After weeks of scraping by to feed her six children in Gaza, the 38-year-old woman thought she’d found a lifeline.

At a shelter, a friend told her about a man who could help with food, aid, maybe even a job. The woman — separated from her husband, and forced to shutter the business that once kept the family afloat — approached him.

It was about a month into the war in Gaza, she said, and he promised her work, a six-month contract with an aid agency. On the day she believed she’d sign the paperwork, he drove her not to an office but to an empty apartment. He complimented her, she said, and told her to remove her headscarf.

He told her he loved her and wouldn’t force her, she said, but he also wouldn’t let her leave. Eventually, they had a sexual encounter, she said. She declined to give details of the nature of their interaction, saying she felt fear and shame.

“I had to play along because I was scared, I wanted out of this place,” the woman said.

Before she left, she said, he handed her some money — 100 shekels, about $30. Two weeks later, he gave her a box of medicine and a box of food. But for weeks, the job didn’t materialise.

As Gaza’s humanitarian crisis grows, women say they have been exploited by local men — some associated with aid groups — promising food, money, water, supplies or work in exchange for sexual interactions. Six women detailed their experiences to The Associated Press, each speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from their families or the men and because sexual harassment and assault are considered taboo topics. Sometimes, they said, the men’s solicitation was blatant: “Let me touch you,” one woman recalled being told. Other times, it was culturally coded: “I want to marry you,” or “Let’s go together somewhere.”

Aid groups and experts say exploitation often arises during conflicts and other times of desperation, particularly when people are displaced and reliant on assistance. Reports of abuse and exploitation have emerged during emergencies in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Congo, Chad and Haiti.

“It’s a horrible reality that humanitarian crises make people vulnerable in many ways — increased sexual violence is often a consequence,” said Heather Barr, associate director for the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch. “The situation in Gaza today is unspeakable, especially for women and girls.”

Four psychologists working with women in Gaza described patients’ accounts to AP. One said her organization — focused on protecting women and children — treated dozens of cases involving men sexually exploiting vulnerable women, including some in which they became pregnant. The psychologists, all Palestinians working for local organizations in Gaza, spoke on condition of anonymity because of privacy concerns for the women involved and the sensitive nature of the cases, in a conservative culture where sex outside of marriage in any context is seen as a grave offense. They said none of their patients wanted to speak with AP directly.

Five of the women who shared their stories with AP said they did not engage in sexual interaction with the men. The psychologists said some women who came to them agreed to the men’s demands, while others refused.

Six human rights and relief organisations — including the local Palestinian group the Women’s Affairs Center and the Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse network, which coordinates with various aid groups including United Nations agencies — told AP they were aware of reports of sexual abuse and exploitation linked to receiving aid.

Aid groups say the context in Gaza — nearly two years of war, the displacement of at least 90% of the population, and turmoil over aid access — has made humanitarian work for vulnerable people particularly challenging. As hunger and desperation grow across the enclave, women in particular say they’ve been pushed to make impossible decisions.

The groups blame Israel’s offensive and blockade for the humanitarian crisis and say the war has made documenting exploitation cases difficult. More than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The ministry does not say how many of those killed were civilians or combatants, but it says women and children make up around half the fatalities.

“Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip and the restrictions on humanitarian aid are what’s forcing women to resort to this,” said Amal Syam, director of the Women’s Affairs Center.

Israel says there are no restrictions on aid and that it has taken steps to expand what comes into Gaza. Israel also accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid — without providing evidence of widespread diversion — and blames U.N. agencies for failing to deliver food it has allowed in. The U.N denies there is widespread aid diversion.

One of the women who spoke to AP described phone calls that began in October, a year into the war. At first, she said, the man’s questions were simple. What happened to her husband? How many children did they have? But, the 35-year-old widow said, his tone took a turn. What underwear was she wearing? How did her husband please her?

She said she’d met the man in Muwasi, a strip of land Israel designated a humanitarian zone. She described standing in line to get assistance and giving her phone number to an aid worker — a Palestinian in a uniform labeled United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Shortly after he took her number, the late-night calls began. He would ask sexual questions, she said, and she’d stay silent. She said that at one point, he asked to come to her, for sex. She refused, and after nearly a dozen calls but no aid, she blocked his number, she added.

The woman said she reported him to UNRWA in Gaza in a verbal complaint. She said she was told she needed a recording of the conversations as proof, but she had an old phone that couldn’t record calls.

UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma said via email that the agency has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual exploitation, takes each report seriously, and doesn’t require proof. But she wouldn’t say whether staff were aware of this particular incident, citing UNRWA’s policy against discussing individual cases, and wouldn’t comment further on its awareness or work on exploitation cases overall.

