the desperate struggle to find food in Gaza

Amal Mohamed used to have to chase her young children around their Gaza home to make them finish their dinner. Now they are desperate for food but she can barely afford to feed them.

“We pretend to the children that we’re not hungry or too busy to eat,” said the Palestinian mother of two, whose family has been displaced from the north of the besieged enclave to Rafah in the south, where they share a tent crammed with relatives.

The price of food and firewood for cooking has soared, eating meat has become “a dream” and the adults have cut their food intake so the children can eat, she said. “We’ve all lost weight.”

The family is among more than 2mn people facing severe food shortages as Israel’s Gaza offensive enters its fourth month. UN officials have warned famine is looming. “The long shadow of starvation is stalking the people of Gaza, along with disease, malnutrition and other health threats,” UN secretary-general António Guterres said last week.

Gaza’s population has become almost completely reliant on external aid brought in via the only two entry points — Rafah on the border with Egypt and Kerem Shalom on the Israeli border. The enclave’s commercial farms have been damaged in the war and are largely out of commission. The aid, which includes flour, oil, rice, legumes and canned foods, is mainly delivered to UN warehouses for distribution to shelters and elsewhere, and people have to queue, sometimes for hours, to get food.

Israel had started to allow some commercial deliveries into Gaza but it was not enough, said Scott Anderson, deputy director of operations in Gaza for UNRWA, the main UN agency operating in the enclave.

With minimal food entering the territory, UN agencies warn of a deepening catastrophe. They have called on Israel to open more crossings and simplify its inspection process for trucks, and say the…