‘We’ll die whether from hunger or the bombing’: Gaza faces critical food shortage
Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, in Nuseirat, central Gaza, 8 April 2025
Sheren Falah Saab reports in Haaretz on 25 April 2025:
“It’s very hard – so hard that I can’t concentrate,” says H., a journalist from the Gaza Strip describing his efforts to cope with the shortage of food and clean water. He sounds exhausted.
“I feel weak,” he says. “I eat one date at 1 P.M. and another at 6. It’s been like that for three weeks now. The rice at home is almost gone, and there’s no flour. The only thing I’m thinking about is how to feed my kids in the next few days.”
H.’s feeling of helplessness is unmistakable. “A few days ago my son Ahmed, who’s 5, was very hungry at night and started crying. We had two pitas that we wanted to split among the four kids the next day. But he was crying so much that we gave him a whole pita. My other three kids shared one pita. That’s all they ate that day.”
The food shortage is the biggest challenge for most Gazans now. Eight weeks have passed since Israel stopped allowing aid into the Strip, and experts are warning of a sudden and rapid decline in health due to the shortages of food, clean water and medicine.
This situation isn’t new for Gazans. In the past year they have learned to adapt to extreme conditions, including hunger. But now they are very worn out, both emotionally and physically, and with each day their ability to survive erodes further.
“The basic food products are missing all over – in Rafah, in Gaza City, in Deir al-Balah,” H. says. “For us it’s yet another tragedy. People say that to cope they’ve eaten porcupine meat or turtles.”
H. says the food and other aid in the humanitarian organizations’ warehouses is also running out. “We count each day and don’t waste a crumb, and the expectation is that the situation will get worse.”
Rice once a week
Three weeks ago, due to a shortage of flour and cooking gas, the UN food program closed the subsidized bakeries that played a key role in Gazans’ diet. Since then, people have largely relied on the 1 million or so hot meals served daily by 175 communal soup kitchens known as taqiya that are run by volunteers and were already operating before the war.
The meal usually includes lentil soup, hummus or beans and sometimes rice. According to the UN, this is many Gazans’ main meal of the day, but it far from meets their nutritional needs. Fresh meat, dairy products, eggs, fruit and vegetables are much harder to come by.
Nur, a 42-year-old displaced person from Gaza City, is living in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza with her husband and their three children 7 to 12 years old. Like most families in the camp, they rely on the soup kitchens to survive. If not for the food distribution there, people wouldn’t have anything to eat,” she says. Even if her family had money, they wouldn’t be able to find or buy the items needed for nutritious meals, she adds.
The situation is worse than what people outside Gaza can imagine,” she says, adding that the family’s daily routine starts with a search for food. “The children go to the taqiya in the morning with empty pots and wait until the food is ready. But there’s not enough to feed all the displaced families.”
The family’s daily menu consists of lentil soup, bean soup, chickpeas and then rice once a week. “We eat one meal a day, whatever we get from the taqiya,” Nur says. This meal comes in a pot whose contents are divided within the family. “I measure out the portions with a cup,” Nur says. “The pot holds six to eight cups. My husband and I eat one cup and we divide the rest equally among the children. It’s the only solution we have for now, and I’m worried that the taqiya won’t be functioning in the coming weeks. Then we’ll have nothing to eat.”
A woman prepares food on a fire for her family at the Islamic University in Gaza City, now a shelter for displaced Palestinians, 4 April 2025
Volunteers in Gaza say that the taqiya are operating thanks to donations from Muslim communities around the world. “In the past it was mainly meant for poor families. It’s a commandment to give food to the needy,” says Mohammed, 48, a volunteer at a communal kitchen in central Gaza.
“The ingredients are purchased in large quantities, and we’re able to prepare 1,500 to 2,000 meals a day, but it’s not enough for everybody. The barring of food aid from Gaza will make it hard for us to keep going.”
Mohammed recalls something that happened a few days earlier – he and colleagues were cooking meals in front of people waiting in line. “There was a girl of about 12 who was crying because she was afraid her turn wouldn’t come,” he says. “I saw the anxiety in her eyes and her fear that she’d have to go back to her tent with an empty pot. This happens sometimes, unfortunately.”
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said that “questions regarding the entry of aid should be addressed to the political leadership and the prime minister’s spokespeople.” The Prime Minister’s Office did not provide a comment.
