The north used to be the breadbasket of the Gaza Strip.
Strawberry fields in Beit Lahia, olive and citrus groves, wheat fields, and the agricultural university in Beit Hanoun.
It seems impossible even to imagine that now.
We flew down across the northern border on a Royal Jordanian Air Force plane, with a meagre eight tons of humanitarian aid ready to go.
Eight tons, when the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the body that has classified Gaza as being on the brink of famine, estimates the population needs 2,038 tons daily.
What was once cropland is barren and scorched. Villages and agricultural structures are in ruins.
There was a ragged uniformity to the greyness as we flew south and past Beit Lahia towards Gaza City, as though dust from the rubble of a million ruins has sprinkled over the land like ash from a volcano.
Gaza City is Benjamin Netanyahu‘s next target. Not that he hasn’t savaged it to date, but there is a cityscape left standing.
Buildings ripped and torn by the monstrous force of artillery, no life or colour or vibrancy from the sky in what was once a bustling port city, with ancient mosques and churches, bookshops, villas and cafes along the seafront.
Now, like a rash of giant pebbles, a mass of tents stretches down towards the Mediterranean, home to tens of thousands of the 800,000 or so people who are still living here.
People who Israel plans to displace once again, before the IDF seizes full control.
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There is an anonymity from the sky, though.
You cannot see the excitement that our camera teams capture on the ground as young children point to the planes.
You do not see the balcony collapsing after an aid package lands on it, and the sheer weight of too many people desperate for food causes them all to fall.
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You do not see the misery of a disabled father whose son was hit by a falling pallet, who our camera crews locate as he lies in intensive care.
Aid drops are dehumanising and cruel. It is not the fault of the countries that deliver them. They are doing what they can. But they are a terrible way of delivering aid.
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‘No clear endpoint’ for Netanyahu
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“Are we dogs to them? They’re throwing aid at us from the sky, are we dogs? They’re hunting us” – that’s what Fadia al Najjar, a mother who had lost her son in a shooting at an aid distribution point, told our Gaza crew in al Mawasi earlier in the week.
As I looked down over the apocalyptic catastrophe that is Gaza now, I could not forget her words.
