Gaza edges closer to famine as Israel's total blockade nears its third month
She found the half-bag of flour in a garbage dumpster. It is crawling with pests and shows clear signs of contamination. But it's still Rajab's best hope for keeping her six children fed and alive. So she sifts the flour once more to make bread.
'My kids are vomiting after they eat it. It smells horrible,' Rajab says of the bread it produces. 'But what else can I do? What will I feed my children if not this?'
She is one of hundreds of thousands of parents in Gaza struggling to feed their children as the war-torn Palestinian enclave barrels towards full-blown and entirely man-made famine.
For nearly two months, Israel has carried out a total siege of Gaza, refusing to allow in a single truck of humanitarian aid or commercial goods – the longest period Israel has imposed such a total blockade.
Israel says it cut off the entry of humanitarian aid to pressure Hamas to release hostages. But international organizations say its actions violate international law, with some accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war – a war crime.
The impact is clear: The World Food Programme (WFP) announced this week that its warehouses are now barren; the soup kitchens that are still running are severely rationing their last stocks; and what little food remains in Gaza's markets is now being sold for exorbitant prices that most cannot afford. A simple bag of flour now costs the equivalent of $100, several people told CNN.
Cases of acute child malnutrition are also rapidly rising, one of the telltale signs of impending famine. Nearly 3,700 children were diagnosed last month, an 82% increase from February, according to the United Nations.
Five-year-old Usama al-Raqab has already lost 8 lbs in the last month, now weighing just 20 lbs, according to his mother. According to the World Health Organization, the median weight for a healthy 5-year-old boy is about 40 lbs.
He has several pre-existing medical conditions – including a pancreatic disorder and respiratory issues – which require a diet rich in fats and proteins to stay healthy. Those foods have become almost completely unavailable as Israel's siege approaches its third month.
Usama's skin now sticks to his bones, and his mother says he can barely walk.
'I have to carry him everywhere. He can only manage to walk from the tent to the bathroom and nothing more,' she says.
When his mother takes off his clothes to bathe him, he winces in pain. Every movement is painful in his condition.
The aid organizations that were once the answer to a food crisis that has roiled Gaza for much of this nearly 19-month-long war are now also out of answers.
Standing in an empty warehouse, the WFP's emergency coordinator in Gaza Yasmin Maydhane said the organization's supplies have been 'depleted.'
'We are in a position now where over 400,000 people that were receiving assistance from our hot meal kitchens – which is the last lifeline for the population – is in itself grinding to a halt,' she said.
If Israel would only open the gates to Gaza, the WFP says it is ready to surge enough aid into Gaza to feed the entire population for up to two months. UNRWA, the main UN agency supporting Palestinians, said it has nearly 3,000 trucks filled with aid waiting to cross into Gaza. Both need Israel to lift its blockade to get that aid in.
As conditions in Gaza spiral, Israel has offered no indication so far that it is planning any action to avert all-out famine.
Israel's European allies – including France, Germany and the United Kingdom –have issued increasingly urgent calls for it to allow the entry of humanitarian aid – with one notable exception. Unlike last year, when former US President Joe Biden's administration pressured Israel repeatedly to facilitate the entry of more aid into Gaza, President Donald Trump's administration is backing Israel's blockade.
The White House's National Security Council has issued statements supportive of Israel's control of the flow of humanitarian aid as a bargaining chip to compel Hamas to release more hostages. And last week, the newly appointed US ambassador to Israel rejected appeals from humanitarian officials to pressure Israel to open the crossings.
'What I would like to suggest is that we work together on putting the pressure where it really belongs: on Hamas,' Ambassador Mike Huckabee said, calling on Hamas to agree to another hostage release deal. 'When that happens and hostages are released, which is an urgent matter for all of us, then we hope that that humanitarian aid will flow and flow freely.'
But Gaza's starving civilians are running out of time.
At a soup kitchen in al-Nuseirat in central Gaza last Friday, hundreds of Palestinians waited in line in the scorching sun for the only meal most of them will eat that day.
