From his displacement tent in western Deir al-Balah, Tayseer Obeid has spent the past week scanning the skies over central Gaza, noting the time and direction of aircraft dropping aid.

His family of 12 hasn’t received proper humanitarian assistance in six months. To feed them, he planted small patches of molokhia, eggplant, and pumpkin around his and his relatives’ tent. But the crops have been repeatedly destroyed — including at the end of July, when the Israeli army razed the tent camp where his mother was sheltering, after forcing residents to evacuate. Since their home in Beit Lahia was bombed in 2024, they have been displaced 11 times.

“We need food, sugar, milk, diapers for babies — we need everything,” Obeid told +972. “But most importantly, we need white flour to feed our children. They don’t understand what man-made famine is. They just scream and cry until they eat or sleep.”

To support his family, the 37-year-old launched a fundraising campaign and began documenting his daily struggles on Instagram. “I buy around three kilos of white flour each week. One kilo makes about 12 loaves of bread. I divide just two loaves among my family of 12 for each meal. I can’t afford more — prices in Gaza are higher than in the most expensive places in Europe,” he said.

Obeid has also tried repeatedly to get food from aid trucks and Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution centers, but usually returns empty-handed, overwhelmed by the crush of starving people. “The aid that enters Gaza is not enough to meet even our most basic needs, and much of it is stolen,” he explained.

On Aug. 10, Gaza’s Government Media Office announced that just 1,210 aid trucks had entered the Strip over the past two weeks, 14 percent of the 8,400 trucks required to meet the basic needs of the population. 

Over that same period, Israel and several Arab and Western nations have airdropped an even smaller amount of food and supplies into Gaza — what aid groups have criticized as an inadequate and unnecessarily expensive distribution method, meant to distract from Israel’s starvation campaign. In some cases, the falling aid has crushed and killed Palestinians on the ground, including a 14-year-old boy and a 32-year-old medic.

Meanwhile, in early August, the UN estimated that since the establishment of GHF sites in May, 1400 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4000 injured while seeking food across the Strip. Alongside the danger of direct fire by Israeli troops, there is also the risk of being attacked by others desperate for food. In the absence of any functioning government, gangs and individuals have begun targeting people leaving aid areas, seizing their food to eat or sell at exorbitant prices.

Many in Gaza see this as part of Israel’s engineered starvation strategy: allowing in only a trickle of trucks each day, while targeting the security personnel meant to protect distribution.

A 46-year-old aid truck driver, who asked not to be named, told +972 Magazine that the Israeli army dictates every detail of their journey — including the route and exact stopping points — and withholds information about the cargo and its destination until after the truck is loaded. “Sometimes we are ordered not to stop even if someone is in the way,” he said. “That’s led to people being run over as they try to grab food. Other times, when crowds force a stop, some are killed in the chaos.”

On Aug. 5, Obeid decided to try his luck at the airdrops for the first time. He had noticed that planes usually release aid between 11 A.M. and noon near the beach in Deir al-Balah, but arrived at 6 A.M. in case it came earlier. “Hundreds were running from every direction, trying to follow the wind,” he recalled. “I was imagining bringing at least a kilo of white flour for my family.”

When the airdrop arrived, he reached the landing site just in time and managed to grab a small bag of ready-to-eat bread. “My heart was filled with joy the moment I grabbed it,” he said. “I hadn’t seen or tasted real bread in so long — it felt like a small miracle. I moved to a quieter place to taste it. I was starving and had made such a huge effort to get it.”

But when he opened the bag, the bread was moldy.

“I was devastated,” he said. “All the effort, waking up at dawn, waiting for hours, and all I got was rotten bread. In the end, I took it with me, poured water on it, and we made do for the day.

“We Gazans are more dignified than chasing aircraft that drop food in such a humiliating way, sometimes [landing] on the heads of people,” Obeid added. “But desperate hunger leaves us no choice. What we’re going through is unimaginable. Where is this heading? It feels like death unfolding in slow motion.”

‘It felt like Judgement Day’

Until recently, Mohammed Shihta avoided the GHF distribution centers and the small number of aid trucks that arrive near the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza. It was simply too dangerous.

One of Shihta’s cousins was killed last month at a GHF aid site in the Netzarim corridor, while another was killed on Aug. 8 near Zikim. He had been lying on the ground down when he was shot in the back, the bullet exiting through his head.

But after weeks of waiting in vain for regular food distribution to resume, the 29-year-old decided he had no choice but to join the crowds heading north in search of something — anything — to feed his family.

“I knew I might be killed,” Shihta told +972. “But that’s easier than watching my only son cry for bread. My wife and mother begged me not to go, but they knew if I didn’t, we could all die of hunger.

“I borrowed over $300 in recent days just to buy flour and rice, but now I have nothing left,” he continued. “I used to work in construction, but I spent all my savings during the war. Our only concern is the children, but we have nothing to feed them.”

