Grapes and Death in Gaza

CrossFireArabia
Features
April 24, 2026

CROSSFIREARABIA – Ahmed Nahed Azzam had no idea that going to buy some grapes for his family to help them through the famine of summer 2025 would save his life. He didn’t then realize it would make him also, a witness to a horrific massacre that claimed the lives of 21 members of his family, including his elderly 65-year-old father and most of his children.

The 31-year-old Azzam recounted to Quds Press what happened on the tragic Monday day of 14 July, 2025, when famine and starvation had been ravaging northern Gaza for the best part of two years.

“I was sitting with my father, my seven-month pregnant wife, my son Karim, my brother’s wife Shahd, and her children, Osama and Rateb, in the garden of our house in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City. It was the height of the famine. I decided to buy a kilogram of grapes and quickly left to get on my bicycle before the vendor leaves,” he recounted.

“As soon as I arrived at the grape vendor and was buying, I heard a huge explosion that shook the area. I had a terrible foreboding and sensed then my house must have been targeted, so I rushed back quickly,” he added.

“I arrived at the house to find it was up in smoke from the missile that landed on it, the smell of death and gunpowder was distinct, filling the air, a profound silence enveloped the place,” he sighed.

It was a four-story house, that sheltered about 50 people, “it had been completely leveled, burying nearly all my family members inside,” he said in a reverie, as if still fathomining what had happened.

He was overcome with grief and shock. The house had been reduced to rubble. At first, he felt completely paralyzed, unable to move his limbs. He began calling out for his father, his wife, his son Karim, and his brothers, but he received no answer, his voice hollow and echoing.

After a while Azzam gazed around and saw pieces of torn flesh, his family members scattered around the destroyed building. “Some had been thrown a considerable distance by the force of the blast,” he added, recounting neighbors soon rushed to the scene and were everywhere, retrieving the bodies of the martyrs and the wounded, one by one.

He confirmed most of the people in the house were killed, becoming martyrs in an instant. “They were soon pulled out from under the rubble and taken to the nearby Al-Quds Hospital, except for my cousin Alaa, who remained buried under layers of concrete because the building came tumbling down.

“My nine-year-old niece Judy was also pulled from the rubble but she was in a critical condition. She suffered fractures in both arms and legs, a fractured skull and forehead, damage to her left eye, and burns across much of her body.

“Initially the doctors thought Judy would soon die due to the severity of her injuries, fractures, and burns, especially on her head and eye, but she survived after being in a coma for two days,” he said.

Azzam explained Judy was the only surviving member of her family after her father, mother, and siblings were killed, and when she learned of this she was devastated.

Ten days ago, he finally arrived in Egypt, after the Israeli authorities granted him permission to leave so that Judy could be treated there since the medical system in Gaza was in complete collapse. “I hope Judy can recover here,” he continued.

Her injuries have left her with no sense of smell, her left eye is blinded and requires reconstructive surgery due to the extensive burns covering her body.

“I hardly believed that I am still alive,” Judy simply said. It is still the beginning of the road to recovery. She is in shock and still can’t get to terms with the fact that her father, mother, brothers, grandfather, uncles, aunts, and their children have gone forever.

“After my treatment in Egypt I hope to recover to return to Gaza to continue my school and help in my uncle Ahmed’s kindergarten,” she concludes as if in a determined fate.

This article written by Dr Marwan Asmar is republished her from the Hackwriters.com website

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

Features

In The Grip of Starvation: Israel Will Not Let Gaza Rest!

CrossFireArabia
June 2, 2026

Gaza Government Media Office Advisor Taysir Muhaysin warned of a gradual return to famine in the Gaza Strip as a result of continued Israeli policies restricting aid entry and other basic necessities.

He told the Sanad News Agency the amount of aid entering Gaza by truck does not exceed 27% of that stipulated in the last ceasefire agreement.

