In a tented encampment on Gaza’s southern coast of Al-Mawasi, Tariq Ahmed, a volunteer at a mobile soup kitchen, spends hours in line waiting for a pot of rice. When he finally returns to his shelter, he divides the contents among his six children. The meagre serving amounts to just a third of what they need.
Each child gets one meal a day, lunch, while dinner is abandoned altogether.
His youngest son, five-year-old Mahmoud, fights with his older siblings over an extra portion of food. He threatens to skip lunch if he isn’t promised food at night. “I’m hungry and can’t sleep,” Mahmoud says.
The children quarrel over scraps until their parents cede portions of their own meals to resolve the fight between the children.
Around 500,000 displaced people from Rafah and Khan Younis have crowded into Al-Mawasi, which has neither the infrastructure nor the resources to support them.
Israel has threatened to push more displaced from Gaza City into the same stretch of land. Al-Mawasi currently has an estimated population density of about 48,000 people per square kilometre, with nearly all residents living in makeshift tents.
Ahmed, 45, a former schoolteacher, tries to soothe his children as they devour their food. “God help us against those who starve us and brought us to this point, denying us food and drink,” he tells TRT World.
Last week, the UN declared Gaza to be experiencing the worst famine conditions it has ever recorded. International aid agencies warn of catastrophic hunger throughout the territory.
Ahmed has been unemployed since the war began, when the private school where he taught was destroyed. He describes his family’s current state as “the most difficult period in our lives in terms of starvation and our ability to carry out daily life tasks."
His health, like his family’s, has deteriorated steadily. Some days, he can no longer stand.
Responding to the IPC report describing Gaza's famine conditions, Ahmed says, “The report is far too late. We’ve been starving for five months. We can’t find a piece of bread, a cup of water, or a single pill. The world, its governments, its institutions, even the UN that claims to support freedom and human rights, has left us to perish.”
He describes hunger as an omnipresent force: “Everyone I know has lost weight. People cut their meals to once a day. The most basic foods are simply gone.”
The report states that Gaza has crossed all three famine thresholds set by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
These stipulations are: one in five households faces extreme food shortages; one in three children is acutely malnourished; and at least two in every 10,000 people are dying each day from starvation or the combined effects of malnutrition and disease.
Meeting even two of these indicators is sufficient to declare famine; in Gaza, the IPC found all three.
A late-July poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 79 percent of Jewish Israelis said they were either “not very troubled” or “not troubled at all” by reports of famine and suffering among Palestinians in Gaza.
‘Too weak to survive starvation’
Israel announced the opening of the so-called “humanitarian corridors” a month ago, after imposing a complete blockade in early March.
But displaced families say they have yet to see meaningful aid.
Ahmed and his family fled northern Khan Younis for Al-Mawasi more than a hundred days ago. Since then, he has received no assistance, international, UN, or local.
“Without aid, my family will die,” he tells TRT World. “The little food we manage to get comes irregularly, in small quantities, from soup kitchens. Some days we get nothing. Then my children go to bed hungry, and I try to quiet them with whatever scraps I can beg from neighbours.”
Warda Sharab, seventeen, holds up a photo of her twenty-one-year-old brother Louay, who has been paralysed since birth. His body is wasting away: he has lost ten kilograms in the past two months.
She angrily questions Israel's claims that no famine exists while showing her brother's skeletal frame.
“Before the war, he could crawl, sit, and move around. Now he can barely hold himself upright,” she tells TRT World.
Their mother, injured in an air strike, has been in Türkiye for medical care with Warda’s twin sister, Dana, since January. Warda has become Louay’s primary caretaker.
"Recently, they allowed some simple items to enter, but they're expensive and my father is unemployed. We live in a tent and can barely afford what keeps us and my brother alive. We are being systematically starved and fear that if the current situation continues, we'll lose my brother due to his weak physical condition and overall health," she adds.
‘4 rice pots for 18 families in 22 days’
Despite Israeli announcements about opening humanitarian corridors, international and local organisations report they have been unable to receive or distribute meaningful amounts of aid.
Tawfiq al-Najeeli, who supervises a camp in Al-Mawasi, complains about the complete absence of support or assistance for displaced people.
He has distributed only four pots of rice among more than eighteen families in the past three weeks.
"We are in worse condition than famine. Aid distribution stopped in early March, and people - nearly 90 percent - are unemployed and can't buy anything because they simply have no money and prices are high," he tells TRT World.
The young man, sweating and overcome with sadness, his voice hoarse from discussions with hungry families, adds: "People think I can help them, but I have nothing. Families come with children, begging. I see them sleep hungry and wake hungry. I cry for them, but there is nothing I can do.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent confirms that, despite Israel’s announcements, no significant food aid has entered. “We’ve received some medicines, yes, but no food,” Raed al-Nims, the organisation’s spokesperson, tells TRT World.
The UN report, he explains, merely confirms what aid groups already know.
“Real famine is here. Children and adults die from malnutrition every day. People risk their lives going to aid points that have become death traps, only to be gunned down while waiting for food.”
Goods sold through commercial channels, he adds, are scarce and unaffordable: “The majority of Gazans are unemployed. Even if food is on the shelves, they cannot buy it.”
Deaths from hunger mount
Gaza’s Health Ministry has documented at least 273 deaths from starvation and malnutrition, including 100 children.
More than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed attempting to reach aid trucks or waiting at distribution points.
The controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which replaced the UN’s food distribution system, reduced 400 community sites to just four in militarised zones that Palestinians risked their lives to reach.
Since late May, the UN has documented at least 994 Palestinians killed near GHF sites, among 1,760 killed while trying to access aid.
Al-Nims insists that alleviating famine requires two steps.
“First, Israel must stop restricting the type and quantity of aid that enters Gaza, and second, it must not interfere in methods of aid convoys and allow them to move freely to experienced organisations that can distribute food fairly and preserve the dignity of those in need.”
Breaking the crisis, he says, would require one thousand aid trucks entering Gaza daily.
Before the war, 500 trucks entered on an average day, at a time when infrastructure was intact and agriculture and health services were functioning.
“Without immediate action,” al-Nims says, “famine will only deepen.”
However, he expresses hope that the latest report will be "the beginning of international pressure on Israel to respect international humanitarian law rules and allow aid flow, not using food as a weapon in this war."
