As Israel blocks aid, ‘reality in Gaza is indescribable’

After nearly 19 months of war, the people of Gaza are running out of ways to cope and are wary of what lies ahead. The Israeli blockade on all humanitarian and commercial supplies is now 2 months old. And Israeli bombardments across Gaza continue.
“The reality in Gaza is indescribable,” Ahmad Qattawi told DW by phone from Gaza City. “We live in tragedy, trying to survive without knowing whether we’ll make it or not. We may survive, but our souls died a long time ago.” Fear of bombing is one issue, he said; finding enough to eat is another. “We are consumed by the daily search for food, storing whatever we can for the coming days,” he said. “We eat frugally, and as much as possible.”
Aid organizations have consistently warned that the risk of malnutrition and hunger is high as bakeries are closed, the cost of basic food items skyrockets and the borders remain shut.
Markets are still selling small quantities of vegetables, but these are now unaffordable for most people. Prices have skyrocketed and many Gazans have no more income. A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of tomatoes, a staple in Palestinian kitchens, now costs about 30 shekels (€7 or $7.90). This is compared to 1-3 shekels per kilo before the war. And a kilo of sugar goes for over 60 shekels.
“Our lives now depend entirely on canned food, with the rare exception of some vegetables,” the 44-year-old Qatawi said, adding that cooking is a challenge because of the shortage of gas. “There is no wood to light fires, so we burn whatever we can find: clothes, shoes, anything. This is our daily life.”
‘No safe place’
“Never in Gaza’s history were we in such a situation,” Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations Network (PNGO), told DW by phone from Gaza City. “It’s a catastrophe”
“We have airstrikes, artillery, attacks on tents, on shelters,” Shawa said. “There is no safe place. And then everyone is starving. Even, speaking personally, we don’t know what to eat. There is almost nothing.”
Shawa said people felt that they were being pushed deeper and deeper into a corner with no end in sight. “And the worst thing for us as humanitarians is to feel that you are handcuffed, that you have nothing to give,” Shawa said. “We do our best to give some hope here and there, but on the other hand we are part of the community and we cannot isolate ourselves from the situation.”
In addition, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the health care system was “on the brink of collapse, overwhelmed by mass casualties and critically hindered by the full blockade that has cut off essential medicines, vaccines, and medical equipment.”
The World Food Programme recently announced that it had depleted its food stocks for Gaza and distributed its last remaining supplies to community kitchens, which serve basic meals for the most vulnerable, as well as the last of the flour to bakeries.
“On March 31, all 25 WFP-supported bakeries closed as wheat flour and cooking fuel ran out,” the UN body announced in a statement. “The same week, WFP food parcels distributed to families — with two weeks of food rations — were exhausted. WFP is also deeply concerned about the severe lack of safe water and fuel for cooking — forcing people to scavenge for items to burn to cook a meal.”
Living in fear
As supplies dwindle, the worry about how to provide for loved ones overshadows everything, Mahmoud Hassouna, a resident of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, told DW by phone. The 24-year-old was displaced at the beginning of the war in 2023, when his family home was destroyed by Israeli bombings.
He said he spends his day moving around his family’s makeshift home and helping his mother prepare meals. “We’re back living on canned food again,” he said. “We don’t have enough money to buy vegetables, which are sold at exorbitant prices in the market.”
Hassouna said his job was to find firewood, which is hard to come by these days as most of the trees have been cut down or destroyed by bombing. Many people risk going into bombed-out houses to salvage any doors or wooden items.
He also has to find clean drinking water and try to charge the phones nearby. The fear of bombing and displacement has become constant. “I have spent almost two years of my life under bombs, killing and death. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
A ceasefire that began in January and lasted until early March brought some relief to the people of Gaza and bought time to fill the warehouses of aid organizations. However, the situation deteriorated again as soon as Israel broke the ceasefire and renewed its offensive on March 18 after the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage release agreement ended and talks on a second phase failed to take place.
Before breaking the ceasefire, the Israeli government had already ordered the closure of all border crossings and halted all humanitarian and commercial deliveries into Gaza.
Israel’s ‘maximum pressure’
The blockade is part of what Israeli officials say is a “maximum pressure” strategy to force Hamas release the remaining hostages under a new temporary ceasefire agreement and ultimately topple the Palestinian militant group. Israeli officials have accused Hamas of stealing aid and using it for its own forces.
Israeli media report that the security cabinet is set to approve operational plans to expand the current military offensive, including calling up tens of thousands of reservists. It not clear when such an expansion would take place.
Hamas has rejected all calls for its disarmament and insists on an agreement that guarantees an end to the war.
Israel launched the war after a Hamas-led terror attack on October 7, 2023, in which gunmen killed nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Israeli officials say 59 hostages remain in Gaza, less than half of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel retaliated immediately to the Hamas-led attack with a massive military operation and ground offensive in Gaza. The death toll in the strip has now risen to over 52,000, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said last week. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble.
Strategically withholding aid?
Aid groups and the United Nations accuse Israel of using humanitarian and food aid as a political tool. This is a potential war crime that affects the whole of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million.
This week, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher reminded Israel in a statement that “international law is unequivocal: As the occupying power, Israel must allow humanitarian support in. Aid, and the civilian lives it saves, should never be a bargaining chip.”
Over the course of the war, Gaza’s population has become almost entirely dependent on aid and commercial supplies from outside.The constant displacement of people and the creation of a large buffer zone held by the Israeli military in the north, along the eastern border and in the south has denied Palestinians access to Gaza’s most fertile agricultural land.
“Put simply, Israel is not only preventing food from entering Gaza, but has also engineered a situation in which Palestinians cannot grow their own food, and cannot fish their own food,” Gavin Kelleher, a Norwegian Refugee Council aid worker recently returned from working in in Gaza, told a press briefing.
Gazans say there have also been incidents of looting of warehouses and a general atmosphere of chaos and limited internal security during Israel’s bombardment.
OCHA reported on Thursday that “recent strikes have reportedly hit residential buildings and tents sheltering displaced people, especially in Rafah and eastern Gaza city. As of this Tuesday, our humanitarian partners estimate that more than 423,000 people in Gaza have been displaced once again, with no safe place to go.”
This is a nightmare for Mahmoud Hassouna. “My only wish is not to be displaced again,” Hassouna said. “After that, I want this crazy war to stop.”