This content was published in 25 April 2025 – 12:28
After a month and a half without humanitarian aid, hunger and hopelessness spread through Gaza. Flour and bread are so scarce that they must be carefully distributed among families to survive.
“As the border crossings are closed, there are no gas or flour, or firewood entering,” says Um Mohamed Isa, a volunteer who helps bake bread with the few resources still available.
In mid -March, Israel resumed military operations in the devastated Palestinian territory, ending several weeks of relative calm for a fragile high fire.
In the territory there is a serious humanitarian catastrophe, warns the UN. Since March 2, the Israeli block prevents the entry of food, fuel and other basic products for the 2.4 million gazaties.
The Hebrew State reiterates that it will not allow help access and accuses Hamas of diverting supplies for its own benefit, an extreme that the Palestinian movement denies.
Amid the crossfire, the population has to resort to increasingly desperate measures to feed.
To cook a fine flat bread called “Saj”, which receives its name from the convex stove where it is made, the volunteers who help UM Mohamed Isa have burned pieces of cardboard.
“There will be a famine,” says the Palestinian woman, repeating a warning released repeatedly by international aid organizations in these 18 months of war.
“We will be in a situation of not being able to feed our children more,” adds Isa.
– The furnaces go out –
Until the end of March, the Gazatis congregated every morning in front of the few bakeries still open, hoping to get some bread.
But one by one, the furnaces went out because the basic ingredients (the flour, the water, the salt and the yeast) were exhausted.
Huge industrial bakeries, keys to the operations of the World Food Program, also closed due to lack of flour and fuel to feed their generators.
On Wednesday, the Oenegé World Central Kitchen also warned of a humanitarian crisis that “every day is more dire.”
The oven of the organization is the only one that still works in Gaza, producing about 87,000 loaf of bread every day.
“The bread is valuable, often replaces meals where you can no longer cook,” said the Oenegé.
Originally from Beit Lahia, in the north of the enclave, Baqer Deeb was displaced by fighting, almost like the entire population, and arrived in Gaza City, where he built “a ceramic oven to make bread and sell it.”
“But now there is a serious shortage of flour (…) and that makes the crisis of even more serious bread,” says the 35 -year -old man.
Nor is much food on offer in the stalls raised next to the roads. And prices take care, making many products unaffordable for the majority of the population.
– “Moth and worms” –
Fida Abu Umayra thought to have found a real bargain when buying a huge bag of flour for just over $ 90 in the Al-Shati refugee camp, in the north of the strip.
“I wish I would not have bought it,” says the 55 -year -old woman. «It was full of mold and worms. The bread was disgusting ».
Before the war, the typical 25 kilos bag like the one she bought would have been around 10 dollars in price.
“We are starving, literally,” says Tasnim Abu Mata, in Gaza City. “We count and calculate everything our children eat and ration the bread to last several days,” says the 50 -year -old woman.
“We can’t stand it anymore.”
People wove among the rubble looking for food remains. Others walk several kilometers to the aid distribution points hoping to find some food for their families.
Germany, France and the United Kingdom urged Israel on Wednesday to unlock humanitarian aid and alerted “a sharp risk of famine, epidemic diseases and death.”
According to the UN Humanitarian Aid Coordination Office, people displaced in more than 250 shelters in Gaza did not have access to a sufficient amount of food last month.
Hamas, whose unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 triggered the war, accuses his enemy of using hunger as a gun of war.
Honoring their resistance reputation after suffering multiple wars, the Palestinians of Gaza devised multiple ways to overcome hardships.
But in their interviews with AFP, many Gazatis lament that these improvised solutions make them feel that they have receded centuries in time.
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