KHAN YOUNIS: For nearly 60 days, no food, fuel, medicine or other item has entered the Gaza Strip, blocked by Israel. Aid groups are running out of food to distribute. Markets are nearly bare. Palestinian families are left struggling to feed their children.
In the sprawling tent camp outside the southern city of Khan Younis, Mariam Al-Najjar and her mother-in-law emptied four cans of peas and carrots into a pot and boiled it over a wood fire. They added a little bouillon and spices.
That, with a plate of rice, was the sole meal on Friday for the 11 members of their family, including six children.
Among Palestinians, “Fridays are sacred,” a day for large family meals of meat, stuffed vegetables or other rich traditional dishes, Al-Najjar said.
“Now we eat peas and rice,” she said. “We never ate canned peas before the war. Only in this war that has destroyed our lives.”
The around 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are now mainly living off canned vegetables, rice, pasta and lentils. Meat, milk, cheese and fruit have disappeared. Bread and eggs are scarce. The few vegetables or other items in the market have skyrocketed in price, unaffordable for most.
“We can’t get anything that provides any protein or nutrients,” Al-Najjar said.
Beans, peas and bread dunked in tea
Israel imposed the blockade on March 2, then shattered a two-month ceasefire by resuming military operations March 18. It said both steps aim to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages. Rights groups call the blockade a “starvation tactic” endangering the entire population and a potential war crime.
Item by item, foods have disappeared, Al-Najjar said.
When meat became unavailable, she got canned sardines. Those are gone. They used to receive cartons of milk from the UN That ended weeks ago. Once a week, she used to buy tomatoes to give her children a salad. Now she can’t afford tomatoes.
Now, they are on a routine of cans of beans or peas and carrots, she said. When they can’t find that, they get lentils or pasta from a charity kitchen. If she finds bread or sugar, she gives her kids bread dunked in tea to stave off their hunger, she said.
“I’m afraid my son’s children will die of hunger,” said Mariam’s mother-in-law Sumaya Al-Najjar. The 61-year-old said she and her husband have cancer; she has stopped taking her medication because its unobtainable, and her husband is being treated in a hospital.
Mariam worries how she’ll feed her children when what’s left in Gaza runs out.
“Maybe we’ll eat sand,” she said.
Malnutrition hitting children at a key time in their development
Doctors warn that the lack of variety, protein and other nutrients in children’s diet will cause long-term damage to their health.
Dr. Ayman Abu Teir, head of the Therapeutic Feeding department at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, said the number of malnutrition cases has “increased in a very substantial way.” Specialized milk for them has run out, he said. The UN said it identified 3,700 children suffering from acute malnutrition in March, up 80 percent from February.
“Children need the food pyramid for their development,” Abu Teir said: meat, eggs, fish and dairy for their growth, fruits and vegetables to build their immune systems. “These do not exist in Gaza,” he said.
He said a 1-year-old child weighing 10 kilos (22 pounds) needs about 700 calories a day.
The four cans of peas and carrots in the Al-Najjars’ Friday meal totaled about 1,000 calories, according to label information — not counting the rice they also ate – split among 11 people, including six children between the ages of 6 and 14.
Israel has previously said Gaza had enough aid after a surge in distribution during the ceasefire., and it accuses Hamas of diverting aid for its purposes. Humanitarian workers deny there is significant diversion, saying the UN strictly monitors distribution.
On a recent day in a Khan Younis street market, most stalls were empty. Those open displayed small piles of tomatoes, cucumbers, shriveled eggplants and onions. One had a few dented cans of beans and peas. At one of the few working grocery stores, the shelves were bare except for one with bags of pasta.
Tomatoes sell for 50 shekels a kilo, almost $14, compared to less than a dollar before the war.
“I dream of eating a tomato,” said Khalil Al-Faqawi, standing in front of the empty stalls.
