WAR IS ECOCIDE

To confront famine in Gaza, Palestinians are hunting wild birds as a last resort

"I realise that what I am doing is an adventure that carries great risks, but there is no other option to provide food for my children," said Tariq Al-Sheikh.

Rasha Jalal
Gaza
19 December, 2024

A Palestinian man is seen preparing for bird hunting with a net near the Israeli border, in the east of Gaza City, Gaza on 22 August 2022. [Getty]

32-year-old Tariq Al-Sheikh is forced to resort to hunting wild birds to feed his children's hunger amid the famine prevailing in the Gaza Strip.

Every morning, Al-Sheikh leaves his tent in the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, to hunt. Since he and his family of six were forcibly displaced from their home in Gaza City to Khan Younis due to Israel's genocidal war, he has been unemployed after an Israeli strike destroyed his home and his small grocery store.

Al-Sheikh places some grain on the ground, then raises a net on top of them with a stick tied to a long rope, making a trap. He moves away from the site holding the end of the string, waiting for the birds to start discovering the grains and then descend to them. At a crucial moment when the birds multiply under the trap, he pulls the rope, closing the net on them.

"I catch about 30 birds each time, then I take them to my wife to prepare food for us from them, as the meat of the birds is special and delicious," he told The New Arab,

Gaza's residents are experiencing the most severe famine since the beginning of the war on 7 October 2023 since Israel restricts humanitarian aid, while it completely prevents the entry of meat such as poultry and beef. Israel claims it is doing this to fight the sources of Hamas's money.


Al-Sheikh learned to hunt birds during his childhood, accompanying his relatives on the eastern border of the Gaza Strip.

The most prominent challenge facing him while hunting birds is the lack of empty spaces west of Khan Younis because of the overcrowding of displaced people, which forces him to move east near the presence of the Israeli army where the agricultural lands are destroyed.

"I fear that the [Israeli] planes deployed in the air will bomb me. I realise that what I am doing is an adventure that carries great risks, but there is no other option to provide food for my children," he remarked.
'Terrible daily struggle'

Ajith Songhai, head of the United Nations Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a press conference in Geneva via video link from Jordan on 29 November 2024, "Large groups of women and children are searching for food amidst piles of garbage in parts of the Gaza Strip."

"Accessing basic necessities has become a terrible daily struggle for survival," he added.

In the northern Gaza Strip, the practice of bird hunting to combat famine is more widespread than in the south due to the Israeli military ground invasion in the area since this past October, followed by a strict siege policy against the people. Those remaining in northern Gaza Strip were previously forced to eat chicken and rabbit feed to avoid starvation.

In order to combat famine, Salah Shahin, a 34-year-old resident of the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, also hunts for wild birds to feed his family.

"There is no food in the northern Gaza Strip except for some types of canned food such as peas preserved with preservatives," Shahin told TNA.

He added that the Israeli army sometimes allows some types of vegetables to enter northern Gaza in order to avoid international pressure, "but they are small quantities and expensive, making it difficult for most of the population to buy them."

He explained that he and his family of five have not eaten meat for several months, "We have lost a lot of weight and our bones have become visible."


Shaheen pointed out that eating sparrow meat "of course does not make us feel full, but it is important in order to obtain the protein needed to fight famine."

Shaheen divides the sparrows he hunts into two parts, one that he feeds his children and the other he sells in local markets.

"I sell what I catch to people for a low price, as a pair of birds costs only seven shekels ($2)," he remarked.

A policy of starvation

Food security and human health expert Zayed Abu Bakr remarked to TNA that the ongoing Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip "has caused a loss of food security and malnutrition among Palestinians, who have become dependent on aid as their main source of food."

Abu Bakr further elaborated that most food aid are canned food containing grains and legumes preserved with preservatives, "which is unhealthy because it contains chemical preservatives, and does not contain essential nutrients such as protein and vitamins."

He explained that Israel imposes a policy of starvation on the residents of the northern Gaza Strip, "as a form of collective punishment because they refused the army's orders to move and evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip."

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that Israeli authorities "facilitated just over 40 per cent of the approximately 320 humanitarian movements through the Gaza Strip during November 2024, with the rest denied, obstructed or cancelled."

In the same time, a UN report confirmed that the entire population of Gaza—some 2.2 million people—"are experiencing crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity."

The report said that the threshold for acute food insecurity for famine has been significantly exceeded, and that acute malnutrition among children under five is advancing at a record pace towards the second threshold of famine.

The report stated that half the population, 1.1 million people in Gaza, have completely exhausted their food supplies, coping capacities, and are suffering from catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5) and starvation.