Quote from a long Conversation: Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot Could someone from inside #Gaza tell us whether #Gaza Soup Kitchen are actually managing to deliver food? I know that World Central Kitchen have had to shut down a lot of their operations. https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke/116918760413624124 Alda Vigdís @alda@topspicy.social UNRWA keeps operating within Gaza despite supplies and international staff being blocked from entering. This is why I am extremely sceptical about any other organisations and projects being able to deliver. Furthermore, UNRWA operates in Palestine camps and settlements in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and maintains the genealogical information that would be super important in case of return being enabled. mahmoud 🇵🇸 @mahmoodhamod991@mastodon.social With all due respect to your role and perspective, the picture you're conveying regarding UNRWA's continued operation doesn't reflect our current reality in the Gaza Strip. The harsh truth is that UNRWA has been isolated and its operations almost entirely undermined in the Strip, and it's no longer able to provide the essential services upon which people's lives depended. ... To rely on the notion that international organizations are fulfilling their role while we here face death from starvation or lack of medical treatment ignores the harsh reality on the ground. UNRWA abroad may have administrative roles, but here in Gaza, the organization is completely paralyzed in its distribution and access efforts. . Natasha @nusher@mastodon.scot How does food get in and get distributed on the ground? Is there any land left for growing (the only images we see are of rubble)? While we know Israel are limiting what gets in, it’s hard for us to know what is really happening as you are our only real sources of information. mahmoud 🇵🇸 @mahmoodhamod991@mastodon.social The situation on the ground is one of complete paralysis. The aid that enters covers only a tiny fraction of the basic needs, and Israeli restrictions are not merely a ban on the entry of specific materials, but rather a total control over the lifelines (fuel, roads, and electricity). As for agriculture, it has been reduced from a vital sector to virtually nonexistent; farmland has been bulldozed or contaminated, and anyone who ventures into ... farming faces the risk of being directly targeted All we see in the pictures is rubble, because agriculture itself is buried under the rubble. We have lost the soil, the water, and the tools that once made Gaza self-sufficient in certain crops. The truth is that Gaza has transformed from a productive society into one that survives on handouts, delivered by trucks with no guarantee that they will reach the mouths of the hungry. Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot I think also that most of Gaza's agricultural land was in the east, and is now behind the 'yellow line'? mahmoud 🇵🇸 @mahmoodhamod991@mastodon.social What you said about the agricultural lands is absolutely accurate; the majority of our food supply used to come from the east, the areas that are now behind what is called the 'yellow line' or buffer zones, where the land is razed and access is prohibited. I personally used to live in eastern Gaza, and now, like thousands of others, I am displaced, far from my home and our land that was a source of prosperity. Simon Brooke @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot yes, my friend Rania used to farm in the east, too. What was her home is now lost behind the lines, the blocks, and the tanks. mahmoud 🇵🇸 @mahmoodhamod991@mastodon.social Your friend Rania's story is the story of thousands of us. It's never easy to learn that the place where you spent your best days, the land you cultivated with your own hands, is now behind a wall, a tank, or a pile of rubble; as if history and geography have been completely erased. This kind of loss leaves a scar that never heals, because we don't just weep for walls, but for a life that once thrived in those places. ... Sometimes I feel that in Gaza we have all become mere "stories" that no longer find their place on the map, people simply trying to find a safe place to sleep or a sip of water, having lost everything that connects us to our agricultural and social identity. For this very reason, the initiatives I mentioned earlier, which attempt to reach these "displaced" people who have lost their land and livelihoods, always seem to me like an attempt to salvage what remains of our dignity amidst this devastation. Alda Vigdís @alda@topspicy.social Destroying the environment is a part of the genocide. Oral and literary tradition would have a really hard time existing if the localities, environments and structures stop existing. mahmoud 🇵🇸 @mahmoodhamod991@mastodon.social The annihilation here is not merely physical; it is an attempt to sever our roots. When place disappears, it becomes difficult for future generations to imagine or recall their history, because place is what gives history its meaning. We live in constant fear, not only of losing ourselves, but also of everything we believe in and everything we have inherited from our ancestors becoming nothing more than an empty void, with no place on the map.