As Palestinians starve in Gaza, some are turning to social media and crowdfunding to survive

Buzzing flies and aerial bombardments have become the normal sounds Palestinian mother Haneen Al Shana wakes up to in her makeshift tent in Khan Younis.

When the 23-year-old's home was destroyed amid Israel's continued siege in Gaza, her family churned through all its money before moving first into a United Nations-run school, then the Al-Mawasi refugee camp.

Ms Al Shana says that within the past month her grandfather and cousins have been killed and her uncle died after not being able to receive crucial cancer treatment. 

While she fears potentially needing to flee once again from what she describes as "Israeli aggression", she says the more pressing threat now is starvation.

To survive, she reaches out to the world to share her story and ask for financial help — using TikTok.

To almost 3,000 followers, Haneen posts short videos about the challenges of hunger, day-to-day life in Gaza and her fears for her family. 

"Starvation is very real. These days, if we could find one meal a day, we would be very lucky," Ms Al Shana told the ABC with the assistance of an Arabic translator.

"Before, we used to live a life where we used to have a house that protects us, and money and food, and now we're trying to survive.

"I'm trying to put that picture to the world… and if there's anyone who cares, maybe they could help us."

Gazans turn to online fundraising

In a trend that has increasingly generated online attention, some Gazans now say their only option is direct online fundraising campaigns capitalising on social media trends to afford feeding their families.

In some cases, this means performing viral online dances or attaching frequently-shared audio clips to videos of their lives in a war zone.

The war ignited on October 7 2023, when nearly 1,200 people were killed after the terrorist organisation Hamas attacked Israel and took another 250 hostage.

In response, Israel launched a military offensive that has now stretched for almost two years and killed more than 60,000 Palestinians and at least 454 Israelis, according to figures compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced that offensive would be expanding to include a military takeover of Gaza City as part of a multi-point plan to disarm Hamas, force the return of all Israeli hostages, demilitarise the strip and form an "alternative civilian government" there.

The decision came after an earlier Israeli blockade of aid from entering Gaza in March, which saw food supplies become severely limited and the World Food Programme warn that 96 per cent of Gazans faced acute food insecurity.

While Israel last month began air drops of aid, many Palestinians say food supplies remain too expensive, ineffective and dangerous to access.

Air drops have recently been made as part of a multinational coordinated effort by Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Germany, Belgium and Canada, however previous drops have also been facilitated by the United Kingdom and Egypt.

More than 1,000 desperate people have been killed trying to access aid sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US- and Israeli-backed private operation that has taken over distribution of critical supplies from traditional aid agencies

Mr Netanyahu has in recent weeks publicly denied there is a hunger crisis in Gaza, saying there is "no policy of starvation" in the territory.

Since the partial easing of restrictions in late July hundreds of trucks carrying aid have been entering Gaza, although the overall number of vehicles remains far lower than the figures before October 2023.

In a bid to raise money for her family, Ms Al Shana has amassed thousands of social media followers, who she appeals to for donations via a crowdfunding platform.

She says direct financial contributions have been far more valuable to her family's survival than Israel's air drops.

"The air drops are just for Israel, like a token, to show to the world that they are actually helping the starving people — but it's not actually helping," she said.

"Financial assistance gives individuals the flexibility to meet their specific needs, whether it's purchasing medicine, specific types of food or covering daily essentials rather than receiving items that may not be immediately useful."

Roadblocks to accessing donations 

Ms Al Shana told the ABC that access to cash is increasingly difficult in Gaza, and Palestinians are subject to transfer fees of up to 45 per cent for every transaction.

"The funds are first transferred to Jordan, the UAE, or Egypt. Then, they are sent to Gaza through exchange offices that have direct contacts operating inside the strip," she said.

"Currently, it is not possible to buy anything through banking apps in Gaza, which forces people to rely on cash transactions.

"The only cash you can find right now in Gaza is in the merchants' hands …  [and] everything is very expensive. That's if there is anything actually to buy."

