First-person: witness to hunger in Gaza

LoopFor months, writer and translator Sondos Sabra has been writing a diary about her personal experiences amidst the horrors of Gaza. Sabra is a Palestinian writer and translator born in Gaza twenty-six years ago. She holds a degree in English literature from the Islamic University of Gaza, where she was mentored by the poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike. She has written works such as Voices of resistance: Diaries of genocide (2025) and regularly collaborates with The New Statesman, from the United Kingdom. He has also written for the stage, including London's Barbican Theatre.

I Am Not This Pain —July 14, 2025—

It seems there's no escaping this chronic, all-encompassing grief. Despite myself, my identity as a Palestinian in Gaza is reduced to nothing more than a shop and a queue for aid. But in reality, all this pain—no matter how persistent it may be—remains foreign to me. It doesn't look like me, and I don't look like it. I don't want to be a friend.

Perhaps, if I hadn't left home that day—around 10 a.m.—I wouldn't have witnessed the scene that was to remain etched in my memory for so long. I was on my way to visit my friend Ola. The street was half-covered in rubble, flanked by smashed tents and twisted iron, the smell of dust still heavy in the air. Just before reaching Ola's house, I heard rising voices, mingling shouts, hurried footsteps. I turned around cautiously.

An aid truck had sped into the neighborhood. People caught him with a barely concealed trick. Some climbed onto the back, grabbed the first sack or can they could, and threw it from the truck. No one cared what was in the packages; it didn’t matter at all. People tried to catch everything they threw in. Some sacks fell to the ground and ripped, their contents scattering into the street. Whatever they caught was treasure.

The crowd grew quickly. Tense faces, bodies pushing, increasingly stronger voices, orders piercing the air:

“Take this!”

“Pick up the sack!”

“Don’t let it go!”

The scene looked like a real battle, but hunger was the only weapon.

Amid the chaos, a funeral procession slowly made its way through the crowd. Four men carried a flag-draped coffin. The throng parted only for a moment to let the coffin pass, then returned to the fight behind the truck.

Here, death passes you by as if it were part of the landscape, something you've grown accustomed to.

At the edge of the crush, a man in his sixties squatted silently, picking up grains of lentils and rice scattered—one by one—amidst feet, dust, and debris. At first, I didn't recognize his face. But as I got closer, I realized I knew him. It was my friend's father.

I quickly walked past. I didn't want him to see me. I didn't want him to know I'd seen him like that. I felt a heaviness in my chest that I couldn't shake, but I kept walking.

The truck disappeared from sight, but people kept chasing it until they ran out of breath. After a few minutes, the noise faded. One by one, everyone returned home. The lucky ones, with something, anything, for their children. The rest, empty-handed, with only disappointment.

I continued until I reached Ola's house. When she opened the door, I followed her into the living room, not saying anything about what I'd seen.

Moments later, her father came in. He was carrying a small bag very carefully, as if it were something fragile. Ola took it eagerly, opened it, looked inside, and with a pained expression as she moved its contents, said:

“The rice is on top of the lentils… and it’s full of sand and pebbles, Baba.”

She didn’t reply right away. She sat down next to him and leaned her back against the wall.

Ola realized she had been too harsh, softened her tone, and smiled at her sweetly.

“It doesn’t matter, thank you. We’ll separate them.”

She poured the contents of the bag into a large tray. The dust rose. The impurities in the food were clearly visible.

I sat down next to her and said:

“I’ll take care of the lentils. You take the rice.”

We removed the pebbles, blew off the dust, and separated the large bonds from the broken ones. We didn't say much. Words weren't necessary.

Inside me, thoughts clashed with each other, but I kept them silent. I just looked at what I had in my hands, picking up the lentils, one by one—as if trying to bring order to some of the chaos I had created that day.

If I hadn't experienced that hunger myself, I would never have known about the existence of real hunger. I used to think hunger was just a fleeting sensation, your body's way of telling you it's time to eat. You open the fridge, you respond to what's calling to you, and that's it. I thought finding food in the fridge was natural. I don't know at what exact moment the fridge became a decorative piece: useless, unnecessary. I thought hunger was something that was assuaged with a slice of bread or a hot meal made in a few minutes.

