GAZA
\nAs Israel\u2019s forced starvation tightens its grip on Gaza\u2019s entire population, an increasing number of Palestinian families are frantically searching for news of relatives who undertook perilous journeys to get food from aid distribution points, never to return.
\nKhaled Obaid has been searching for his beloved son, Ahmed, for two months, scanning every passing vehicle on the coastal road in Deir-el-Balah, hoping against all odds that one of them might bring him home.
\nThe boy had left the displaced family\u2019s tent in the central town to find food for his parents and sister, who had lost her husband during the war, and headed to the Zikim crossing point, where aid trucks enter northern Gaza.
\n\u201cHe hasn\u2019t returned until now. He went because he was hungry. We have nothing to eat,\u201d the distraught father told Al Jazeera, breaking down in tears with his wife under the blue tarpaulin where they are sheltering.
\nKhaled reported his son\u2019s disappearance to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and every official body he could reach, to radio silence.
\nTo this day, he has received no answers on Ahmed\u2019s whereabouts.
\nKhaled\u2019s story is all too common under Israel\u2019s ongoing punishing blockade of Gaza, where the largely displaced population faces a stark choice between starvation and braving the bullets fired by Israeli soldiers and United States security contractors in a bid to get food from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites. These distribution points have been dubbed \u201cdeath traps\u201d and \u201chuman slaughterhouses\u201d by the United Nations and rights groups.
\nIt is a life-or-death gamble that has taken the lives of nearly 1,400 people, shot dead mainly by the Israeli army, at the aid sites since they started operations in late May and along food convoy routes, according to figures released by the UN last week. That is, without counting the untold numbers of missing aid seekers, like Ahmed.
\nHuman rights monitors have been collecting harrowing firsthand accounts of people who have gone missing in Gaza, only to be found later, killed by Israeli forces.
\n\u201cIn many cases, those who went missing are apparently killed near the aid distribution points, but due to the Israeli targeting, their bodies remained unreachable,\u201d Maha Hussaini, the head of media at the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, told Al Jazeera.
\n\u201cMany Palestinians left home with empty hands, hoping to return with a bag of flour. But many never came back,\u201d said Al Jazeera\u2019s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir-el-Balah. \u201cIn Gaza, the line between survival and disappearance is now heartbreakingly thin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GAZA As Israel\u2019s forced starvation tightens its grip on Gaza\u2019s entire population, an increasing number of Palestinian families are frantically searching for news of relatives who undertook perilous journeys to get food from aid distribution points, never to return. Khaled Obaid has been searching for his beloved son, Ahmed, for two months, scanning every passing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-495015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n