LETTER FROM MIDEAST: IN GAZA, HOPE IS RATIONED LIKE BREAD

GAZA, April 9 (Bernama-Xinhua) -- In Gaza today, hope is a commodity more precious than bread. Both have grown dangerously scarce.

The wind along the Mediterranean coast no longer brings the comforting aroma of salt and seaweed, but instead carries the choking dust of pulverised concrete, and with it, a faint echo of explosives. Walking along this coastline -- once a vibrant escape for Gaza City -- feels like traversing the edge of a bleeding wound. Every concrete slab and every twisted piece of rebar marks a place, where life once thrived, now hidden beneath layers of rubble.

A young Palestinian woman, Sajida Ayesh, stared out over the grey, turbulent waves.

"I used to bring my nieces here," she said. "We'd skip stones, watch the fishermen. They loved the sound of the waves." She paused, pulling her thin scarf tighter. "Now, even the sea sounds different. It sounds like it's mourning."

Her words capture the profound grief that has been lingering over this place. The collapse of the ceasefire -- a brief, fragile pause in an enduring tragedy -- snuffed out a small light of hope that had managed to briefly pierce the darkness. The ceasefire that began on January 19 was less a structured peace than a desperate gasp for air after 15 months of relentless bloodshed since October 2023. For a few weeks, it offered a glimpse of normalcy.

Displaced families returned not to familiar homes, but to rubble where once-neighbourly streets and communities thrived. Yet the pull of a land rich in memory proved irresistible. They cleared debris, raised tents and began reclaiming their identity from the ruins.

Before dawn on March 18, the truce collapsed. In a swift and brutal escalation, Israeli forces launched a heavy assault on Gaza, with eyewitnesses and local reports indicating that around 80 airstrikes struck within minutes, plunging the region back into the familiar cycle of all-out war. The timing deepened the tragedy: these attacks occurred during Ramadan -- Muslims' holy month of fasting and reflection -- beginning around the pre-dawn meal.

"Everything just turned upside down... It was pure hell," recalled Hanan Muhanna, a woman sheltering in Gaza City. Her family managed to escape, but many of her neighbours were either trapped or killed.

The renewed Israeli offensive, described by officials as essential for security objectives and reportedly carried out with the "full support" of Washington, has proven widespread and lethal. Gaza health authorities report over 1,000 deaths since March 18, increasing the total toll since October 2023 to more than 50,000.

As if the carnage of war were not enough, an imminent famine now looms. Access to vital supplies has been completely severed for over a month. Earlier this week, the World Food Programme confirmed that all 25 UN-supported bakeries across Gaza have ceased operations, their flour and fuel supplies blocked, leaving communities on the brink of starvation.

The consequences are catastrophic. Bread, the fundamental staple for life, has become an almost unattainable luxury. In some cases, a single 25-kg bag of flour is reportedly selling for the equivalent of US$100, a sum unaffordable for most who depend entirely on sporadic aid.

"Bread is everything here. And it's gone," said Woroud Abdul Hadi, a mother of five, near the shuttered doors of a bakery. "We all had hope with the ceasefire. But why does this suffering continue? Do we dare to hope at all?"

That is a question that resonates across this landscape of despair. While many claim hope is the world's most potent force, here in Gaza, it has become something to be rationed as carefully as food.

Here, each new dawn does not necessarily bring relief; often, it merely signals the start of another day in the relentless fight for survival.  

-- BERNAMA-XINHUA