The PSEA network — to which UNRWA belongs — said survivors can report anonymously or without naming the perpetrator and are never required to provide proof.

Understanding the scale of exploitation is challenging, said Sarah Achiro, a coordinator for the network, which works to prevent, and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian and development settings. Gaza’s limited connectivity restricts calls that could report abuse, and constant displacement makes it harder for survivors to seek in-person help and for aid groups to build trust.

Achiro noted that sexual violence is vastly underreported, particularly in humanitarian and conflict settings, where data often shows just “the tip of the iceberg.”

The PSEA network said that last year, it received 18 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation linked to receiving humanitarian aid in Gaza, all involving either aid workers or those associated with it, such as community representatives or private contractors. Allegations against aid workers are investigated by the employer organization. The network wouldn’t indicate how many of the cases were being investigated, saying it can’t disclose information unless they are formally concluded.

Four of the women who spoke to AP said the men who solicited them identified themselves as aid workers, and, in one case, a community leader promising aid.

Gaza peace plan LIVE

Like the widow, several women said it happened while registering or trying to register for aid, with men taking their numbers — frequently a step in the aid process — and later calling. The women said all the men were Palestinian. Several said they weren’t able to identify which aid group the men seemed to be associated with.

The U.N. and aid groups generally work with local communities: paying people as contractors, using volunteers, or having leaders appointed by the community as liaisons.

The mother of six said the man who promised her a job drove a car with U.N. markings. After their interaction, she said, the messages kept coming — late-night sexual calls and requests for photos. She described dodging them with excuses: She was busy, her phone was broken, she couldn’t talk.

But about a month after their sexual interaction, she saw the man at an aid site, in December 2023. He then helped her get a six-month position with UNRWA, which she completed, she said.

She told AP she never reported the man, their encounter or his exploitation attempts.

“I told myself that no one would believe it,” she said. “Maybe they would say I am only saying this so that they would give me a job.”

Asked about the woman’s story, UNRWA’s Touma emphasized the organization’s zero-tolerance policy and said it would seek more information on the exploitation incidents and accusations.

Since the interaction and her job, the woman has been displaced, doesn’t have work and struggles to feed her family. She said she blocked the man’s number but he’s tried to contact her as recently as this summer.

Some women say they’ve been solicited multiple times, by various men throughout the war.

A 37-year-old mother of four told AP she was approached twice, once by the head of a shelter. She said the man offered food and shelter if they could “go together somewhere,” like the sea. She said she understood he was asking for something sexual. She refused.

Psychologists and women’s groups said cases have increased as the crisis worsened — with more people displaced, reliant on aid, and crammed into camps. One psychologist said some women were kicked out when their husbands learned what happened.

Before the war, exploitation reports happened once or twice a year, but are up dramatically, said Ms. Syam, of the Women’s Affairs Center. But she said many organisations won’t highlight the numbers or the issue.

“Most of us prefer to keep the focus on the violence and violations committed by the Israeli occupation,” Ms. Syam said.

Israel says it is fighting to dismantle Hamas and release the hostages taken in the 2023 attack that sparked the war, and that it mitigates civilian harm as much as possible.

The women who spoke to AP said it’s important to try to hold on to their dignity as the war continues.

For weeks last fall, a 29-year-old mother said she received calls from an aid worker asking her to marry him in exchange for nutritional supplements for her four children.

She refused and blocked his number, she said, but he called from different phones. He insisted he liked her and made distasteful comments that she called too vulgar to repeat.

“I felt completely humiliated,” she said. “I had to go and ask for help for my children. If I didn’t do it, who would?”

Smoke rises from Gaza, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, near the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from Israel on July 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.N. rights experts on July 9 accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza.

“Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent United Nations experts said in a statement.

The U.N. has not officially declared a famine in the Gaza Strip.

But the experts, including the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri, insisted there was no denying famine was under way.

“Thirty-four Palestinians have died from malnutrition since 7 October, the majority being children,” said the experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.

Also Read | UNICEF finds 90% of Gaza’s children lack food needed for proper growth

Israel’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva slammed the statement, charging that “Mr. Fakhri, and many so-called ‘experts’ who joined (him), are as much accustomed to spreading misinformation, as they are to supporting Hamas propaganda and shielding the terrorist organisation from scrutiny”.

Complicit

The U.N. experts meanwhile listed three children who had recently died “from malnutrition”, after a number of others were said to have starved to death in northern Gaza earlier this year.

