ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
For months now, NPR has brought you stories of people in Gaza going hungry, of children too famished and weak to cry. Palestinians say Israel's restrictions on aid are forcing them to choose between starvation and risking their lives to find food. And while attention has been given to the deadly food distribution sites that are funded by the U.S. in southern Gaza, there is another, sometimes even deadlier dash for food in the north. NPR's Aya Batrawy brings us reporting by NPR's Anas Baba in Gaza, who takes us there. And a warning - this piece features gunfire and descriptions of war.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORN HONKING)
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Trucks with the U.N. World Food Programme have just rolled into northern Gaza, carrying with them large sacks of flour. This flour is like gold. It keeps families holding on just a while longer.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORN HONKING)
BATRAWY: And this white gold is drawing thousands of people, knowingly within range of Israeli troops every day. Mohammed Abu Tarabish is among the thousands running to the WFP's trucks between rounds of Israeli gunfire.
MOHAMMED ABU TARABISH: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He tells NPR producer Anas Baba, "show us mercy. I'm just trying to feed my kids." Baba asks him, what about the gunfire?
ABU TARABISH: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Abu Tarabish says, "gunfire or not, I will die to feed them."
ABU TARABISH: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: He says his wife's nine months pregnant and that every day he asks her to forgive him if something happens to him.
NPR obtained a recent breakdown of death tolls from Gaza's Health Ministry. It shows that since June 12, when the first aid trucks were allowed into northern Gaza after a two-month Israeli blockade, more than 530 people have been killed trying to get food aid just from this northern border crossing, known as Zikim.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: "This is the price of flour," a young man yells out. "We're dying and tanks are firing at us," he says.
It's a mad scramble to grab flour off trucks here. People are shot by Israeli snipers and tanks, knifed by looting gangs and sometimes crushed under the trucks. The World Food Programme says Israel only permits a few dozen trucks a day to enter through Zikim, leading to desperation and looting.
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: The Israelis started to open fire on all of the people in Zikim at the meantime, and we are going to take some cover.
BATRAWY: NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, knows the risks of Zikim. In one day last month, he documented from the morgues 86 people who'd been killed there. Baba went to Zikim several times to observe from a distance before bringing us this reporting.
BABA: I can hear that the bullets in the meantime are whistling in front of our heads. Every single person at the meantime in Zikim, and all of them at the meantime are laying on the ground or taking cover. This is the price that the Palestinian needs to pay here in order to take the sack of flour or the humanitarian aid.
BATRAWY: Israel's military repeatedly says its troops only fire warning shots when crowds come too close. Those shots ring overhead as Umm Hamdi al-Nahal ducks behind a sandy hill for cover.
UMM HAMDI AL-NAHAL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: She says, "who's going to feed us and feed our kids at home? What are they still negotiating and talking about?" she says, referring to failed ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel. "Our kids - our flowers - are dying out here," she says.
None of the WFP aid that enters through northern Gaza reaches warehouse. It's all taken by hungry crowds.
AL-NAHAL: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Out of breath and exhausted, al-Nahal says there's nowhere to turn to. She says, "if I don't face death, no one will feed my kids."
Zikim is considered a militarized zone of Gaza that's off-limits to Palestinians. But people who are closest to the border, where tanks are, have the best chance of getting flour. Thousands of people walk for miles on dirt roads, past flattened neighborhoods, to reach this expansive corridor of rubble and trash. Those who come away with a sack of flour are covered in its white dust. Palestinians call them the White Walkers - a reference to the chilling zombie-like characters of the far north in "Game Of Thrones."
BABA: I can see women. I can see elderlies. I can see little girls and even small boys. And all of them are trying just to get any sack of flour. I have been running for the past 30 minutes because the bullets stopped, and now the bullets, I do believe, is going to return in 5 to 10 minutes. I don't have many time, just like the others.
BATRAWY: As Baba rushes to safer ground, he films an unconscious, wounded boy being carried in an empty sack of flour. Others wounded are carried on empty flour crates. He sees a 16-year-old boy shot in the leg.
BABA: They are trying to take him to the hospital on the top of the truck that all of the people looted there in Zikim corridor itself. And here we're trying to talk to him. He wants to talk.
KHALIL AL-BILBASY: (Non-English language spoken).
BATRAWY: Khalil al-Bilbasy tells him he was walking with flour when he got shot in the leg. He says he's got no choice but to come to Zikim because there's no food at home. The teenager says his family has been killed in the war. It's just him and his brother now.
AL-BILBASY: (Non-English language spoken, crying).
BATRAWY: He cries out in pain as the truck moves. That day at Zikim, Gaza's Health Ministry recorded 23 people killed and nearly a hundred wounded at this corridor. Tens of thousands of people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, but for the first time in this war, the health ministry says there are days where more people are killed trying to get food than in strikes.
Aya Batrawy, NPR News, with reporting by Anas Baba in Gaza. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
