CAIRO/GENEVA/GAZA – For Rehab Akhras and her family in Khan Younis, bombs haven’t been their end – but hunger might be. Nearly six weeks after Israel shut all border crossings into Gaza, food supplies are almost gone, and desperation is rising.
Since the blockade began in early March, stockpiled food from a previous ceasefire has depleted. Aid kitchens are closing, markets sit empty, and bakeries have gone silent. Akhras, 64, boiled a lone can of fava beans over a cardboard-fueled fire — the last meal for her 13-member household.
“We survived the bombings. But this? Hunger will kill us and our children,” she said.
In central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, long queues form at the few remaining emergency kitchens. Children wait, holding buckets in hopes of bringing home a small meal.
Aid agencies warn they’ll be forced to halt operations within days unless food supplies are allowed in. The World Food Programme has already shut down bread distribution at all 25 Gaza bakeries and is preparing to end food parcel deliveries.
“All basic items are vanishing,” said Juliette Touma of UNRWA. “Children are going to bed hungry. The prices are unbearable — flour now costs ten times more, oil is nearly seven times as expensive.”
Medical workers are seeing rising cases of malnutrition among children and pregnant women, with some mothers too undernourished to breastfeed.
Israel denies there’s a hunger crisis, stating that supplies must be blocked to prevent Hamas from misusing aid. They say Hamas exploited previous shipments to rebuild its arsenal — an accusation Hamas denies, countering that Israel is using starvation as a weapon.
Each morning, Neama Farjalla sets out across bombed-out streets in search of food for her children. “If the airstrikes don’t kill us, the hunger will,” she says. “When my son asks for milk, and I can’t give it to him — it breaks me.”