, healthcare professionals since day one of this war. We have to think about the context as well. So this is a healthcare system that was already on its knees as a result of 17 years of blockade and siege from air, land and sea,

compounded now by an escalation which has essentially pushed the healthcare system into collapse. What we know, and this is from speaking to the doctors on the ground, is that many of the hospitals, at least a third of the hospitals when I last spoke to them, have essentially gone out of service. These are hospitals that are no longer able to accept patients, to look after patients. And that's as a result directly from the lack of fuel and electricity cuts as a result of generators running out of fuel, essentially. The basic supplies, medications, antibiotics, basic things that you need to run a healthcare facility, let alone a large tertiary care hospital, are basically completely diminished. They're completely finished. large tertiary care hospital, are basically completely diminished.

They're completely finished. So these guys are working day and night shifts with very little break under extremely stressful conditions. They are struggling to look after their patients. And on top of that, many of them have had family members killed whilst being on duty. So they would find their loved ones coming in as corpses into the hospital that they are working in. So this is a really horrific situation that they're struggling in.

A couple of weeks ago, we spoke with an MSF doctor in Gaza, Mohamed Abu Mugaisib, and he told us back then that the health system was on the brink of collapse. At that point, primarily because fuel was running out for generators. And it sounds like, from what you're saying, we're kind of there now. I guess I'm curious specifically, what kind of things in the hospitals are simply no longer functioning? So in terms of running out of fuel, so the last message I had, there was today, I'm sure you know, there's been a communication

blackout again in Gaza. I think it's been a bit more intermittent than before because I have had a couple of voice notes come through. But the last proper message I had from a colleague yesterday evening was from our Schiffer Hospital, the largest trauma center in the North Gaza. And they basically, their colleague said to me, you know, we are hours away from our generator shutting down. And what that actually practically means is no electricity for a lot of the life-saving equipment which patients rely on.

So if you think of a neonatal unit or an intensive care unit or a pediatric intensive care unit, these are run by essentially ventilators or breathing machines to keep their patients alive. These patients, if the electricity runs out and you can't automatically ventilate them, then you have to manually do that. And there's only a limited number of staff that can actually physically do that. So what that actually means is the potential death of a number of patients, a large number of patients, as a result of being unable to sustain them on life-saving equipment. Now, unfortunately, I haven't been able to contact these doctors to find out what

has actually happened as a result of this, but I can only be imagining that it's a pretty horrific situation. It also means things like dialysis machines, which are used for patients with kidney failure. They rely on this again to keep them alive. That's not working. Even fluid pumps to give saline to dehydrated patients, antibiotic machines, all of these equipment rely on electricity. And the lack of fuel coming in from Egypt as a result of the Israeli decision not to bring in fuel is compounding this problem and making the situation untenable, really, for the patients and the doctors and staff on the ground. Over the weekend, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israel had ordered the evacuation of Al-Quds Hospital in northern Gaza. If that's even logistically possible,

what are the dangers of trying to evacuate an entire hospital like that? Well, I think as you rightly point out, it is almost impossible, it's nigh on impossible to evacuate a hospital this size in a war zone, and a hospital that is already depleted in every sense, in its staff, in its resources, in its bed capacity. And the other issue is, and this is really important, I don't think this is stressed enough, is many of these hospitals are being used as shelters. So patients are being treated in hallways and corridors on the floor.

So you can imagine logistically, you know, the number of patients packing these areas and the number of people there means that it's almost impossible to actually evacuate a hospital or actually move people out. And if you're evacuating a hospital, you start with the sickest patients on ventilators. You try to get those moved out. The ones who are walking injured, you try to help.

As I said, I think that mass migration from a hospital, especially with the surrounding areas being bombed, so we have to remember that the surrounding area, or of course the surrounding area is being bombed. So we have to remember that the surrounding area, the surrounding area of Shifa have been bombed regularly and indiscriminately. So even if you've got patients into an ambulance with the paramedics, there is a high risk that these same ambulances are going to be fired at. And no doctor wants to be put in that position where they take a patient outside. And then the next thing they know is the ambulance has been blown to smithereens. So Israel's begun a ground offensive in the last week.

At the same time, we just spoke today to someone from the World Food Program about the health effects of lack of having access to food and clean water, disease, lack of sanitation. My understanding is that a lot of what doctors have been treating now are trauma injuries from the bombardment. There's a second wave of public health concern coming. Do you have a sense of how doctors are preparing to deal with the impact of those things as well as the ongoing trauma? So I think that's a very important point. And I think this is essentially the long game.

So the malnutrition side and the lack of sanitation, the lack of water and the dehydration, these are going to have chronic effects, which we will see for generations to come. And this is actually not new. Gaza has been under siege, as I said before, for over 17 years. We know there are areas that, especially in the refugee camps, where there's been chronic malnutrition. Chronic malnutrition

in children and being a pediatrician, I sort of understand this, that this has direct effects on your long-term cognitive outcomes. This has long-term effects on your health outcomes. This will have an off-point effect for generations to come. Now, in terms of what doctors are doing on the ground, I think the reality is they are so inundated with the short-term direct impact of IDF bombs that they probably are not able to foresee that huge tsunami of excess deaths that is basically waiting around the corner and will for definite arrive. The risk of infectious disease, I mean, I am, and this will again be another public health disaster that is awaiting these poor souls that have already been subjected to essentially death

in numbers that they have never witnessed before. All right. Dr. Abdulmanan, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking time. Thank you so much for your time. That's it for today. We'll keep bringing you updates on the situation in Gaza as the ground offensive continues. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. We'll keep bringing you updates on the situation in Gaza as the ground offensive continues. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. I'll talk to you tomorrow.