How hunger and displacement in the Middle East mirrors the same issues back home.
When we think of fundamental human needs, shelter and food are two of the most basic ones. A safe, comfortable place to live and having enough food is a baseline metric for wellbeing. Being hungry or without a home is a traumatic experience that no one should have to go through. Addressing these issues in our own community is at the core of Our Streets’ mission. While we are not a global organization, the issues we address in Portland are present worldwide. Extreme conflict produces hunger and houselessness at unprecedented rates, and we believe that addressing these issues at the root is vital for improving the world we live in.
It would be remiss to turn a blind eye to the ways that the United States plays a direct role in these issues, and the way that global issues are connected to the local ones we are addressing. Specifically, the funding of military endeavors vastly eclipses the funding important social services that could improve the lives of people in the U.S. and abroad. Furthermore, solidarity with all people who are experiencing homelessness and hunger globally informs how we address these problems in our own city. Today, we address how the U.S. is playing a role in the displacement and extreme hunger that Palestinians are currently facing in Gaza.
Funding & Power
It is estimated that ending hunger in the U.S. would cost $25 billion, and ending homelessness would cost $20 billion. Although that is an enormous amount of money, it is not an unreasonable ask, especially when the cost would help ensure all Americans have stable shelter and access to food. The U.S. military budget makes up 14.4% of the federal government’s entire yearly budget, over $2 trillion. To solve hunger and homelessness combined is only 2.25% of the U.S. military budget, and that doesn’t even include what the U.S sends overseas. In 2022, the U.S. approved $70 billion in overseas military aid. Israel is the U.S.’s greatest beneficiary. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. has sent Israel billions of dollars in military aid. As of October 2024, the U.S. has provided at least $17.9 billion. And it does not stop at money. In the last year alone, the U.S. has supplied Israel with thousands upon thousands of bombs and other weapons, including 10,000 2,000-pound bombs. These weapons are directly responsible for thousands of deaths, life-altering injuries, and the destruction of entire neighborhoods: homes, businesses, places of worship, entire communities.
Houselessness & Displacement
In May of 2024, when the reported death toll was at least 34,560, the UN reported that it is estimated at least 10,000 people are buried under the rubble. As the bombings have not stopped or decreased since then, it is safe to assume that number has only grown in the last six months. The medical journal The Lancet, referencing the Geneva Declaration’s extensive Global Burdens of Armed Violence issue, reported that deaths in armed conflict such as Gaza are typically anywhere from three to 15 times the number of documented deaths. This means that the 43,000+ death toll could be 129,000, or much, much higher. Furthermore, Israel has begun targeting the country of Lebanon, where more than 2,000 people have been killed and 11,000 more injured.
Constant bombings have leveled thousands of homes, leaving more than 370,000 housing units in Gaza damaged since Oct. 7, and 79,000 destroyed completely. 80% of Palestinians have now been displaced from their homes. It is estimated that 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced; for reference, the Portland metro area is home to 2.5 million people. Imagine if residents in three quarters of the 24 cities within the metro area’s population–including Beaverton, Hillsboro, Troutdale, Gresham, Tigard–were indefinitely displaced, with most of its homes and neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Thousands of Palestinians are currently living in makeshift encampments, and the IDF, despite calling these encampments “safe zones,” have bombed multiple camps and killed dozens of people. Recent bombings have left enormous craters where camps used to be, likely from 2,000-pound bombs. These bombings render residents displaced once again, something that has become a new normal for Palestinians. This past October, a hospital was set on fire by an Israeli missile strike, and hospital patients with IVs still in their arms were burned alive.
The term “internally displaced” is interpreted as temporary, but the truth of the matter is that Palestinians have lost their homes, and in many cases will never return to their homes. They are now indefinitely houseless. Their belongings, family heirlooms, neighborhoods, and in many instances entire communities are being destroyed, and the result is an ever-increasing displaced population.
It is estimated that it would cost 50 billion dollars to reconstruct what has been destroyed in Gaza, and that it would take many years to do so, if they are even allowed to return. Israeli military and government are contemplating laying direct, indefinite siege to northern Gaza.
Hunger & Access to Resources
These crises are compounded by hunger. The flow of food and aid into Gaza has been not enough to adequately feed and provide nourishment to Palestinians impacted by the war. In many cases, the Israeli military, or Israeli citizens themselves, are blocking aid from entering Gaza altogether. Following Oct. 7, 2023, Israel ordered a complete siege on the Gaza strip, blocking food and desperately needed supplies from entering. A ProPublica article found that Israel has prohibited the transfer of flour into Gaza, blocking enough flour to feed 1.5 million Palestinians for five months. They also found that the Israeli government frequently uses bureaucratic delays to reduce the aid entering Gaza, taking weeks or months to approve or deny specific aid requests from organizations with no justification. Now, while some trucks are allowed to into Gaza, the flattening of neighborhoods and lack of functioning infrastructure has made it extremely difficult for supplies to reach those who need them.
This has all led to life-threatening shortages of food and water, leaving many to face severe and even acute hunger. Severe hunger refers to people who are missing meals days in a row, and acute hunger refers to those who have not eaten for a week. Most children in Gaza under the age of five are spending entire days without eating anything at all, and 15.6% of children under the age of two are acutely malnourished in Northern Gaza. This is an unprecedented crisis. 1.1 million people are on the brink of starvation in Gaza. People are resorting to eating animal feed. Despite tireless work from aid organizations, people in Gaza are houseless and hungry, and many of these people are children.
There is also the enabling of the spread of disease, an element regarded as a hallmark of settler colonialism. The spread of disease was a major cause of death for indigenous people in the Americas when European settlers first entered. In Gaza, diseases like polio and meningitis are spreading due to lack of clean water. All of Gaza’s wastewater treatment plants have been shut down, and the extensive damage done to the water system’s infrastructure would take months to years to rebuild, even if the fighting were to stop.
U.S. efforts to increase aid to Gaza are vastly disproportionate to the value of weapons it is sending to the Israeli military. You cannot bomb someone’s house, kill their family, permanently displace them and then say, “here’s a sandwich.” The damage has already been done, and it greatly outweighs any aid that is currently being provided. The U.S. has recently warned Israel that it will lose military support if it does not increase humanitarian aid. This comes a year after the relentless attacks on Palestinians began, with many already dead from lack of aid.
As Portlanders and Americans, the sight people living in tents and tarps has become normalized on our streets, something we know is unacceptable. In Gaza, many displaced Palestinians are now experiencing chronic houselessness without access to even these most basic supplies. They have resorted to constructing their tents out of “tattered cloth and remnants of nylon tarps obtained from aid trucks.” In Portland, hypothermia from the rain and cold is an extreme risk for unhoused residents. This very well may become the reality of Palestinians without adequate supplies to protect them from inevitable inclement weather.
Hunger and displacement are still issues that affect millions in the U.S. Instead of spending so much money overseas, funding wars and enabling violence, the U.S. should bring its focus back home, to where people are also suffering. Putting money and attention towards housing, food, and healthcare for all will only benefit the struggling population. Helping those in need is the best way forward.