Sitting on the ground, an elderly woman named Aisha shields her head from the sun with the pot she hopes will be filled with food. She feels sick – her head feels like it is melting, she says.
'We are starving, tired, and weary of this life,' Aisha says, her voice weak with fatigue. 'There is no food, no nothing. Death is easier than this life.'
Young and the old crowd towards the front of the line, pots and bowls raised high. The one meal a day from this charitable association has become their only lifeline – but the exhausting routine of hours spent standing in line for meager sustenance is pushing him and many others to the brink.
'This pot – how can it feed eight people?' Abu Subhi Hararah shouts, unable to contain his frustration. 'Who should I feed – my wife, my son, or the elderly?
'Our children are dying from war, from bombings at schools, tents and homes,' he cries. 'Have mercy on us. We are searching for a morsel of food.'
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Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Mothers in Gaza stretch meager ingredients where they can, but say hunger persists
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News24
6 days ago
- News24
A Sudanese city is starving: What can be done to help?
Warnings have been coming for months. Last December, the global hunger monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reported famine in two camps near the northwestern Sudanese city of El Fasher, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Even then, they warned Sudan's ongoing civil war could see famine spread into the city by May. The warning was prescient. El Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, has now been under siege for over a year now. This week, the United Nations and a number of its agencies warned that approximately 300 000 people trapped inside the city face starvation. 'WFP [the World Food Program] has not been able to deliver food assistance to El Fasher by road for over a year as all roads leading there are blocked,' the UN aid programme said in a statement on Tuesday. 'The city is cut off from humanitarian access leaving the remaining population with little choice but to fend for survival with whatever limited supplies are left.' 'In El Fasher, there was only bombing and hunger.' 8-year-old Sondos fled. But 300,000 people are still trapped, cut off from food, water, and medicine. WFP needs urgent safe passage into El Fasher. Lives hang in the balance. 🔴Press release: — WFP Sudan (@WFP_Sudan) August 5, 2025 Many residents are resorting to eating hay or animal fodder. Food that is available in the city costs significantly more than elsewhere in Sudan, making it unaffordable for most people. 'What we really need now is for a humanitarian pause to be agreed upon so that we can safely transport urgent food and nutrition supplies into the city,' Leni Kinzli, a WFP spokesperson based in Sudan, told DW. Why is this happening? Sudan's civil war began in early 2023 when two rival military groups - the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) - started fighting for control. The SAF, with about 200 000 personnel and led by the country's de facto leader Abdel-Fattah Burhan, operates like a regular army. Burhan's government, based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, is recognised as Sudan's government by the UN. AFP The RSF is estimated to have 70 000 to 100 000 fighters and headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. It functions more like a guerrilla force and includes the infamous Janjaweed militias, notorious for their brutality in Darfur in the early 2000s. Both sides have been accused of war crimes. El Fasher remains the only urban centre in the Darfur region not controlled by the RSF. If the RSF wins here, they would control almost all of western Sudan. The SAF-aligned militias inside El Fasher, known as the Joint Forces, prevent a complete RSF victory. This is why the RSF has laid siege to the city since April 2024, digging trenches and regularly launching attacks on it. AFP The situation worsened this past April when the RSF attacked two camps near El Fasher sheltering over 500 000 displaced people. Many fled into the city or nearby towns. Siege on El Fasher has tightened As the Joint Forces inside El Fasher lose ground, the RSF has tightened the siege in recent moments, said Shayna Lewis, senior adviser on Sudan for the US-based group PAEMA (Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities). 'The Rapid Support Forces have besieged the city for over a year at this point,' she told DW in a televised interview. 'But it's particularly in the past few months that they've tightened that blockade. Nothing is coming in and out. We used to have donkey carts that carried food into the city but now barely anything is able to even be smuggled in.' AFP Locals have said the RSF aims to starve out SAF-allied forces. There are also reports that some of the forces inside the city are preventing civilians from leaving, using them as a protective buffer. 