AS ISRAEL’S second total blockade stretches into its second month, more than two million Palestinians are being pushed to the brink of famine.
Hunger is consuming the Gaza Strip. The siege has created the longest uninterrupted period of deprivation since the escalation of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began 18 months ago, and the situation is now catastrophic.
Israel has completely sealed the enclave’s borders, cutting off food, fuel, medicine, and essential supplies.
According to humanitarian agencies, this forced starvation – compounded by daily airstrikes and ground assaults – amounts to collective punishment and a grave breach of international humanitarian law.
United Nations leaders have warned that the entire population is being ‘trapped, bombed and starved’ in what they call a ‘humanitarian hell’.
By 1st April, the World Food Programme had shut down all of its bakeries in Gaza due to the depletion of flour and cooking gas.
The closure severed one of the final lifelines of bread for hundreds of thousands.
Shortly after, the Gaza Bakery Owners Association confirmed a complete shutdown of all bakeries across the territory.
The WFP has since halted the distribution of food parcels, and its remaining emergency kitchens are predicted to go dark imminently.
Among those facing the worst consequences is Mohammad Sobeh, 45, a man paralysed from a recent spinal operation, now living in a tent in Jabaliya.
‘The markets are empty. There’s no flour, and when there is, it’s sold at prices I could never afford,’ he said.
‘The worst feeling in the world is watching your child cry from hunger, and you can’t even give them a piece of bread.’
His story is not an exception but emblematic of a wider collapse of civilian life.
Sobeh had already been displaced multiple times before Israeli airstrikes destroyed his home in Beit Lahia.
He, his wife, and their three children initially sought refuge in Zaid School – only to be forced to flee again when Israeli tanks opened fire on the building on 22nd March.
‘The occupation doesn’t differentiate between a home, a school, or a hospital,’ he said.
During the panicked escape, his 12-year-old son, Muatasim, pushed his wheelchair for miles across debris and danger until they reached a patch of rubble where they could erect a tent.
‘I don’t want luxuries,’ he said. ‘I just want to live peacefully – a place to sit and bread for my children.’
As infrastructure crumbles, even foraging for food has become dangerous.
In northern Gaza, Ahmed Nasr, 40, opened a community bakery last year using traditional clay ovens.
‘These are the ovens our grandfathers used. We’ve gone back to the primitive life they once lived,’ he explained. But with fuel supplies cut, he too had to rely on firewood.
That became a death sentence for some. One of his former suppliers, a local farmer, lost both his sons – aged 18 and 19 – who were killed by Israeli forces while collecting wood.
‘The occupation treats a farmer gathering wood like a terrorist, but all he wants is to feed his children,’ Nasr said.
Before the blockade intensified, Nasr’s bakery provided bread to 15-20 families daily. Now, that number has surged to 90, even though flour has become nearly impossible to find.
What once cost 20 shekels now sells on the black market for up to 400 – more than £80 a bag.
Despite soaring costs, Nasr continues to sell bread at five shekels per bundle, operating at a loss to prevent hunger in his neighbourhood.
‘There are no jobs and the prices are insane,’ he said.
‘Flour alone doesn’t make bread. We need yeast, salt, water, and labour. We never know if we’ll be forced to shut down tomorrow – or today.’
Nasr is not alone in his despair.
Reem Abed, a 24-year-old mother of two, has also been displaced repeatedly and now cooks over cinder blocks outside what remains of her house.
Her children, aged one and two, cry from hunger.
‘We haven’t received any aid since the crossings were closed, and now the bakeries are shut down. We don’t have any stock of flour left,’ she said.
Abed forages for wild mallow plants in the soil near her home and relies on tinned legumes she managed to save.
‘We can’t buy or store anything; prices in the markets are astronomical, and the nightmare of displacement could strike at any moment, forcing us to leave all the food behind.’
Her youngest son, Mahmoud, was born on 1st February in the middle of the siege.
During a night of heavy shelling, she began bleeding and had to be transported by an animal-drawn cart to Kamal Adwan Hospital for an emergency Caesarean section.
‘The nightmare of that night still haunts me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to have more children – at least not until the world treats the women and children of Gaza like everywhere else.’
Her children, like tens of thousands of others, are suffering from severe malnutrition.
Last Wednesday, Gaza’s health ministry announced that at least 60,000 children are at immediate risk of life-threatening complications.
With hospitals overwhelmed or destroyed, and medicine scarce, even treatable illnesses now prove fatal.
To make matters worse, Israeli airstrikes have targeted multiple charity kitchens in recent weeks.
Last Monday, a bombing outside a kitchen in Khan Younis killed seven people, including three children.
These kitchens, already struggling with supply shortages, are among the last remaining sources of hot meals for displaced families.
Israel has offered no clear plan for easing the blockade.
A recent proposal by the Israeli military to distribute humanitarian aid through private contractors under military oversight was categorically rejected by Gaza’s authorities as a violation of international law and a means to legitimise the occupation.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich later dismissed even that plan, stating: ‘Not a single grain of wheat will enter the territory.’
In the face of these policies, Nasr had a message for the world: ‘You watch us being slaughtered. If neighbouring nations had stopped normalising relations and torn up their peace deals, this war would’ve ended long ago!’
The blockade, bombing, and forced starvation campaign continues to deepen the humanitarian catastrophe.
Yet Gazans like Nasr, Sobeh, and Abed endure – resisting the slow grind of erasure not just with survival, but with defiance.
