Two hundred and fifty calories represents two slices of supermarket wholemeal bread sold in the UK. Twelve per cent of recommended nutrition intake. Today in northern Gaza, already in the grip of a “catastrophic” level of hunger as defined by the UN, it represents an entire day’s calorific intake.
Six months into Israel’s war against Gaza, which followed Hamas’s brutal surprise attack on southern Israel’s border communities on 7 October last year which killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw almost 250 others taken hostage, acute hunger has become pervasive in the coastal strip.