Six-month-old Fayez Ataya and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi had died on May 30 and June 1 at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital, while nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Khan Yunis, they said.

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they said.

The experts decried that the world had not done more to avert this disaster.

“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on 24 February and 4 March respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said.

“The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths.”

“Inaction is complicity.”

Gaza has been facing a deep humanitarian crisis since the war erupted following Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,243 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

‘Starvation warfare’

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that 60 cases of severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting —the most deadly form of malnutrition — had been detected last week at the Kamal Adwan paediatric hospital in the north of the Strip.

The U.N. has long been warning of looming famine, especially in the north, but one has not been officially declared.

Also Read | The politics of humanitarian aid

The Israeli mission highlighted Tuesday that the latest assessment by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership determined that famine had not materialised after aid access improved somewhat.

“Israel has continuously scaled up its coordination and assistance in the delivery of humanitarian aid across the Gaza Strip,” it said, claiming Hamas “intentionally steal and hide aid from civilians”.

Hamas authorities meanwhile issued a statement Tuesday describing a “humanitarian catastrophe and escalating famine”.

They accused “the terrorist Israeli government” of continuing “its policy of starvation”, and “preventing the entry of food aid trucks for the 64th consecutive day”.

“Continued starvation warfare threatens a humanitarian disaster and further loss of innocent children,” that statement warned.

Metres away from the concrete and steel fence separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt, 11-year-old Malak Ayad flies a paper kite high in the sky — a welcome distraction from the horrors of war.

“Every day I play with my brothers and cousins with kites next to the Egyptian border,” said the Palestinian girl, displaced from Gaza City with her family to the southern city of Rafah.

“When I do, I feel free and safe,” she added, gently manoeuvering her kite, which she calls “Butterfly”, back and forth across the border with a white string.

Her cousins and friends run along the fence trying, in vain, to get their kites to take flight, but a loud explosion in the distance makes them stop in their tracks.

“Quickly, the (Israeli) bombardment is getting closer,” said Malak’s uncle Mohammed Ayad, 24, urging the children to leave the area.

Malak quickly obeys, reeling in her kite and folding it, then rushes back to a tent where her family is taking shelter in the nearby Khir area.

“Playtime is over. When air strikes begin we run back home,” Malak said, trembling with fear.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign to destroy Hamas has killed at least 32,782 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

‘Trapped’

Malak Ayad and her family are among 1.5 million people, most of them displaced by the war, now living in Rafah, where Israel has vowed to carry a ground offensive as it pursues its campaign against Hamas.

Despite the war and the fear that grips her, Malak seems to be happy to fly her kite and dreams of life as it was before the war broke out on October 7.

“My kite flies to Egypt everyday while we are here trapped in Gaza,” said Malak, who wears a bracelet featuring the Palestinian flag.

“I don’t know when we will be able to return home,” she said, adding that her mother told her that her school has been hit by the Israeli army and “destroyed”.

Haitham Abu Ajwa, 34, who is also displaced from Gaza City, said kite flying “reminds me of my childhood”.

He too lives in a tent in Rafah with his wife and two boys, Mohammed, 5, and seven-months-old Adam

Flying kites helps to “free oneself of negative thoughts”, he said, and the border area with Egypt is “the ideal place to expel… the sadness and pain that we feel”.

“In the camps, you cannot feel free or comfortable,” said Abu Ajwa as he helped Mohammed fly a kite.

Dozens of children, some with their families, come daily to the border area in the afternoons to fly kites across the frontier.

Some start up conversations with Egyptian soldiers manning surveillance towers.

When Malak’s kite flew past the watchtower, one of the soldiers called out to her: “Well done, princess.”

The little girl thanked him with a wave and said, “I love Egypt. My wish is to travel there like my kite.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Four more children have died of “malnutrition and dehydration” in war-torn Gaza, the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry said on Friday, the latest such reported deaths as famine warnings mount.

The deaths occurred at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement, noting that the number of child “malnutrition and dehydration” deaths now totalled 10.

Earlier Friday, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA told reporters that “if something doesn’t change, a famine is almost inevitable” in Gaza.

“Once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people,” said the spokesman, Jens Laerke.

Global attention turned to the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza on Thursday, when the health ministry said more than 100 people were killed after desperate Palestinians rushed an aid convoy.

Israeli troops opened fire as Palestinian civilians scrambled for food supplies during a chaotic disturbance.

World leaders called on Friday for an investigation into the deaths and a ceasefire nearly five months into the war, which kicked off with Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive to eliminate Hamas has now killed at least 30,228, mostly women and children, according to the ministry’s latest toll.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)