The hunger I've seen here—but the one I've experienced—is nothing like that. Real hunger doesn't just call out to the stomach. It also calls out to dignity. Real hunger slows down time: an hour feels like a day, and a day feels like a lifetime of waiting. Real hunger changes you. It reshapes your thoughts, redefines what's enough, rearranges your priorities. It teaches you arithmetic in a new language: number of loaves, number of meals. It shrinks your dreams little by little, not making you give up, but devouring the strength you need to pursue them.

And the most dangerous response to real hunger is to get used to it: to develop the ability to act as if nothing is happening, to accept it as normal, to get up every morning expecting nothing, not seeking breakfast—only to continue existing. Real hunger blends into life, dissolves, becomes part of your identity, your character, your everyday vocabulary.

But I don't want to be hungry forever. I don't want this hunger to redefine who I am. I don't want others to look at me and think, "That's someone who's endured hunger."

I don't need this kind of heroism.

I'm not here to live with the pain until it grows accustomed to me, nor to tame it so that it becomes lovable. All I try to do is prevent the pain from becoming my identity, not to say its name as if it were my own, not to give it away to anyone who asks, "Who are you?"

I am not "the hungry one," I am not "the displaced one."

It's not normal for destruction to be everyday, nor for loss to be written off as a passing fact. And hunger, too, should be something temporary, strange, and foreign. That pain is not my destiny. I want it to remain unknown, no matter how long it lasts. I want it to remain an intruder in my heart, no matter how many times it returns. Normalizing pain means surrendering to the idea that there is no alternative to this life. It means withering away while you breathe. It means death while we are still alive.

I cannot accept this.

I believe that joy—no matter how small the crack—has the right to exist, even in the narrowest alleys of this fence. I believe I have the right to say, clearly and courageously, "I am not this pain. This sorrow does not define me. And that misery should not be linked to the word Gaza forever. It is time for that pain to end, completely and forever."

Dear Father… Before cooking the last bowl of lentils - July 25, 2025 -

Beloved Father,

Remember when you told me one day that the sun rises for everyone? My body no longer believes in that promise of clarity. And you still believe?

I write to you in rebellion—against the tyranny of a beast that has left me too weak for even the simplest chores around the house. My body, in my mid-twenties, behaves as if it has endured seventy wars. I wake up with a heavy vertigo that pulls me down, as if I were drowning in a bottomless void. I can't lift a bucket of water, sweep the floor, or stand upright for long enough at the sink. Every gesture is a battle, every postponed meal is a postponed dream, every waking moment weighs with headache, hunger, and weakness. I don't know when breathing became a burden, or when balance became a luxury, or why getting out of bed returned the first victory on a daily battlefield.

Sunday, July 27, 2024 – Al-Sabra neighborhood, Gaza

Ghazal, the neighbors' ten-month-old daughter, has been crying since dawn… she wants milk.

Because, dear sir, Israel is no longer merely an occupying force—this description has become obsolete, insufficient. Israel has assumed the role of supreme administrative deity, the Lord of Records, Permits, Authorizations, and Denials. It starves us whenever it wants, permits only the products it pleases, decides whether you have the right to be cured or to die at the gates of Coordination. When it comes to travel, it reunites families or dismembers them, according to the numbers on the blacklist. Everything falls under omnipotent authority. "I am your Lord Most High"—it needn't utter these words; it exercises them through bureaucracy and security seals, not by divine revelation. We live under the dominion of a bureaucratic god obsessed with fantasies of grandeur, who measures national security by the cholesterol content of our cheese and the softness of our toilet paper rolls—each authorized only by pre-approved paperwork.

You know, dear Father, even before October 7th, we weren't just harassed. We were lab rats in an experiment run by a state that monopolizes the air and water… and decides the fate of cilantro.

Yes: cilantro.

In a June 9, 2010, CBS News report titled "Israeli Blockade of Gaza Surprises Both Sides," the absurdity of Israel's blockade policy was highlighted. The report stated:

"The military bureaucrats enforcing Israel's blockade of Gaza allow frozen salmon fillets, facial scrubs, and low-fat yogurt into the Hamas-ruled territory. Coriander and instant coffee are another matter: they're banned as luxury items."

(CBS News, June 9, 2010)

Not tanks. Not explosives. An aromatic herb—cilantro—is considered a threat to national security more dangerous than enriched uranium. Meanwhile, His Administrative Majesty allows salmon fillets and facial scrubs, but forbids instant coffee—because it threatens the psychological well-being of the occupier. In Gaza, life was measured neither by light nor by meals, but by a capricious list of what was prohibited or permitted, according to the visionary on duty at the Ministry of Defense:

–Cañilla? Approved.