Muhaysin stated the Israeli policy of reducing aid is not limited to food and humanitarian supplies, but extends to fuel, including diesel, gasoline, and cooking gas, which is an essential commodity for Palestinian families to manage their daily lives and prepare whatever food they can find under the difficult living conditions.

Government institutions in the Strip continue to perform their duties at the minimum level possible, given the available resources and the exceptional circumstances Gaza is experiencing, whilst Muhaysin denying an administrative vacuum in the enclave.

He affirmed that Gaza government institutions continue to function and maintain a minimum level of stability and essential services essential to the population.

The Media Office Advisor indicated different government bodies expressed their full readiness to hand over their administrative and executive responsibilities to the “technocratic committee” as soon as it arrives in the Strip to begin its work, in accordance with the ceasefire agreement signed in 10 October, 2025. He stressed however, there are real obstacles as procedure and conditions is imposed by the Israel occupation that prevent this.

A Complex Humanitarian Crisis…

Muhaysin warned the living conditions in Gaza are really a “complex humanitarian crisis” affecting all aspects of life.

“Hundreds of thousands of citizens are still living in tents amidst the spread of epidemics and diseases,” whilst pointing to the decline in the capabilities of the health system and municipal services in addition to the severe shortage of food and essential shelter supplies.

The health sector faces increasing risks due to the ongoing shortage of fuel and medical supplies. Muhaysin noted the administration of the Al-Aqsa Hospital were forced to shutdown about 50% of its power generators, and this threatens the lives of patients, especially kidney patients, premature infants, and those in operating rooms and intensive care units.

“What Gaza is witnessing today represents an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, caused by the decisions and measures imposed by the Israeli occupation, which has led to an unprecedented deterioration in living, health, and humanitarian conditions.”

He pointed out that the technocratic committee that is yet to enter the Gaza Strip needs to assuming its responsibilities across the entire enclave, and this needs to happen with the concurrent withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from the areas they reoccupied in Gaza and the commencement of international forces operations tasked with monitoring and security separation under the terms of the ceasefire.

Muhaysin accuses the Israeli occupation of attempting to impose new realities on the ground through excluding areas east of what is known as the “yellow line” from the committee’s administrative responsibility. He said these go against the principles agreed upon in the proposals put forward to end the ongoing crisis.

He concluded by saying the occupation continues to impose its own vision on the future of the Gaza Strip by repeatedly introducing new conditions and ideas, contradicting the fundamental understandings and initiatives discussed over the past months. This, he asserted, obstructs any genuine efforts to alleviate the suffering of the population and end the escalating humanitarian crisis.

The specter of famine is returning to haunt the Gaza Strip, and is coinciding with the tightening of military measures at the crossings controlled by the Israeli occupation. Such prevents the entry of humanitarian and relief aid, and allows militias affiliated with the occupation to steal the incoming aid.

At the end of May, the Palestinian Council of Ministers warned of the severity of UN reports that indicate that about 1.6 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, nearly 77% of the population, face the immediate threat of famine due to declining humanitarian funding and reduced aid flow.

In a previous statement to Sanad News Agency, Ali al-Hayek, head of the Palestinian Businessmen Association, warned of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. He emphasized that famine indicators are becoming increasingly apparent amid the continued decline in humanitarian aid and the curtailment of relief organizations’ operations. He noted the Gaza situation “threatens the onset of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”

This article is based on an extended interview by Advisor Taysir Muhaysin published in Arabic by the Sanad News Agency and republished crossfirearabia.com

Features

Jordan 2007! Elections and Hiccups: Looking Backwards

CrossFireArabia
May 20, 2026

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written more than 18 years again in October 2007 for the 7iber.com online portal and is reprinted her

Its election time! As a good non-totalitarian democrat I love the elections, when they happen that is. What I really love about the elections is the time leading up to their finale when voters go up to the polling stations and vote. Although I’ve never voted in my life, I’ve always carefully watched election campaigns, right from start to finish. They are exciting days, of banners hoisted, constituency meets, mini-rallies and all the rest of it.

