Alaa Haddad, fighting for food in Gaza City

Alaa Haddad, 29, says he goes entire days without eating. When he does eat — often by braving the life-threatening risks of trying to grab food from aid trucks, he said — it is mostly rice, lentils or bread. Vegetables are rare. He said he could remember the last time he ate fruit: eight months ago.

It is hard to endure the feeling of constant hunger. “Every day is a battle with hunger,” he said. “I often don’t have energy.”

Haddad said the frenzied, often violent contests for aid frequently forced him to choose: sacrifice his humanity for food, or keep it and starve.

“You become an animal in search of food,” he said. “When I go home, I think to myself, ‘What did I just do?’”

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