Humza Yousaf's wife El-Nakla: My family in Gaza can’t even find grass or leaves to eat
Wife of former first minister says lives of her relatives are “hanging in the balance”
The wife of former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf has said the lives of her family in Gaza are “hanging in the balance” as she accused Israel of starving two million people in the Strip.
Nadia El-Nakla said her family could not even find grass, leaves or any animals to eat, amid an Israeli blockade on the amount of food and supplies going into the region.
The Dundee councillor said it was “traumatising” to watch her relatives go through a “living nightmare”.
She described the territory as “hell on earth”.
Asked on BBC Scotland’s Drivetime programme if she thought she would ever get back to Gaza to see her family again, she said: “I think Gaza is gone – I don’t think Gaza will exist any more.
“The situation is just incredibly difficult, heartbreaking, traumatising for us to watch, and for them their life is now hanging in the balance.”
She said her cousin Sally, a mother of four, has been moved to different tents 15 times after her house was destroyed.
“She has no food,” Ms El-Nakla said. “She had a loaf of bread the other day that she was trying to save for her children.
“My other cousin told her, ‘look, just eat grass, eat leaves, eat plants’, and she said ‘we can’t even find them’.
“There’s no cash either, so even if I sent her £1,000, she can’t access that money, and there’s no way for her to buy anything. So it’s just a living nightmare – it’s hell on earth.”
She added: “It’s just, it’s so devastating because her husband is going out every day, and they’re so scared that he’ll not come back because of the bombing, to try and find food, and he can’t find any.”
She said that even for those who can access money, the price of a kilo of sugar is about 200 dollars (£148), making it inaccessible for most.
Mass starvation warnings
She urged world leaders to do more to force Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, amid warnings from aid agencies about mass starvation.
Speaking about her cousin Sally, she said: “She sent me a voicenote saying ‘I hate the world – no-one is coming to help us’, and I could hear her children in the background.
“That’s what breaks my heart the most, is they know that no-one’s coming to help them, and to have your child hungry, to be hungry yourself, how that feels to have hunger, and how you’re supposed to look after your kids, and they’re crying to you because they’re hungry – like I say, it’s a living nightmare.”
She added: “Now nothing exists. It’s bare survival.
“They feel that they’re all going to die and we’re all watching them through the process of being terrified for their lives from bombs, from being shot at and having to run, which I’ve had calls with her where she’s like, ‘I can hear the gunfire’, and she’s having to run, and then now calls that there’s no food there.
“It’s a silent killer. They’re killing them so slowly and quietly, but they’re killing them at every single point.
“And it’s just devastating to watch. It’s heartbreaking. It’s sickening.”
Ms El-Nakla said she feels “physically sick” hearing about her family’s situation in Gaza, adding that she feels “completely inadequate as a cousin, as a human being, that I can’t do anything”.
She said she was angry with the UK Government, which she said “isn’t doing anything” to “try to stop the genocide”.
She said aid must urgently be allowed in to stop the “catastrophic starvation of two million people”.
“We are living in a dystopia where we are just watching two million people slowly die,” she said.
“For our own humanity, how can we live with that? Our Government has to do something.”
The UK Government and Israeli embassy in London have been approached for comment.
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