'Drop in the ocean': With limited aid, what does it take to find food in Gaza?

Survival for Hafez Azzam, a 38-year-old humanitarian aid worker in war-torn Gaza, begins at dawn every day as he and his family take turns queuing at bakeries to secure a few loaves of bread.

"At the beginning of the war, we used to wait two hours, then three hours.. then six hours, until recently queuing took 12 hours" before bakeries began to shut down due to lack of fuel, he tells TRT World.

Alongside his two siblings, Azzam has lived in the besieged enclave his entire life, where Israeli attacks have now killed more than 13,000 Palestinians and set off a devastating humanitarian crisis over the past few weeks.

"Despite all the ongoing trauma and nonstop shelling and raids, we have had no time for grief... we are constantly busy trying to survive and secure our basic necessities like food and water," he adds.

Even before Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, nearly one-third of the population of Palestine was food insecure, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

But Israel's relentless bombardment of the enclave for over 40 days now has left the entire population "suffering from food insecurity", according to the United Nations.

Similar stories from Gaza, such as Sahar Kalloub's testimony, highlight daily missions of "finding bread and water" to feed large families.

"Each morning my father walks more than six kilometres to stand in a long queue. And then he comes home, after many hours of waiting, with only one bag of bread for fifty people in the house. This amid a nightmare of bombings," writes Kalloub.

At the start of Israel's bombardment of the enclave, the WFP was working with 23 bakeries to provide bread for 200,000 people in shelters.

Now, over 1.5 million people in Gaza are estimated to be internally displaced, including about 813,000 who are staying in at least 154 shelters run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

But just one WFP bakery is operational, producing only enough bread for 20,000 people.

As bakeries closed shop due to shortage of fuel, which was banned by Israel, Azzam and his family sought alternatives such as baking their own bread using a mud oven and wood fire. But their next challenge shortly followed: access to flour.

The only functioning mill in Gaza is also unable to grind wheat to produce flour due to a lack of electricity.

Other essential food items such as rice and vegetable oil are nearly depleted in the market, while dairy products and eggs have disappeared from shelves across Gaza over the past few days, according to the WFP.

Fellow Palestinian Yasser Saleh tells TRT World, in this state, "if Gaza remains until next week, people will die of hunger, thirst and pain."

"Everything has been exhausted, and there is nothing left. We are now considered dead, Saleh says.

Evacuation to the south

One week after surviving heavy bombing and shelling in central Gaza City, Azzam evacuated his home in Gaza City on October 13, following orders by the Israeli army to head to southern Gaza.

"We left everything behind and headed south to Khan Yunis, where my extended family lives. On the way from Gaza to Khan Yunis, I saw unprecedented destruction on both sides of the road," Azzam says.

Azzam thought, based on instructions from the Israeli army, that Khan Yunis would be much safer than his home in the north. However, the minute he arrived in the southern city, explosions rocked multiple areas.

"A few hours later, our backyard in Khan Yunis was targeted twice by fighter jets without any prior warning. It was a miracle that we survived as the house was full of 40 people, half of whom were women and children," he says.

Whatever food the house can secure goes first to the children. The house is filled with children of all ages – the youngest is a one-year-old who requires formula milk that is also unavailable in the enclave.

UNRWA has warned that many women, especially those pregnant or lactating, have been unable to nourish themselves and their children, endangering their health and well-being.

This has led people to dangerous coping mechanisms due to food scarcity, such as skipping meals, using unsafe and unhealthy methods for making fire to cook, and unconventional eating, such as consuming combinations of raw onion and uncooked eggplant.

To combat this, only a small portion of this food is secured from external aid, which Azzam says mainly includes flour and special high-calorie fortified date bars and biscuits. "It's a drop in the ocean compared to the overall needs," Azzam says.

Last week, 115 aid trucks entered Gaza from Egypt, carrying food, medicines, health supplies, bottled water, blankets, tents and hygiene products, according to the UNRWA. In total, 1,096 trucks have entered Gaza since October 21.

The WFP estimates at least 40 trucks of food supplies need to reach Gaza daily to keep pace with the need. In other words, they have received over 500 trucks less than required aid.

Still, humanitarian operations at Rafah crossing are expected to cease due to the depletion of fuel to operate trucks and machinery to take supplies from the border and unload them in Gaza, according to UNRWA.

UN relief chief Martin Griffiths insisted in his plea for access that aid is "right there, sitting in front of those people, at the borders of Gaza, in Rafah, ready to go" and to "try to reach people where they are".

What little aid is allowed in by Israel is mainly delivered inside UN shelters in the southern Gaza valley, according to Azzam. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people are left with no access to aid in the besieged areas of Gaza City, northern Gaza and eastern parts of the besieged enclave.

"Not to mention that some trucks entering Gaza included irrelevant aid, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and nearly expired food, according to eyewitnesses," Azzam says.

Azzam says people with "other pressing priorities than biscuits" or those who cannot bake the flour end up using aid as currency. They sell it in local markets to get cash to buy what they need.

The WFP and several local NGOs also provide cash-based transfers so people can buy food in shops that still remain open. Some organisations also provide food vouchers directly.

Nearly 250,000 people in Gaza have used cash assistance in shops since October 7, with around 11,000 people redeeming their electronic vouchers every day to buy food from shops, according to WFP.

But cash aids prove to be ineffective as most grocery stores have run out of provisions.

Secondary crises

Water is another huge challenge, Azzam says, as Israeli attacks have left 95 percent of the enclave without access to clean water.

"No electricity" from fuel shortages "also means no water pumps to push water to higher floors. We had to line up for hours outside water desalination plants and facilities.. then use buckets to lift water to rooftop tanks," he explains.

Azzam says they also drink from agricultural water wells directly without disinfection desalination.

"Water tastes terribly bad, but there's no alternative. Unfortunately, it has caused many of us abdominal pain."

No matter how dire his situation in the south, it's nothing compared to northern Gaza, where he says the situation is ten times worse.

"Some of my friends decided to remain in Gaza as they couldn't find a place to go to in the south," he says, adding that "all UN shelters are overcrowded and there is an outbreak of communicable diseases in the shelters."

"The other day, one friend was killed outside his home in the heart of Gaza City.. the other ones who survived are not even able to leave their homes to get any food. They have to cope with whatever they get inside."

Azzam also warns that several secondary crises are unfolding from Israel's war on Gaza, including the outbreak of diseases like skin conditions and chickenpox inside overcrowded shelters and a sharp increase in domestic violence and family disputes.

"You'd find big quarrels or even fights at every queue, at every shelter and every family. Social pressure is at its peak," Azzam adds.