In Gaza, Israel’s creeping Yellow Line takes Palestinians’ land, and lives

• By Ghada Abdulfattah Special contributor
• Taylor Luck Special correspondent
   
  Feb. 17, 2026

  Why We Wrote This

  The yellow cement blocks demarcating Israeli-held territory in Gaza were supposed to mark a temporary armistice line. But with the ceasefire process stalled, the blocks keep moving deeper into Gaza, making Palestinians feel more closed in, and trapped.

For Palestinian residents of Gaza, a string of concrete yellow boxes now demarcates where Israeli-occupied land begins – a barely visible border that, for Palestinians who cross it, marks the line between life and death.

It also marks a shrinking amount of space in which displaced Gazans can live.

The blocks – some with yellow poles – mark the so-called Yellow Line, which residents say is steadily being moved further west and south by Israeli forces.

A temporary makeshift armistice line, the Yellow Line was to disappear and Israeli forces were to withdraw from Gaza... READ MORE   https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2026/0217/gaza-palestinian-land-israel-yellow-line-border

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In famine-struck Gaza, another burden: An exhausting search for water & In Gaza, military offensive and civilian chaos hinder food aid - CSM Christian Science Monitor

• By Ghada Abdulfattah Special contributor
• Taylor Luck Special correspondent

Amid an intensifying Israeli military offensive and a deadly famine that is deepening daily, Gazans are facing a third crisis: a lack of drinking water.

In what the United Nations has described as a “man-made drought,” Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip are left chasing down water trucks, washing in seawater, and trekking miles to find enough drops of water to last the day.

It is, they say, an all-consuming crisis.

“This war is not only airstrikes,” Suzan Abu Khaddoura, a displaced mother of four, says as she treks from her sea-side tent to a water vendor. “It is about food. It is about hygiene. It is about water.”

On Tuesday, the Israeli military deepened its operations in the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun – and the number of Palestinians who have died of starvation rose to 303, according to Gaza health authorities, days after U.N. experts declared famine in the strip. But water remained elusive for nearly all Gazans... READ MORE  https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2025/0826/gaza-famine-clean-water 

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• By Taylor Luck Special correspondent
• Ghada Abdulfattah Special contributor

Sept. 24, 2025, 2:25 p.m. ET | Amman and Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip

After a harrowing eight-hour evacuation from Gaza City, Mohammed al-Rai, a father of five, returns to a familiar challenge: the hunt for food.

But he is finding it harder than ever to feed his family, he says.

He does not have enough money to buy food in the market, nor does the local charity kitchen near his new home – a makeshift tent – have enough food for him. He just has to wait and see whether a relative can spare him any leftovers.

Some days, Mr. al-Rai’s children eat; other days, they wait in line for a meal handout that never arrives.

“Today, you may get something, tomorrow, nothing,” Mr. al-Rai says, a few days after fleeing an Israeli army offensive in Gaza City with his family in a truck hastily packed with their last belongings. “Now, the suffering cannot be described.”

As several Western nations moved to recognize a Palestinian state, and as U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for the implementation of measures ordered by the International Court of Justice to halt fighting as part of an ongoing genocide case against Israel, Gaza’s residents face an ever-deepening crisis.

Just as the amount of food flowing into Gaza began to increase, stoking hopes of turning back an impending famine, Israeli forces launched an all-out assault on Gaza City. That assault once again disrupted the distribution of lifesaving aid, threatening to plunge the enclave back into starvation.

Displaced Palestinians say it adds a new level of desperation among families accustomed to hardship.

More aid, less access

The contradiction at the heart of Gaza’s hunger crisis is stark.

On paper, aid deliveries are rising; in practice, bombardments, displacement, and collapsing infrastructure mean families still go hungry.... READ MORE https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2025/0924/Gaza-starving-flee-Israel-military

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CSM: Cooking videos got these Gazans a global following. Now, there’s nothing to eat.... “This famine is entirely man-made [BY ISRAELI BLOCKADE]"

Renad Attallah by a clay oven in Gaza where she cooked when there was food- her Instagram account has more than 1.6 million followers.

• 
  By Ghada Abdulfattah Special contributor

Sept. 02, 2025, 1:20 p.m. ET | Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip

For more than a year, Renad Attallah’s Instagram cooking tutorials offered an unusual window into life in the Gaza Strip.

On @renadfromgaza, the giggly 11-year-old explained to her 1.6 million followers how to cook hamburgers with canned meat from an aid parcel. In another video, she quipped at the drones buzzing overhead as she explained how to make a banana roll “the Gazan way.”