Prospective candidates, some running for the very first time and of which we are expected to know and vote for, hoist their banners across streets and roundabouts, screaming at the electorate to vote for them because they are the best candidates.

This is the 15th elections for the 15th Lower House, and parliament in Jordan has consistently been in session since 1989, after a long absence of parliamentary life in the country. I am proud to say I covered the 1993 elections, the 1997 ones, and just about missed the 2003 elections because of being away from Jordan.

In all these years, the excitement never faded. Islamic Action Front candidates continuously stood under the IAF banner, but this was never the case with the other political parties, such as the nationalists, the leftists, the middle-of-the-roaders and the tribalists. Although a lot of parties came on the scene after 1993, like Al Ahad, Al Yaqatha and Al Risala and still many others, for some reason or another, many of their candidates preferred to stand as independents arguing they are known for their own independent political personalities rather than as representatives of their parties.

Is this a wrong attitude? Well, maybe. However, once some of them were elected to the Lower House of Parliament, they revealed their true political colors and supposedly argued on party-political lines. Ironically, most of the electorate never knew what those lines were when the MP was just a candidate running for a seat. Many of these parliamentarians argued that they stood a better chance of getting into parliament as individuals rather than under the banner of their political parties. This is due to the belief that such organizations were still seen as relatively new and unknown, despite the fact that many, including leftists, Arab nationalists and Baathists parties, had existed in the 1960s and 1970s, but many of which were effectively banned.

They may of course have been right in their assumptions as political parties were just made legal in the early 1990s, and have thus needed time to be nurtured. As independents, the negative connotations of belonging to political parties would wither away among the electorates who needed to get used to voting for candidates on party political platforms. But the problem with running on independent tickets is that it actually perpetuated individualism, parochialism and depended on the appeal to family, kinship and tribal relations. In past Jordanian parliamentary elections, and even today, the tribal bloc vote has been very important in deciding who wins and who loses.

The effect of this frustrates the process of developing political parties, which, except for the Islamic Action Front, remains weak, ineffective and are no more than talking shop. They have even been used by established politicians to further their own individual political ends and causes. This stands contrary to the need for building modern, strong political parties designed to make democracy and the democratic experiment effective.

Realizing that there is a lot to say about the tribal vote, sometimes political candidates, even Islamists, have been known to appeal to kinship and family relationships as a means of getting into parliament. Once they do, they start the usual game of political party meandering under the parliamentary dome.

That may also be why election banners and slogans on roads are no more than hackneyed, clichéd phrases emptied from their political content. They are read for what they are: brief formulaic statements, lacking the resonance of strong, vibrant agendas and political manifestos that promise change and development, as is the case with elections in more mature democracies around the world.

Political parties in Europe, for instance, are big machines with national and local clout. Everyone, especially the main personalities, know who they are, what they stand for, and what they hope to do once they form the government, or become the party in the majority. In this part of the world, the political culture, machinations and value systems are different and have to be treated differently.

However, in the final analysis, a political party is a political party in which ever part of the world it belongs to; sharing little differences with its counterparts. That’s why such parties have to be strong, come out of their closed shops and enclosures, and appeal to the masses; become broad-based with clout in order to be listened to by decision-makers.

In all fairness however, we have to be gentle with our political parties by understanding the history and the context of where they came from. It took political parties in the western world, centuries to develop and become the national institutions they are today.
They emerged through political struggles and a great deal of pushing and shoving.

But does that mean we have to take that long? Not necessarily, the element of transition from one era to another can take place quickly, but it has to be supported by the state and government. There has to be a political will for democracy, where parties are nurtured rather than left alone.

Jordan is doing well despite different hiccups, but the Arab world in general has to pull itself by the bootstraps if it is to enter into a meaningful political era where representation, democracy and political pluralism is seen as healthy for a society. Our problem now is to move faster in order to catch up with the rest of the world, and develop politically.

In the meantime, let’s for a minute stop and enjoy the political actions of the electoral campaign.