He said he has nine people to feed. “The children ask for meat, for chicken, for a cookie. We can’t provide it,” he said. “Forget about meat. We’ve got lentils. Great. Thank you very much. What happens when the lentils run out?”
The only vegetables are those grown in Gaza. Israeli troops have destroyed the vast majority of the territory’s farmland and greenhouses or closed them off within military zones where anyone approaching risks being shot.
The remaining farms’ production has fallen for lack of water and supplies.
Mahmoud Al-Shaer said his greenhouses yield at most 150 kilos (330 pounds) of tomatoes a week compared to 600 kilos (1,300 pounds) before the war.
Even that can’t be sustained, he said. “In two weeks or a month, you won’t find any at all.”
Israel has leveled much of Gaza with its air and ground campaign. It has killed over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Almost the entire population has been driven from their homes. Hundreds of thousands live in tent camps.
In Khan Younis, children mobbed the Rafah Charity Kitchen, holding out metal pots. Workers ladled boiled lentils into each one.
Such kitchens are the only alternative to the market. Other food programs shut down under the blockade.
The kitchens also face closure. The World Food Program said Friday it delivered its last food stocks to the 47 kitchens it supports — the biggest in Gaza — which it said will run out of meals to serve within days.
Kitchens can provide only lentils or plain pasta and rice. Hani Abu Qasim, at the Rafah Charity Kitchen, said they have reduced portion size as well.
“These people who depend on us are threatened with starvation if this kitchen closes,” Abu Qasim said.
For nearly 60 days, Israel has blocked food from Gaza. Palestinians struggle to feed their families
https://arab.news/9d2nh
For nearly 60 days, Israel has blocked food from Gaza. Palestinians struggle to feed their families
- For nearly 60 days, no food, fuel, medicine or other item has entered the Gaza Strip, blocked by Israel. Markets are nearly bare
A father awaits Rafah crossing reopening after 2-year separation from family in Gaza
- Belal, 51, has packed his suitcases, bought gifts for his children, and is ready to go as soon as he is allowed
- Gaza has been closed to entry for Palestinians since Israel launched its retaliatory campaign against Hamas for its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel
BADRASHIN, Egypt: Stranded in Egypt for the past two years, Raed Belal has had to watch helplessly as his wife and children in the Gaza Strip endured bombardment, displacement and hunger. Now he finally has hope he might return to them.
With Israel preparing to reopen the vital Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, Belal, 51, has packed his suitcases, bought gifts for his children, and is ready to go as soon as he is allowed.
“It’s the moment I have been waiting for,” he said, speaking at the rented apartment where he has been living in the Egyptian village of Badrashin. “The moment when I reunite with my children, when I return to my home and homeland, even if everything is destroyed.”
Belal, who left Gaza to get treated for back pain three months before the war broke out, is one of tens of thousands of Palestinians eager to return to the territory, despite the vast destruction wreaked by Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. The Rafah border crossing is expected to reopen within days, a process jump-started by Israel’s recovery on Monday of the last hostage’s remains in Gaza, where a ceasefire with Hamas has held for four months.
Gaza has been closed to entry for Palestinians since Israel launched its retaliatory campaign against Hamas for its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. In the first months of the war, some 110,000 Palestinians were able to leave Gaza. The Rafah crossing was completely closed in May 2024 when Israeli troops took it over.
Since then, people like Belal have been trapped abroad – most of them in Egypt. Many feared Israel would never allow them back to Gaza.
A ‘limited opening’ of the Rafah crossing
Still, Palestinians will likely face a long wait before going home even after Rafah reopens. Israel intends to keep returns to a trickle.
The exact date of Rafah’s reopening has not been announced. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called it a “limited opening,” saying 50 Palestinians a day would be allowed into Gaza and that Israel will keep tight control over who enters, subject to security inspections. Before the war, several hundred people a day would enter Gaza from Egypt.
So far, some 30,000 Palestinians have registered with the Palestinian Embassy in Egypt to return to Gaza, according to an embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity because details of the reopening remain under discussion.