“It looks like the drone above us likes cream – that’s why it’s out!” she joked. As basic ingredients became increasingly scarce in Gaza, Renad improvised, mashing cooked pasta to make bread.

Why We Wrote This

Their Instagram accounts became globally popular for showing the creative ways Palestinians in Gaza cooked and ate in a time of war. But as hunger spread, the story they were sharing began to change.

But Renad’s popularity isn’t due only to her made-for-social-media cuteness. With foreign media excluded from Gaza, and local journalists regularly killed in the line of duty, social media has become one of the few windows still cracked open onto life in the besieged territory. Through the eyes of Renad and other content creators, the conflict’s devastating effects on civilians play out in real time.

“It’s not about views. It’s not about comments,” Renad says. “It’s about the truth of our lives.”

“The Gazan way”

And the truth now is that Palestinians in Gaza are starving. In late August, United Nations agencies warned that close to 100% of people in Gaza are facing a hunger crisis, and 1 in 3 will experience famine – meaning “catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution and death” – by the end of September.

“This famine is entirely man-made,” the U.N.-backed report said.... READ MORE https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2025/0902/renadingaza-hamadashoo-instagram-gaza-famine-hunger

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CSM: In Gaza, Palestinians wonder: Is it worth braving bullets to find food?

• By Ghada Abdulfattah Special contributor
• Taylor Luck Special correspondent

June 13, 2025, 2:18 p.m. ET | Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip; and Amman, Jordan

Efforts to feed desperately hungry Palestinians in Gaza are facing setbacks, peril, and pandemonium.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed venture with alleged links to the Israeli military, says it is making progress in providing meals in the blockaded Gaza Strip since taking over food distribution from the United Nations in late May.

But Gaza residents, who are struggling to find food, describe the distribution process as chaotic. And one Israeli military expert faults Israel’s attempt to manage the complex process at arm’s length.

Why We Wrote This

In Gaza, even the strongest pangs of hunger do not persuade everyone to seek food in the only places they can find it – official hubs run by a U.S.-Israeli group. The fear of fatal gunfire is a major deterrent.

Insecurity stalks the aid effort. Scores of Palestinians in Gaza have allegedly been killed by the Israeli army while collecting aid, and a Hamas attack on Wednesday killed eight GHF workers, the organization said... READ MORE  https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2025/0613/gaza-food-shooting-ghf

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Three weeks ago, in violation of the ceasefire and international humanitarian law, the Israeli government blocked all aid, food, fuel, and shelter from entering Gaza. At the same time, the Israeli government was resisting scheduled talks for the second phase of a more permanent ceasefire agreement. Instead the United States floated a short-term “bridge proposal,”

“Palestinian lives have become so undervalued that reports of 50 children killed barely register... We must speak about it... We must tell the stories.” Ms. Yafa Abu Akar, a Palestinian Journalist in Gaza

People walk by buildings destroyed during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, March 20, 2025.  Leo Correa/AP

By Ghada Abdulfattah Special contributor

March 20, 2025, 4:51 p.m. ET | Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip

When Sabah al-Qarra first returned to her home in the Gaza Strip town of Khuzaa seven weeks ago, she was careful not to get too comfortable. There was a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but she didn’t trust it.

But as the days turned to weeks, Ms. Qarra and her family tacked sheets of nylon over the blown-out glass windows and hauled rubble from the bombed-out rooms. They installed solar panels and, when Ramadan arrived, strung twinkly crescent- and star-shaped lights to celebrate the holy month.

It felt, at last, like life could begin again.

Then the bombs began to fall.

On Tuesday, Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza, killing 500 people, including 200 children, local authorities said, sending Ms. Qarra and her family fleeing once more. On Thursday, after days of calling on the international community to push Israel back to the negotiation table, Hamas responded in kind, launching rockets into central Israel. Meanwhile, Israel began a new ground offensive in northern Gaza.

The developments spelled an end to the stalled ceasefire negotiations, which had tried the patience of both Israelis’ and Palestinians’ allies. But for Gazans, the resumption of fighting simply laid bare their greatest fear: The world had turned its back.

 “We were let down and left behind” by the international community, says journalist Yafa Abu Akar. “No one cares.”...          READ MORE  https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2025/0320/gaza-ceasefire-israel-airstrikes

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‘Abandoned by everyone,’ Gazans watch the bombs fall

CSM ‘Cold is death.’ For Gazans in flimsy tents, a winter of sorrow and loss.

