RAFAH — Sandra al-Qassas stands every day in a line for multiple hours, holding her child in one hand and waving a small pot. The 32-year-old mother — like so many other people in Gaza right now — spends much of her day searching for food to satisfy her family’s needs amid a severe shortage of food and other necessities.
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Thousands of women like al-Qassas are struggling to get one meal a day for themselves and their children. Most of them were forced to flee their homes in northern Gaza amid Israel’s relentless bombardment that flattened their homes, and have headed to the southern half of the strip, especially to Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
So even if they have so far escaped death, they now find themselves struggling each day for their survival.
To feed her family of 10 people, al-Qassas has several different queues she has to line up for each day and week: a bread queue outside a bakery that takes six hours; then she heads to the Takiyya al-Rahma charity to get cooked meals.
An inevitable famine
The food and charitable work initiatives in Gaza are called “Takiyya,” which have long provided food to the poor. And amid the worsening conditions and the flow of displaced families to southern Gaza, such initiatives are now serving the broader population.
On this day, Al-Qassas eventually managed to get her food, before returning to her shelter: a tent of nylon and wood that aid groups promised would provide protection for her family. “But it does not protect us from the cold weather or the rain,” she said.
On a recent visit there, her husband and six of her children were in the tent. Two of her other daughters had been sent to the bakery to bring bread, as the single loaf she had previously received was not enough.
This is collective punishment of more than 2.2 million Palestinians.
Getting a loaf of bread nowadays is not easy at all in southern Gaza. Flour is scarce, and if available, its prices are skyrocketing. There are even people who have to mix animal fodder to make bread.
Gaza is now facing what officials call an “inevitable famine” following the decision of the U.S. and other European countries to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, after Israeli accusations that 12 of the agency’s employees took part in the Hamas attack on October 7.
Such decisions amount to “collective punishment of more than 2.2 million Palestinians,” according to Michael Fakhry, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, who added that “famine was imminent.”
On the brink of death
Searching for food has become an essential part of the lives of the displaced people of Gaza. Anxiety is clear on their faces as they try to secure their sole meal of the day.
“We are going through difficult days, moments that changed everything in our lives,” al-Qassas said. “Even if you want to buy falafel, it means waiting in a long line to get them. We are trying everyday to meet our children’s basic needs, but they want a lot of what we cannot provide due to the high prices here.”
Al-Qassas lost her job as a worker at the Turkish Friendship Hospital when the war began four months ago. Her two brothers were killed, among the more than 27,400 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the war began.
Like more than 1.9 million displaced Palestinians in Gaza, she waits for the war to stop to simply return to her hometown in the north. “Let us set up even a tent in place of our homes that were destroyed. The important thing is to return,” al-Qassas said. “We are on the brink of death.”
Al-Qassas’ daughters returned empty hands. They were unable to get bread and are distraught. The mother tried to comfort them and offered them the food she had brought in the pot.
“This is the story of an entire camp. We are all facing the same conditions and the same suffering,” she said.
Charities are not enough
Haj Khaled, director of Takiyya al-Rahma, said that his most difficult situation is when people have been waiting for a meal for hours as his food runs out.
“It is a harsh feeling to find people, after the end of the distribution, returning to their homes without food,” he said. “We know that there are hungry children waiting.”
Khaled, a 55-year-old father of 14 children, says the charity prepares 70 large pots everyday, and distributes meals to displaced families in tents across Rafah. “Wherever there are displaced people, we are there,” he said.
They arrived here with only their clothes and a lot of psychological burdens.
Khaled said access to more large pots for cooking could help. “If we had more of these pots, we would have cooked more food and distributed it to a larger number of people,” he said, adding that Rafah’s population has swelled to over 1 million from around 300,000 before the war. “Everyone needs food and medicine.”
He said many of the displaced families had their money confiscated at the Israeli military checkpoints.
“They arrived here with only their clothes and a lot of psychological burdens,” he said.
Before the war, about 3 out of every 4 people in Gaza relied on the United Nations for food, Arif Hussein, chief economist at the World Food Program, told CNN.
Israel had imposed a complete siege on Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack, only allowing the entry of aid after long negotiations. Now about 150 aid trucks enter the strip everyday, down from about 500 trucks before the war.
A United Nations report said Gaza has now the highest percentage of people facing elevated levels of acute food insecurity ever recorded in any region or country.
What that means for families in Rafah is parents spending their day without food to ensure that their children have enough to eat. This can only last so long.