‘Everything was lost’
The word “hard” keeps coming up when people talk about their situation. “Inhuman,” actually, says Amjad, a 37-year-old from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza and the father of 4-year-old twins. Like Nur, he’s living in the Nuseirat refugee camp. “We learned to live with shortages even before the war,” he says. “With an electricity shortage, at least you can use solar energy for a two-hour supply every day. But where can you get food when everything around you is destroyed?”
Amjad cites the agricultural infrastructure that has been destroyed during the war, while large swaths of Gaza have been evacuated. Since the fighting resumed over a month ago, the Israeli army has issued more than 20 evacuation orders for different areas.
Sources at humanitarian organizations say these orders have no expiration date, and no one knows if they’ll be able to return to the designated area after the army’s offensive. A UN report last week said that 69 percent of Gaza is classified as off-limits to Palestinians, either because it has become part of a buffer zone or because of evacuation orders.
Ostensibly, the evacuation orders are unrelated to the hunger issue, but actually they deprive Gazans of one last desperate tactic: growing their own food. “We can’t even go back to our land,” Amjad says, “and when the border crossings are closed and humanitarian aid isn’t entering, vendors raise prices. A sack of flour now costs $130 or $150, depending on demand. And anyone who can’t afford that can’t eat bread.”
Rabia, a 39-year-old agricultural engineer from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, told Haaretz in October about the struggle to survive by tending little vegetable gardens. Now he says Gazans can’t grow anything because they constantly have to leave the place where they’re living. “At the beginning of the month, the army said we had to leave Deir al-Balah, so we moved to Rafah,” he says, referring to the city at Gaza’s southern tip. “Everything was lost and other families are in the same situation – they were growing vegetables but then they had to leave it all behind.”
Rabia says he was able to save some of the food he had in Deir al-Balah: four one-kilogram sacks of legumes. He also has a little flour and a sack of za’atar – hyssop. “A kilo of flour is enough for two days,” he says. “We’re down to one kilo so … we eat once a day. My wife cooks a pot of soup with a little salt and two cups of legumes.”
The situation in Khan Yunis in the south is dire as well. Maha, 39, sits on a torn mattress in a makeshift shelter. “I used to dream that my daughter would celebrate her birthday with a cake,” she says, holding her toddler during the video call. “Now I dream that she’ll eat one meal a day. When she cries at night I sing to her so she’ll forget the hunger. It’s hard to see my daughter hungry and know I have nothing to feed her except milk powder that isn’t suited for her age. In the evening, I take half a date and put it into a piece of cloth for her to lick, like candy. It breaks my heart. We’re living on something that resembles food without knowing when we’ll be able to eat a full meal again.”
The heartbreak also follows some who have managed to leave Gaza, like Nasrin, who is from Khan Yunis. In March 2024, she was able to leave the Strip and now lives with her family in Egypt. Despite her new and safe life, she is filled with worry for her relatives back in Gaza. “It’s torture to read every message I get. … They’re pleading for help,” she says. “Some ask how they can get out, and some ask for donations to help buy food. It breaks my heart that they’re so desperate and suffering.”
Nasrin’s brother Mustafa, 58, is currently living in Zuweida, a town about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from Deir al-Balah. He describes his meager daily diet: tea in the morning and soup in the afternoon. That’s it. “The soup has a half-cube of soup powder and two handfuls of legumes. There is no meat,” he says, adding that last April his family ate hubeiza, an edible plant. “This year, I’ve asked my children not to go too far so as not to run into the army. We’ll make do with what there is.” In the evening, they heat water and add a little cinnamon and a spoonful of sugar. “It quiets the hunger and calms the children a little,” Mustafa says. “When we can get milk powder, we add that too.”
In northern Gaza, the people who have returned to their ruined homes are also suffering the food shortage. “We’ve lost the hope to live. We’ll die whether from hunger or the bombing,” says Fatima, a 28-year-old from Jabalya. She and her parents recently returned to their partially destroyed home. “It’s impossible to buy flour,” she says. “Five kilograms costs $160 to $200. Vendors are exploiting the situation and raising the price, and they know we can’t afford to pay. A kilogram of sugar costs $30.” Fatima says her 3-year-old nephew wakes up at night from hunger and cries that his stomach hurts. Last week, the extended family banded together to buy a kilogram of rice for $40. “We take a handful, grind up the rice, boil it in water and add a little sugar,” Fatima says. “It’s like hot cereal. We make three plates – one for my little nephew, and all the adults split the rest. It comes out to two or three spoonfuls apiece.” Asked what she’ll do when the rice runs out, she says, “We don’t know. This isn’t food, it’s heartbreak. We’re all hungry. The war has left us with nothing. We’re all losing.”
This article is reproduced in its entirety