Hadeel al-Kafarna, who has been living in a tent since the start of the war, holds her 6-week-old son, Yousuf, in her arms in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Jan. 5, 2025. “Most of the time, we huddle together” for warmth, she says.

By Ghada Abdulfattah Contributor 

Jan. 07, 2025, 4:59 p.m. ET | Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip 

 

December began as a month of joy for Yahya al-Batran and his wife, Nora, when they welcomed twin sons into the world: Jomaa and Ali.

 

“They were small, sweet, and beautiful,” Mr. Batran recalls.

 

The month ended in tragedy. Three weeks later, they buried Jomaa, who died from hypothermia Dec. 29 in their makeshift tent on the Deir al-Balah coast, in central Gaza. His twin, Ali, is fighting for his life in the intensive care unit.

 

Why

A story focused on

Resilience

For tens of thousands of Palestinian families forced from their homes by 15 months of war, the temporary shelters they have constructed are no match for Gaza’s winter winds and rain. Supplies are expensive. Infants are especially vulnerable.

 

“I saw them dying. I cried; I wept. I felt helpless and hopeless,” Ms. Batran says while waiting Sunday for Ali to recover at the ICU at Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. “I am so tired.”

 

After escaping an Israeli siege and shelling in northern Gaza, the family was felled by an unexpected danger: the cold.

 

“Imagine watching your child die in front of you and feeling utterly powerless,” says Mr. Batran from his tent in western Deir al-Balah. “What can I do? Cold is death.”

 

For tens of thousands of displaced Gaza Palestinians living in flimsy, temporary shelters, it has been a winter of sorrow and hardship.

 

Their deteriorating makeshift tents – patchworks of blankets, clothes, cardboard, and whatever materials displaced families can find – are woefully inadequate to confront the winter’s rains and temperatures below 46 degrees Fahrenheit at night.,,, READ MORE  

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2025/0107/gaza-winter-cold-rain-illness

 

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‘If I would speak, I would start crying’: Our reporters grapple with loss in Gaza war

The correspondent's father inspects the rubble that was once their family home, destroyed during an Israeli military offensive, in Deir al-Balah central Gaza Strip, Sept. 2, 2024

• By Ghada Abdulfattah Contributor
• Dina Kraft Contributor

  Sept. 04, 2024, 2:40 p.m. ET | Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip; and Jerusalem

The impact of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip is deeply personal for those living it on the ground, including the Monitor’s correspondents, for whom the intersection of their real lives and news events of just the last few days is a devastating reminder.

Friday Ghada Abdulfattah returned to her neighborhood in the Gaza town of Deir al-Balah after an Israeli military operation left her family home no more than a teetering pile of rubble.

Just weeks ago the house and compound were home to dozens of people in a sprawling, interconnected family. They are all now homeless, rejoining the ranks of the estimated 85% of Gaza residents who have been displaced since Oct. 7.... READ MORE  https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2024/0903/gaza-home-destroyed-israel-hersh-funeral

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CSM: ‘Waiting to see if I will survive’: A Gaza reporter caught in the war she’s covering ..."We no longer even bother to ask where humanity has gone."

Children jump between pools of sewage-contaminated water in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Palestine August 15, 2024- Ghada Abdulfattah

 "This week, the news that an Israeli airstrike had wrecked another shelter, this time a disused Gaza City school, was not merely depressing and shocking. It literally made me tremble.

The video footage of the aftermath filled me with fear. The charred remains of the dead scattered in pieces. Rescuers carting off bodies in blankets and bags because they had neither stretchers nor ambulances. I wanted to scream. Why must we endure such hardship, when all we seek is a life of peace and dignity? The injustice left me feeling paralyzed.

Israel said it had targeted Hamas militants, but more than 100 civilians were killed in the attack, many of them women and children.  “Why doesn’t Israel just kill all of us together and rid the world of Gaza?” one of my neighbors asked aloud in despair."   READ MORE   https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2024/0816/gaza-war-reporting-forced-evacuations

‘Waiting to see if I will survive’: A Gaza reporter caught in the war she’s covering

• By Ghada Abdulfattah Special contributor

Updated Aug. 20, 2024, 3:42 p.m. ET | Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip

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A story focused on

Safety

Ghada Abdulfattah, the Monitor’s Gaza correspondent, keeps her cool when she reports. But sometimes she feels like screaming. In this wrenching personal letter to readers, she voices her fear and fury at the climate of death that poisons life in Gaza. Ordered to relocate yet again, she cries from the heart: “Why must we endure such hardship? ... Who will stop this war?”