As Israel’s siege on Gaza enters its 10th month, one heartbreaking symbol of the region’s unfolding humanitarian crisis has emerged: Palestinian mothers grinding dried beans, lentils, cornmeal and animal feed to make makeshift bread and feed their starving children.
Under intense strain from depleted flour supplies and commercial bakeries that have closed or been destroyed, women across Gaza Strip are resorting to desperate measures in search of sustenance. Some families are boiling wild herbs for sustenance while other households mix crushed animal fodder with water and salt in an effort to create food that may barely pass as edible.
Umm Faris, a mother of five sheltered in Rafah for over two months, reported: “I haven’t seen flour in over two months – we soak lentils then grind them up for flatbread instead. Although it tastes bitterer, my children seem less distressed.”
According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Gaza is on the verge of starvation. More than 90% of its residents rely on one meal or less per day for subsistence; nearly 30% of children under five suffer acute malnutrition and aid agencies are unable to respond quickly due to access restrictions and targeted strikes against food distribution sites.
Abeer Etefa of WFP noted that mothers are doing everything possible to feed their children, yet the situation is dire. She stated: “Mothers are trying their hardest but their efforts are no match for the catastrophic hunger situation we are witnessing in some areas; people are even eating grass.” What they are witnessing is not simply food insecurity but an unprecedented collapse of human dignity.
Reports from northern Gaza, where fighting has been especially intense, indicate that even alternative ingredients have become scarcer. Animal feed, once sold on the black market as an emergency measure, now fetches exorbitant prices on the black market – in Khan Younis alone it cost over ten times what flour did prior to wartime.
Israel continues its tight blockade on Gaza, permitting in only limited humanitarian aid. Officials insist Hamas interfered with distribution and accused it of diverting resources; international human rights organizations argue Israel’s military tactics — such as destruction of agricultural zones, bakeries and aid convoys — are directly to blame for an increasing hunger crisis.
United Nations experts and humanitarian advocates have advocated for immediate and unimpeded access to Gaza for food and medical aid delivery, warning against what they view as “deliberate famine.” Despite these calls for aid to arrive as quickly as possible, diplomatic attempts at creating ceasefire agreements or humanitarian corridors have so far proved futile.
Footage shared by journalists and aid workers shows women baking on open fires, hand flattening bean paste, and trying to cook in flood-ravaged refugee camps. One viral video depicted a mother feeding her toddler small pieces of bread made with crushed lentils and rainwater as she whispered: “This is all I have left.”
Gazans have come to accept this scene as their new norm.
As international appeals have mounted, mothers in Gaza continue to grind whatever food sources are available – not out of choice but out of necessity; hunger cannot wait.