Fifty-three days into Israel's renewed blockade of Gaza, humanitarian groups are warning of a total collapse in the besieged territory, as airstrikes resume and critical aid remains barred from entry.
With the March collapse of a cease-fire deal and deteriorating humanitarian situation, over 2.1 million Palestinians are now facing acute shortages of food, fuel, medicine and clean water.
The UN warned this week that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached its most critical point since the war began in October 2023. Since March 2 this year, Israel has shuttered key crossings into the enclave, blocking the entry of vital supplies, despite repeated warnings of famine and widespread suffering in the war-ravaged strip.
"There is a total collapse of the humanitarian situation," Riham Jafari, ActionAid's Palestine advocacy and communications coordinator, told Anadolu. "There is a catastrophic level of food insecurity and famine, which has started to affect the people, especially pregnant women, children, elderly."
Jafari stressed that by cutting off aid, Israel is deliberately using starvation as a weapon of war — a tactic that violates international humanitarian law.
"Starvation, aid, food are being used as a weapon of war in a clear violation of international law," she said. "The dream of Gazan people is to get a piece of a bread or a piece of food."
Those dreams are now slipping further away. Fuel shortages have crippled community kitchens and bakeries across the territory, including those supported by the World Food Program. Without fuel or gas to cook, many kitchens are now forced to hand out raw ingredients, such as uncooked rice, to desperate families.
People are unable to get the main components of their meals, Jafari explained, as scarcity has sent food prices soaring beyond the reach of ordinary Palestinians, including staples like flour.
Shaina Low, communications adviser for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Palestine, said the collapse of food systems has forced people to forego eating altogether, in some cases.
"We're hearing reports of people eating one meal a day or less," she said. "The kitchens that are operating distributions to individuals … have been suspended for some time now, so that food actors could pool their resources and distribute food supplies to community kitchens."
According to Low, those kitchens are serving approximately a million meals per day. Despite the high number, they are reaching only half of Gaza's population, she added.
With shops empty and supply lines severed, only fresh fruits and vegetables grown locally are still available — but even those are extremely expensive, she added.
While the food crisis garners international attention, it is just one of many compounding emergencies gripping Gaza. From shelter to water, fuel, medicine, and hygiene supplies, humanitarian workers say the needs are endless.
"We cannot give a priority to one item over other items. Everything is needed," Jafari said. "The people have different humanitarian needs, but the most importantly are shelter, food, water, fuel, medicine and medical supplies, heavy equipment."
She noted that access to clean water is particularly pressing as summer approaches. Without fuel to power water desalination and pumping systems, communities are relying on polluted or insufficient sources.
"We're getting close to summer, when people need water for drinking, cleaning, and washing," she said. Other essentials include sanitation kits, diapers, hygiene items, clothing for children and women, and temporary housing solutions, Jafari highlighted.
Low echoed these concerns, describing how hospitals are overwhelmed and dangerously under-equipped.
"We're seeing hospitals in desperate need of medicine and medical supplies with reports of people undergoing surgeries without anesthesia," she said. "We are seeing the reduction of fuel that's limiting the ability to pump water and truck water to different sites in Gaza."
Supplies are declining across all sectors, she added. "We're rapidly seeing all of these supplies dwindle."
If conditions continue to deteriorate, Jafari fears a catastrophic loss of life.
"We are very afraid that more people will be lost … due to the starvation," she said. "It has become clear for the world … that people in Gaza are not being killed only with the weapons and with bombing.
"They are killed with hunger. They are killed with lack of medicine. They are killed with lack of access to treatment and access to hospitals."
Pregnant women and newborns are particularly vulnerable. Many babies are being born underweight, far below global health standards. Jafari said medical teams are once again being forced to carry out cesarean sections without anesthesia — a return to the harrowing early days of the war.
Low warned that in addition to malnutrition, communicable and waterborne diseases are on the rise. "It's going to be even more difficult to treat these conditions when there isn't adequate medicine or medical supplies getting in."
"As food runs out and gets an even shorter supply, we've already started to see that starvation is spreading and anticipate that it will get much worse," she added.
Beyond physical needs, aid workers are also sounding the alarm over what they describe as a systematic dismantling of the humanitarian sector itself. Israel's blockade, they say, is not only starving Gaza's people, but also preventing aid groups from doing their jobs.
"We're seeing that this isn't an accident — this is very intentional to prevent us from being able to do our jobs," Low said referring to the blockade.
She cited Israel's refusal to reinstate the humanitarian notification system, which previously allowed aid groups to coordinate their movements with the military for safe access.
"We've seen humanitarian workers get denied access to Gaza or to other parts of the occupied Palestinian territory," she said. "Not just ordinary humanitarian workers, but also doctors on emergency medical teams."
"All of this is making it more and more difficult for us to be able to do the work that we are there to do and these are obstructions could easily be removed — if the Israeli government were willing to do so."
Low emphasized that the situation is not due to a lack of available aid. As of mid-April, the UN reported over 3,000 aid trucks were waiting to enter Gaza, held up on the Egyptian and Israeli sides of the border.
The Norwegian Refugee Council alone has 34 truckloads of supplies stuck in Egypt, including food, medicine, and sanitation items.
"The materials in those trucks could go to waste," Low said. "If it's food, it could spoil, or medicine. Even for things that were non-perishables back before the ceasefire, some of those things would get damaged from sitting in these hot trucks."
On top of that, aid groups are being forced to pay for storage fees and truck rentals while their cargo sits idle — money that could otherwise be spent saving lives.
