Roads in Gaza no longer lead to safety or life, but rather to danger and death. One of the most notorious of these roads is the route to Zikim in the northwestern part of the Strip, which in recent months has turned into a bloody scene that repeats itself daily. Thousands of hungry people rush toward trucks loaded with bags of flour, while the rifles of occupation soldiers are aimed at their bare chests, leaving dozens either killed or wounded.
The scene repeats itself every day, and each time it leaves a new wound in a mother’s heart and deepens the tragedy of a family that has lost its sole provider. Gaza remains trapped between the grip of hunger and bullets.
Mohammed Al-Shantaf, a man in his thirties, never dreamed of much. All he wanted was to see the smiles of his three daughters and to reassure his pregnant wife that tomorrow might bring enough flour to fill their empty stomachs. But extreme hunger pushed him to take the road to Zikim, despite his family’s warnings.
His mother, her voice trembling, said:
‘We had nothing left to eat at home. Mohammed went with the other young men to Zikim to get flour and feed us and his daughters. We tried to stop him because the road was dangerous, but the hunger consuming his daughters’ bodies pushed him to take the risk.’
She adds, fighting back her tears:
‘On the afternoon of July 27, some young men who were with Mohammed came and told us that an Israeli sniper’s bullet hit him directly in the throat and killed him. I had not yet finished mourning my first son, Ali, who was killed at the beginning of the war. When I received the news about Mohammed, it broke me.’
She pauses for a moment, then continues in a broken voice:
‘Mohammed was trying to provide us with food, and now he is gone too. We have no one left to support us, and the famine grows worse with each passing day. I have nothing to feed the children.’
Mohammed, like hundreds of others, carried no weapon and posed no threat. All he held was a hope to return with a bag of flour to ease his family’s suffering. But he was met with the bullets of the occupation, which insists on punishing the hungry as they search for a piece of bread.
In another neighbourhood of Gaza, a similar tragedy reached the home of the Al-Balawi family. Shadi, a young man in his twenties, decided to take the same road to Zikim to secure food for his family after losing his father, who an Israeli sniper killed.
Shadi recounts the details of that journey and says:
‘On 12 August, I decided to walk toward Zikim. I had no other choice but to try to ease my family’s hunger. When the trucks arrived, everyone rushed toward them. Some managed to grab a sack of flour, while others were struck by deadly bullets before they could reach it, and the flour bags were soaked in their blood.
I jumped onto one of the trucks, hoping to get a sack, but the crowd pushed me down, and my foot got stuck under its wheels, which ran over it, shattering the bones in my left foot. No one noticed my injury amid the chaos. I bled until I lost consciousness and was later taken to Al-Shifa Hospital.
The doctors told my family that they needed to perform an urgent operation and put platinum in my foot, but they did not find enough blood units. My family had to search for donors at a time when hospitals were facing a severe shortage of medical supplies and medicine. After two days of intense pain, they were able to perform the surgery.’
Today, Shadi is struggling to cope, but his voice remains a witness to the daily massacre committed against the starving. According to eyewitnesses, soldiers fire live bullets and artillery shells randomly at the gathered crowds, turning the area into an open massacre zone. Dozens of people are wounded and killed daily, yet there is no international response to stop these violations.
The white bags stained with blood have become a symbol of this tragedy: flour mixed with the blood of the poor, a land mined with fear and bullets, and children waiting for the return of fathers who may never come back.
In Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals, injuries pile up as they barely operate with minimal resources. The shortage of medicines, surgical supplies, and blood bags turns every wound into a compound injury. Hospital doctors face dozens of critical cases daily, many of which could have been resolved if basic medical tools were available.
Continued shooting at starving civilians amid a medical blockade will lead to more avoidable bloodshed. Faced with this reality, the people of Gaza find themselves confronted with a bitter choice: either stay at home with children crying from hunger or risk going to Zikim, where the barrels of guns await them.
‘We only ask to live with dignity,’ Mohammed’s mother says. ‘Our children want nothing but bread. Why do they kill them while they are hungry?’
Meanwhile, Shadi adds from his hospital bed, ‘I will not stop trying despite my injury. If I do not go, someone else will. All of us in Gaza are fighting for a piece of bread.’
On this road, the stories of grieving mothers, orphaned children, and wounded survivors intersect, their bodies carrying living testimony to the brutality of the occupation. Zikim is a path filled with death, but it also shows the resilience of people who refuse to be defeated despite manufactured hunger and unceasing gunfire.