'They attacked us; it was exhausting,' Enaam Mohammed, a Sudanese woman who fled El Fasher for the nearby town of Tawila, told journalists this week. Tawila, around 40km away, has seen a massive influx of around 400 000 displaced people since April. Diseases like cholera and measles are now spreading there. '[They asked us] 'Where are the weapons? Where are the men?'' Mohammed continued, describing her experience with the RSF. If they find someone with a mobile phone, they take it. If you have money, they take it. If you have a good, strong donkey, they take it. Enaam Mohammed Mohammed said she also saw the RSF killing people and raping women. What can be done? Currently, the conflict is at what analysts have described as a 'strategic stalemate'. Alongside other smaller groups, the RSF controls much of western Sudan, while the SAF controls the east. Earlier in July, the RSF set up their own civilian government, effectively splitting Sudan in two. There is no credible peace process and heavy fighting is also ongoing in other parts of Sudan. 'Both parties view the conflict through a zero-sum lens,' analysts at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) wrote earlier this year. 'The victory of one side is entirely dependent on the defeat of the other.' Neither side wants to negotiate, observers say. AFP Exacerbating that situation is foreign backing for the different fighting groups. In July, the US postponed a meeting about Sudan that would have brought together Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The Saudis and Egyptians are thought to support the SAF and the UAE, the RSF - all deny providing military aid to Sudanese groups. The meeting is now rumoured to be rescheduled for September. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called SAF leader Burhan to ask for a weeklong ceasefire that would allow aid into El Fasher. Burhan agreed, but the RSF has yet to consent. 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San Francisco Chronicle
7 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Mothers in Gaza stretch meager ingredients where they can, but say hunger persists
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A single bowl of eggplant stewed in watery tomato juice must sustain Sally Muzhed's family of six for the day. She calls it moussaka, but it's a pale echo of the fragrant, layered meat-and-vegetable dish that once filled Gaza's kitchens with its aroma. The war has severed families from the means to farm or fish, and the little food that enters the besieged strip is often looted, hoarded and resold at exorbitant prices. So mothers like Muzhed have been forced into constant improvisation, reimagining Palestinian staples with the meager ingredients they can grab off trucks, from airdropped parcels or purchase at the market. Israel implemented a total blockade on trucks entering the besieged strip in early March and began allowing aid back in May, although humanitarian organizations say the amount remains far from adequate. Some cooks have gotten inventive, but most say they're just desperate to break the dull repetition of the same few ingredients, if they can get them at all. Some families say they survive on stale, brittle pita, cans of beans eaten cold for lack of cooking gas, or whatever they can get on the days that they arrive early enough that meals remain available at charity kitchens. 'The children remain hungry. Tomorrow we won't have any food to eat,' Muzhed said from the tent where her family has been displaced in central Gaza's Deir al-Balah. Once, her bowl would barely have fed one child. Now she ladles it out in spoonfuls, trying to stretch it. Her son asks why he can't have more. The Muzhed family's struggle is being repeated across Gaza as the territory plunges deeper into what international experts have called 'the worst-case scenario of famine.' On some days, mothers like Amani al-Nabahin manage to get mujaddara from charity kitchens. The dish, once flavored with caramelized onions and spices, is now stripped to its bare essentials of rice and lentils. "Nearly nine out of ten households resorted to extremely severe coping mechanisms to feed themselves, such as taking significant safety risks to obtain food, and scavenging from the garbage,' the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said on July 29. Gas for cooking is scarce, vegetables are costly and meat has all but vanished from the markets. Families in Gaza once dipped pieces of bread into dukkah, a condiment made of ground wheat and spices. But today, 78-year-old Alia Hanani is rationing bread by the bite, served once a day at noon, allowing each person to dip it in a wartime dukkah made of flour, lentils and bulgur. 'There's no dinner or breakfast,' the mother of eight said. 'I had to beg for it,' she said. For some, it's even less. Kifah Qadih, displaced from Khuza'a east of Khan Younis, couldn't get any food — the bowl in front of her has remained empty all day. 'Today there is no food. There is nothing.'