The United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) says "the few remaining supplies are being sold at rapidly rising and increasingly unaffordable prices".

"The primary challenge for many households is the lack of income/money to afford essential goods as prices sky-rocket," the WFP said in its June monthly monitor of the situation in Gaza.

Crowdfunding platforms play key role

Representatives of the crowdfunding platforms GoFundMe and Chuffed have told the ABC that the numbers of campaigns launched to raise funds for Palestinians in Gaza have been increasing since the war started in late 2023.

A spokesperson for Chuffed says that "tens of thousands of Palestinian families are now being supported" through its crowdfunding campaigns.

"Campaign owners are responsible for ensuring funds reach Gaza. Generally they work with beneficiaries to transfer funds to local bank accounts or via money transfer services," a statement from Chuffed said.

"Unfortunately the fees for these services can be extremely high and the cash conversion rate in Gaza is exorbitant. Accepting these fees is the only way to get life-saving funds into the hands of Palestinians families."

A spokesperson for GoFundMe said that it has facilitated the raising of more than $US330 million ($510.3m) to support people in Gaza and Israel, with donations coming from people in 195 different countries.

"Our platform has become a meaningful way for people to help in times of global crisis, especially as people look for ways to offer rapid support," a spokesperson said in a statement.

The online crowdfunding platform JustGiving was unable to respond to a request for comment by the ABC.

Multiple cybersecurity experts that the ABC has spoken with say they have not yet seen any evidence to suggest Gaza-focused crowdfunding campaigns are being targeted by online scammers.

'The Palestinian has been dehumanised'

Board member at Palestine Australia Relief and Action (PARA) Reem Borrows said "the Palestinian has been dehumanised" and has no other options but to search online for direct donations.

"This is what is called pure survival and desperation and hoping that the average person on the street is going to be able to help," Ms Borrows said.

Muhammad Shehada, a political analyst from Gaza who is a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, shared the same view, saying "it's a dystopian Darwinist experiment, the strongest survive".

"It's like a sick twisted mix of Hunger Games, Squid Game, Mad Max, Fallout and Black Mirror."

The United Nations has said Israel is "intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival" and that it is a war crime. 

In July, two Israeli human rights groups — B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel — said Israel was carrying out "coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip".

After the deaths of six more Palestinians due to starvation on August 3, the Gaza Health Ministry said that the total toll of those dying from what international humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine has risen to 175, including 93 children.

The Israeli government argues figures from Gaza's Health Ministry are Hamas propaganda and not trustworthy. 

It also does not allow the ABC and other news organisations entry to Gaza to report freely.

World faces moral Gaza dilemma over crisis that 'shouldn't exist'

Jeremy Moses, an associate professor in political science and international relations at New Zealand's University of Canterbury, says confronting images of starvation shared online are fuelling an ongoing moral debate about how the world has allowed Gaza's hunger crisis to grow so dire.

"There's always been questions about the use of images of malnourished children in order to garner sympathy of western audiences and what that does to how we think about what those places are, who those people are, what the causes are of the famine that is occurring and so on," he told the ABC.

"These kinds of appeals are always morally challenging in some sense — people shouldn't be starving, they shouldn't be in the situation that they're in in the first place.

Mr Moses says there is also an ethical dilemma facing global powers, who he believes are failing on the internationally agreed-upon "Responsibility to Protect".

Known as R2P, the Responsibility to Protect resolution was adopted unanimously by United Nations members in 2005 and aims to prevent acts of "mass atrocity" such as genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The resolution says that while each member state has a responsibility to prevent atrocities within their territory, if a country cannot protect its people the international community has a responsibility to intervene by using "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means".

"Australia and New Zealand, European states, the United States, the United Kingdom, have for many decades now tried to represent themselves as humanitarian actors on the world stage," Mr Moses said.

"They associated themselves with this idea of promoting peace, democracy and human rights around the world, and yet we've seen all of these countries really refuse to do anything serious in order to ensure that humanitarian aid is able to get to the people of Gaza since October 7, 2023.