Lines had not been this desperate, nor markets this empty, since before the Israel-Hamas cease-fire took hold Jan. 19. The truce had allowed aid to surge into Gaza for the first time after 15 months of conflict during which residents received only a trickle of supplies.
But no aid has gotten in since March 2. That was the day Israel blocked all goods in a bid to pressure Hamas into accepting an extension of the current cease-fire stage and releasing more hostages sooner, instead of moving to the next phase, which would involve more challenging negotiations to permanently end the war.
Now, the aid cutoff, exacerbated by panic buying and unscrupulous traders who gouge prices, is driving costs to levels that few can afford. Shortages of fresh vegetables, and fruit and rising prices are forcing people to once again fall back on canned food such as beans.
Though the canned food provides calories, experts say, people — and children in particular — need a diverse diet that includes fresh foods to stave off malnutrition.
For the first six weeks of the cease-fire, aid workers and traders delivered food for Gaza residents, many still weak from months of malnutrition. Medical supplies for bombed-out hospitals, plastic pipes to restore water supplies, and fuel to power everything also began to flow in.
Data from aid groups and the United Nations showed that children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers were eating better. And more centers started offering treatment for malnutrition, the United Nations said.
These were only small steps toward relieving the devastation wrought by the war, which destroyed more than half of Gaza’s buildings and put many of its 2 million residents at risk of famine.
Most hospitals remain only partly operational, if at all.
Aid groups, the United Nations and several Western governments have urged Israel to allow shipments to resume, criticizing its use of humanitarian relief as a bargaining chip in negotiations and, in some cases, saying that the cutoff violates international law.
Instead, Israel is turning up the pressure.
Last Sunday, it severed electricity supplies to the territory, a move that shut down most operations at a water desalination plant and deprived about 600,000 people in central Gaza of clean drinking water, according to the United Nations.
The Israeli energy minister has hinted that a water cutoff might be next. Some wells are still functioning in central Gaza, aid officials say, but they supply only brackish water, which poses long-term health risks to those who drink it.
Israel had closed off all other sources of electricity that it used to provide for Gaza, a measure that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that began the war. That left essential services to run on solar panels or generators, if power was available at all.
Now there is no fuel coming in for anything, including generators, ambulances or cars.
Israel argues that about 25,000 truckloads of aid that Gaza has received in recent weeks have given people sufficient food.
“There is no shortage of essential products in the strip whatsoever,” the Foreign Ministry said last week. It repeated assertions that Hamas is taking over the aid entering Gaza and that half the group’s budget in Gaza comes from exploiting aid trucks.
Hamas has called the aid and electricity cutoffs “cheap and unacceptable blackmail.”
For many in Gaza now, the focus is back on survival.
“There’s no bombing at the moment, but I still feel like I’m living in a war with everything I’m going through,” said Nevine Siam, 38, who is sheltering at her brother’s house with 30 other people.
She said her sister’s entire family had been killed during the fighting. Her children ask her to make Ramadan meals like the ones they remember from before the war. But without an income, she can get nothing but canned food in aid packages.
Where she is, she said, there are no celebrations and no festive decorations for the holy month.
“It feels as if the joy has been extinguished,” she said.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