Shihta and his family were sheltering in a relative’s home in Gaza City’s al-Daraj neighborhood with three other families, after they had been displaced from the al-Tuffah neighborhood following the Israeli army’s evacuation order. During the evacuation, a missile landed nearby, lightly injuring Shihta’s leg.

On Aug. 3, Shihta learned from a truck driver friend that aid would arrive around 4 P.M near the Zikim crossing. The night before, he and his wife had barely slept. Their five-year-old son, Ihab, cried through the night from hunger. The only food they had left was a handful of lentils.

Shihta dressed in loose clothing and sturdy shoes for the rough 10-kilometer hike from his relative’s home, and carried a small bag in case all he could collect were scattered scraps of flour. He also took a kitchen knife for protection.

When he arrived, the area was already packed. Suddenly, Israeli forces opened fire.

“It felt like Judgment Day,” he recalled. “I threw myself to the ground. A young man next to me started crying. He told me he was his parents’ only child. I told him to keep his head down. After a few minutes, he raised it — and was shot in the head.”

Despite the chaos, Shihta covered the young man’s body with a plastic bag and waited. When the trucks finally came, he managed to grab a sack of flour. But on the way home, three men intercepted him. When he refused to hand over the parcel, they slashed it open and took what they could.

When Shihta finally returned home with what little remained in his torn sack, his wife immediately began kneading dough.

“When this runs out, I’ll go again,” he said. “Our lives are now worth a sack of flour. That’s what starvation has taught us.”

Jostling for bread under fire

One of the main entry points for the trickle of humanitarian aid is the Morag Corridor, an Israeli-controlled security zone established between Rafah and Khan Younis in April. Three of Gaza’s four GHF distribution centers operate there.

Among the thousands waiting for food there on July 29 was 35-year-old Mahmoud Wadi, who had been a physics teacher before the war. He was lucky enough to secure a sack of white flour from one of the trucks.

“I used to teach my students to be gentle and polite,” he said. “But today, I had to jostle and push others under Israeli shelling and gunfire just to grab a sack before it ran out. If I hadn’t, I would never have been able to bring any food to my children.”

Wadi now lives in a tent in central Khan Younis. He is the sole provider for his family of six, as well as four nephews whose parents and two siblings were killed in Israeli attacks. “I come every day for whatever I can find — flour, rice, lentils — because I fear the complete siege and total cutoff of food could return at any moment.”

Others left the Morag Corridor empty-handed, some carrying the wounded instead of food. 46-year-old Awad Al-Astal held his 12-year-old son Jasser, who had been shot in the shoulder.

“My son insisted on coming with me to help me carry the bag of food if I managed to get one,” Al-Astal said. “Now, I am carrying my son, and no one cares about us — everyone only cares about getting something to eat.”

‘I beg the world to save my daughter’s life’

Without adequate access to food, malnutrition and starvation-related deaths in Gaza have only continued to rise — 166 in the past month and a half, and 227 since October 2023. According to Dr. Mohammad Abu Afsh, director of medical relief in Gaza, at least 500,000 people in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition, the majority of them children. “Every day, the number of children reaching level-five malnutrition rises, and many die,” he said in a recent interview. “We urgently need a safe way to distribute food.”

Eight-year-old Jana Ayad is one of the many severe cases. She is so malnourished that she can barely speak or walk, and has begun losing her vision and hair.

Her mother, Nesma, 34, has been by her side for two weeks at the malnutrition ward of the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society hospital in Gaza City. Jana’s decline is not new: during the famine in northern Gaza in February 2024, she was hospitalized with acute malnutrition at an International Medical Corps clinic in al-Zawaida. During the brief ceasefire that followed, with food aid flowing in, she regained weight and began walking, talking, and playing with her siblings again.

But by late June 2025, with famine spreading throughout the Strip, Jana and her two-year-old sister Joury began deteriorating rapidly. The family had been displaced multiple times — first from their home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, which was bombed, to a relative’s house in the nearby area of al-Tuffah, and later to a classroom at the UNRWA al-Nour Center for the Visually Impaired. Jana’s father was in Egypt, accompanying his own father for medical treatment, leaving Nesma to care for the children alone.

With the siege tightening, Nesma spent her savings, sold her gold necklace, and borrowed from relatives to buy food for her daughters. “They cried and begged for food. I gave them my share, especially Joury, because she was the youngest,” she said.

Joury’s health spiraled. She developed liver and blood complications from malnutrition: dangerously high liver enzymes and abnormal white blood cell counts. “Doctors told me to feed her eggs, fish, and fruit, but there was nothing in the markets — and whatever was available was unaffordable,” Nesma said. On July 20, Joury died.

Now Nesma fears she will lose Jana too. “Jana keeps asking me if she’s going to die like her sister. She is drained, refuses to talk, and won’t eat even when food is available. Her body is swollen from malnutrition.

“Jana needs an urgent medical referral outside Gaza. I beg the world to save her life,” Nesma pleaded. “Don’t wait until she dies to talk about her.”