–Chocolate? No food.

–Plastic butts? You can take two.

–School notebooks? Security risk – someone could write resistance poetry.

–Strawberry jelly? A strategic threat.

Have you ever heard of a state that classifies flower vases as weapons of war? Of an army that combats sage and cilantro as if they were guerrilla cells in a flagrant insurgency?

And then that war came.

Now, after two years of incessant bombing and debris, Israel has put us on a lentil diet—and banned us from meat and vegetables—as if we were enrolled in a compulsory nutrition program overseen by the same bureaucratic deity. We don't choose our meals; they are chosen for us. One product is labeled luxurious and forbidden, another is permitted as "safe." Lentils are allowed, tomatoes are suspect, and chocolate is a crime. Flour—white gold—is banned; breads are besieged, as if each one concealed a revolutionary bomb.

This is not an accidental famine. It is a planned famine—a war against our bodies, our lucidity, our ability to move. Israel doesn't just bomb our homes; it rearranges the contents of our refrigerators. And so, we continue to "live"—or pretend to live—under a system of forced feeding, where ration cards are issued from Tel Aviv, and the national palate is dictated by the Ministry of Defense.

Imán's house collapsed on him in the Al Zeitoun neighborhood. Her husband died in her arms. She had both legs amputated.

Believe me, dear father,

We're no longer just outraged by hunger, but by the fact that someone has decided that this level of hunger is what we deserve. The endless stream of food videos on our phones isn't entertainment, it's visual torture. Chocolates, freshly baked bread, cascades of meat... boasting the triumph of a world that doesn't recognize hunger. I'm not asking for a hot meal or a varied menu; I'm just asking that lentils not be the law. This isn't poverty. It's calculated hunger, dictated by military decree, engineered by a power that even controls appetite.

What I feel isn't just hunger, it's a slow, internal erosion. It doesn't leave blue marks on the skin, but it devastates the soul. This isn't living. It's a cold form of death… without blood, without noise, without witnesses, without headlines.

The Grand Steward allows me tea bags, and I grow mint in the garden, but sugar is forbidden. So the bitter pick. You know: security is terribly fragile.

And, because the administrative god isn't content with controlling belly fat and prescriptions, it also meddles with families—deciding who you can love, who you can marry, who you live with, and who you can officially register as a child. Under the pretext of "family reunification permits," Israel determines who can legally exist in Gaza or the West Bank, and who remains in the shadows—unrecognized citizens in their own land. Thousands of Palestinian families remain broken because the occupation refuses to recognize them—either because one spouse is from Gaza and the other from the West Bank, or because a child was born abroad. According to Human Rights Watch, Israel froze "family reunification" in 2000, and later resumed it only in a very limited number of cases, as a "political gesture," not as a human right.

Even survival, Dad, requires security clearance. Gaza's patients aren't "evacuated," they're "coordinated." And coordination can be denied—because we're not yet considered trustworthy bodies. Thousands of patients, including children with cancer, heart problems, or kidney failure, remain on endless lists of stamps and signatures that will decide whether they'll be treated... or buried.

And the students? They have even more absurd stories. Brilliant young people with scholarships from the best international universities, with visas and funding secured, are trapped because "the crossing is closed" or their names haven't been "cleared by security." In the logic of the supreme administrative deity, knowledge is a threat, travel is a lottery, and any Palestinian outside Gaza is a potential crisis. Thus, a scholarship becomes a suspended miracle, and access to medical treatment is a dream indefinitely postponed, because sovereignty neither recognizes pain nor honors excellence. It only obeys the red seal of border control.

Israel has perfected the art of absolute control: over stomachs, minds, hearts, classrooms, and hospital wards.

He makes us interpret the rest of our lives as a failed cooking experiment. This isn't just a job: he's a sarcastic supply manager, distributing food aid to the hungry under rubber bullets and pepper spray, watched over by an overweight American soldier, apparently assigned to protect the sacks of flour.

They see thyme as a form of rebellion. Cilantro as a national threat. And yogurt as a subversive attempt at sovereignty.

Beloved Father,

If your shadow stretches beyond the border

show me an exit, a hallway, a window

that drones cannot monitor.

Is there any place that Israel hasn't reached yet?

Translation: Melcion Mateu