Aid Teams Race to Curb Hunger in Gaza as Food Slowly Returns

Bread production in Deir Al Balah, Gaza. The UN World Food Programme supports 17 bakeries in the enclave and aims to maintain 25 with sufficient funding.

Food is slowly returning to shelves in Gaza, but supplies remain desperately inadequate, UN humanitarians said on Tuesday as they renewed calls for wider access and continued financial support.

Last month, hundreds of thousands of people returned to northern Gaza — where famine was declared at the end of August — but their access to food is “severely limited,” said Abeer Etefa, Senior Spokesperson for the World Food Programme (WFP).

Many returnees have found their homes in ruins, while displaced families who remain in the south are “often living in tents and without access to food and services,” she warned.

Speaking from Cairo, Ms Etefa said that three and a half weeks into the fragile ceasefire, WFP had distributed food parcels to around one million people across the Strip, against a target of 1.6 million, as “part of the broad operation to push back hunger in Gaza.”

“Supplies are still limited, so each family is receiving a reduced food ration — one parcel that provides enough food for 10 days,” she explained.

To expand operations to the required level, “we really need more access, more border crossings to be opened, and more access to key roads inside Gaza,” the WFP spokesperson insisted.

Aid crossings still closed

The UN aid coordination office (OCHA) said on Monday that no food aid convoy has reached the north through any direct crossing since 12 September.

“We still have only two border crossing points that are operational,” Ms Etefa said, referring to Kerem Shalom in southern Gaza and Kissufim in central Gaza. “This severely limits the quantity of aid that WFP and other agencies can bring in to stabilise markets and address people’s needs.”

She highlighted that the continued closure of northern crossings means aid convoys must “follow a slow, difficult route from the south.”

The UN food agency also said that around 700,000 people receive fresh bread daily through 17 WFP-supported bakeries — nine in the south and centre and eight in the north — with a goal to increase to 25.

Speaking from Gaza, WFP Communications Officer Nour Hammad said that while she was witnessing “apocalyptic scenes” across the enclave, she also saw on people’s faces “the joy that the guns have fallen silent after all this time and the fear of whether the silence will last.”

She said Gazans likened the destruction caused by more than two years of war to “the aftermath of an earthquake.”

‘This help matters’

“In every distribution point I have visited across the Gaza Strip over the past few days, people tell me one thing: this assistance matters,” she said.

After months of “surviving on bits and pieces, rationing food, stretching one meal over days,” people are finally accessing “fresh bread, food parcels, cash transfers, nutrition and support.”

“This is where the journey to recovery starts,” she stressed.

While 200,000 of the most vulnerable are now receiving digital cash payments to “complement the food baskets with fresh foods” from local markets, prices remain prohibitive.

“Food is slowly coming back to the shelves, but prices are still beyond families’ reach, as they have depleted their resources to survive two years of war,” Ms Hammad said. “Today, for example, I buy one apple at the cost of a kilo before the war,” she explained.

The fragility of the ceasefire and of aid flows remains at the heart of people’s concerns, Ms Hammad added, sharing the story of a displaced mother she met in Gaza City.

Even though the woman is receiving assistance, she warned her children against eating all the rations immediately as “she cannot trust that tomorrow will bring food too,” the WFP communicator said.

“Families invite us into their tents — worn out by winter cold and summer heat — and they want to show us their reality. Their reality is that people need food, shelter, and warm clothing as winter approaches, and they need continued support,” she concluded.