GAZA, (PIC)
Amid the scent of burnt bread wafting from a makeshift clay oven, and the flickering flames beneath a small pot of lentils, the outlines of a life struggling to survive death are drawn.
In the Gaza Strip, a meal doesn’t symbolize family warmth or a variety of dishes—it is a daily ritual shrouded in danger, led not by the traditions of fullness, but by the calls of survival.
Among the rubble of her destroyed home in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, Umm Fadi sits near a stove she built from stones and iron rods, boiling lentils over firewood.
In a voice worn thin by hunger, she says: “This lentil is everything. We have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rice is gone. Flour has run out. We haven’t seen oil in weeks. Sometimes we cook herbs we gather from the rubble. We don’t choose anymore—we just eat to stay alive.”
Today, Gaza Strip has become synonymous with besieged hunger. The dining table has turned into yet another battlefield in a war that doesn’t distinguish between fighter and child, soldier and housewife. Food is now scarce, and aid has stopped for weeks following the closure of crossings by the Israeli occupation forces. UN agencies, including the World Food Program, confirmed that warehouses in the Strip have been looted or are completely empty.
In an overcrowded shelter in Khan Yunis, Abu Ammar tries to calm his seven children. With a tone that blends pain and irony, he says: “I divide a single loaf into seven portions, and boil water with an onion—if we have one—just so the kids feel like something is cooking. Hunger has become a daily ritual. We’re adapting to it more than fighting it.”
In Gaza Strip, every dish reflects a catastrophic reality. Tables no longer know the taste of fruit or the scent of fresh vegetables. Meals are limited to old canned goods, dried chickpeas, ground lentils, or bread made from expired flour. And even these are considered a luxury not everyone can access.
Ten-year-old Salma says: “Mama used to bring me chocolate every Friday. Now I don’t want chocolate—I just want bread that isn’t burnt. Soft bread, like before.”
Mahmoud, a university student from the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, has traded his lecture halls for the mission of feeding his family.
“I collect wood scraps from destroyed homes so I can cook,” he says. “Every meal I prepare feels like a challenge. The smell of firewood burns our chests, but we have no other choice. Every lentil dish is a cry against death and siege.”
Women in Gaza Strip have become experts in cooking without ingredients. They bake bread from barley or leftover grains, cook with whatever is available, and share food among families—a form of grassroots solidarity that has become the last line of defense against famine.
The United Nations described the situation in Gaza as being on the brink of “total humanitarian catastrophe,” affirming that food security is on the verge of complete collapse.
Since the end of the first phase of the ceasefire and the return of the suffocating siege in early March, Gaza has become a closed zone—no medicine, no flour, not even hope, is allowed in.
Airstrikes make no distinction between a bakery and a military site. Bakeries have been bombed, aid trucks destroyed, and preparing food has become a gamble that might end in blood instead of a meal. And yet, the fires stay lit, the pots stay boiling, and people—despite everything—continue to gather around meals. Not for fullness, but to remind themselves they are still alive.
Every bite eaten here, every plate shared among family and neighbors, is a testament to life, and proof that this people—despite hunger and destruction—still refuses to be erased.