Hamas in a statement Monday called on Israel to open the Rafah crossing in both directions “without restrictions.” Ali Shaath, head of the new Palestinian committee administering Gaza’s daily affairs, last week said the crossing would be opened this week to facilitate movement into and out of the territory.
Palestinians are also hoping that the crossing’s reopening will mean medical evacuations out of Gaza will increase. Some 20,000 Palestinians needing urgent treatment abroad for war wounds or chronic medical conditions have been waiting for evacuation, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Throughout the war, the numbers allowed out have been low. The ceasefire since October brought only a tiny uptick, with an average of only 25 medical evacuations a week, according to UN figures.
Watching his family’s trauma from afar
Belal, who owned a mobile phone store in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, left the territory in July 2023 to get treatment for his back. Weeks later, Hamas launched its attack on Israel, Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza began, and Gaza’s borders slammed shut.
Belal was stranded, struggling to keep up with the turmoil that had enveloped his loved ones.
A few days into the war, he got a video call from his sons, who were rushing to move the merchandise out of the shop after they got a warning from the Israeli military that it was about to bomb the building, where both the shop and their family home was located.
The strike demolished the building, and Belal’s 15-year-old son Younis was wounded in the back, he said. At first, doctors said he might be paralyzed, but after months of treatment he was able to walk again.
That began a long trek for his wife and children, who were displaced 12 times over the course of the war. They first moved to a neighbor’s house, but that was bombed the next day. They sheltered for several weeks along with other displaced families in the nearby Indonesian Hospital, until Israeli forces besieged and raided the facility, forcing them to flee again in November 2023.
They eventually made it to a school-turned-shelter in the southern city of Khan Younis, but soon after Israeli forces invaded the area and they had to move again.
Sometimes, Belal spent days unable to reach his family because of communication blackouts.
One of his brothers, Mohammed, was killed along with his 2-year-old child when Israel bombed the school where they were sheltering in the Shati Refugee camp in northern Gaza in mid-2025.
At one point last year, Belal got a phone call from Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital telling him that his son Younis had been killed. They sent him a photo of the body of someone who looked like Younis. He couldn’t reach his family, and it was only after a day of torment that he was able to call them and learned it was a case of mistaken identity.
“Being far away, while your children and family were in such a situation is awful. You live in constant fear; you don’t eat because you’re thinking about your hungry children,” Belal said. “Sometimes you wake up at night, terrified. You rush to the phone and call them to make sure that they are OK.”
A family reunion that can’t come soon enough
Belal’s wife and five children now shelter in a tent in Gaza City, depending on charity kitchens for food. Belal has been sending them money when he can, but his wife, Asmahan, told the AP their savings have almost run out and they’ve had to borrow money from others to get by.
Asmahan said she has had to bear the burden of moving from place to place and keeping her children fed and safe.
“I’m mentally exhausted. The responsibility is immense,” she said. “We have been humiliated and degraded.”
“God willing, the crossing will open, my husband will return, and we will be reunited,” she said.
Belal’s brother, Jaber, left Gaza on Oct. 1, 2023, seeking a job in the West Bank. After the war began, Israel launched a crackdown in the occupied territory, carrying out destructive raids targeting armed groups and imposing tough restrictions on movement.
“Life became impossible in the West Bank,” Jabel said. So in February he joined his brother in Egypt, and he married an Egyptian woman in June. He, too, has registered to return to Gaza with his wife.
“This is our land. Our house is there, even though it’s destroyed. We will rebuild it and rebuild Gaza,” Jaber said.
Raed Belal knows it may still be a long time. After news of Rafah’s opening came, he said, his children “think it will happen tomorrow.” But it could be months, he said, before he presents the gifts he has bought for his children – shoes and clothes for his teenage sons, and makeup and perfume requested by his 8-year-old daughter.
With his bags packed, he is ready.
