'It's a trap' The story of a mother, killed in seach of food

Reem Zeidan was terrified of being separated from her children.

- By Malak A Tantesh

As they trudged for hours through the ruins of Gaza towards a food distribution centre, she rehearsed over and over with her 20-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son what they should do and where they should wait if an Israeli attack turned the column of hungry people into a chaotic, panicking mass and the family were torn apart.

It was the last conversation she had with them. She was dead before dawn broke last Tuesday, killed by a single bullet through her forehead.

Her daughter and son spent nearly three hours beside her body, pinned down by gunfire.

"We went there out of desperation.

Hunger is what forced my mother to go. She had been going every day for a full week walking six hours to get there and coming back with nothing," Mirvat, her daughter, said in a phone interview.

A couple of days before, after Israeli forces had opened fire on the weary crowds approaching new Israeli and US-backed food distribution centres, Mirvat had begged Reem not to risk the trip any more.

The walking, waiting, battling the chaos and returning empty-handed seemed a risk, a waste of what little energy they had left after months of small, irregular meals. But her children were famished.

"I told my mother it was a sign from God not to go again and that convinced her," Mirvat said. "But she would quickly change her mind when my little sister Razan, who is only five years old, cried to her that she was hungry." Reem tried to stretch out what little stocks the family had left after months of siege, but it is hard to trick a hungry child. After one meal of "soup", made with just a handful of lentils for the whole family, Razan begged for food, telling their mother "water doesn't fill my stomach", Mirvat said.