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$30 potatoes, $300 flour: Food prices reach extraordinary heights in Gaza

AdAm RAsgon & Ashley Wu Deadly chaos and violence have engulfed aid distribution in Gaza since Israel reconstituted the system in May as part of what it said was an effort to keep aid out of the hands of Hamas. The mayhem — and the limited amount of aid entering the enclave in the first place — has led many Palestinians to give up trying to get humanitarian aid, even though starvation is mounting. One of the few alternatives has been to buy food from markets in Gaza, which are stocked with a combination of aid materials — some of which may have been looted — commercial goods, and small amounts of locally grown produce. But the prices of many basic goods have skyrocketed. 'Have I ever seen this anywhere else to this extent?' Arif Husain, the chief economist at the UN World Food Programme, said in a phone interview on Wednesday. 'Absolutely not.' Sugar now costs about $106 per kilogram, compared with 89 cents before the war. Flour is $12 per kilogram, compared with 42 cents. Tomatoes are $30 per kilogram, compared with 59 cents — according to data published this week by the Gaza Governorate Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The data were collected by some of the chamber's staff members, who have been conducting surveys at markets in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, and Khan Younis. An emergency committee representing chambers of commerce in multiple areas of the enclave authorized the Gaza Governorate chamber to conduct the surveys and publish the results. 'The prices are insane — totally insane,' said Mohammad Fares, 24, a resident of Gaza City who was staying with a relative alongside his parents and two brothers because his family's home was destroyed earlier in the war. He has lost more than 50 pounds since the start of the war, he said. Fares said that he was unwilling to risk his life by going to aid sites, describing them as 'death traps' where Israeli soldiers fatally shoot people and desperate Palestinians threaten one another with knives. (The Israeli military has said that its forces have fired 'warning shots' when people approached its forces outside aid sites in what it described as a threatening manner.) Staying alive, Fares said, required his family to dig into what remains of its savings to purchase small quantities of flour and lentils. His family was no longer purchasing vegetables and fruits, which had long exceeded what they could afford, he added. 'At a certain level, people get priced out,' Husain said. 'The prices are so high that they become meaningless.' The focus, he said, becomes getting small amounts of the most essential goods. The instability in the supply of goods has caused drastic price fluctuations. For example, the price of flour reached $891 for a 25-kilogram sack on July 20, dipped to $223 on Sunday, and climbed to $334 on Wednesday, data from the enclave's Chamber of Commerce showed. The same amount of flour cost a little over $10 before the war.