Israel’s Systematic Destruction of Life Essentials in Gaza Has Forced Palestinians into a Hunt for Survival

Amid a total siege and massive bombing, people in Gaza are on the brink of starvation as they search for food, water, and basic goods

A bread stall's contents are scattered on the ground amid damaged tents after Israeli strikes on a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in central Gaza City on March 23, 2025. (Photo by OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)

GAZA CITY—Wael al-Masri sits on the rubble of a demolished building watching his teenage sons struggle to secure a plastic sheet to create some kind of meager shelter. Amid Israel’s resumption of its scorched earth campaign that began on March 18, the 52 year-old was forced to flee with his family from Beit Hanoun, on the northeastern edge of Gaza, to Gaza City on March 21.

"We used to live safely in our home, and now we live on top of the rubble of destroyed houses. No electricity, no water, not even a private bathroom,” al-Masri told Drop Site News.

Over the past week, the streets of Gaza City’s western neighborhoods have been transformed into a densely crowded maze of tents, with laundry lines criss-crossing between them and the cacophony of children's voices filling the air. Over 142,000 people were newly displaced across Gaza, according to the United Nations, between March 18 and 23. Many are now living on the streets and in desperate need of food, drinking water, and basic shelter.

Wael's wife, Samar, sat in front of their tent, trying to light a small pile of firewood to cook leftover rice given to her by a neighboring family. "We sleep on the ground, with no mattresses or blankets. When it rains, the tent floods,” she said as she struggled to light the fire. “We have nothing to cover the children with except our old clothes."

She pointed to the sewage water spreading into the streets and around the tents as a result of Israel’s systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure. "The foul smell is suffocating us," she said. "We just want to feel human—to drink clean water, to let our children sleep with full stomachs. Is that too much to ask?"

The Israeli military has killed over 830 Palestinians in Gaza since March 18, including more than 320 children, according to the ministry of health. The governorate of Gaza, where Gaza City is located, has seen the highest number of casualties—over 250 dead and nearly 500 injured.

Along with the aerial bombardment and shelling, the Israeli military has issued new displacement orders in areas across Gaza—including in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, Rafah, and Jabaliya—covering a total of 55 square kilometres, or 15 percent of the Gaza Strip, according to the UN.

On Wednesday, the Israeli military issued new orders for people to flee several neighborhoods in Gaza City, including Zeitoun al-Gharbi, Tal al-Hawa and Sheikh Ajlin—immediately south of the neighborhoods to which the al-Masri family and thousands of others were recently displaced.

The Israeli military has also re-deployed along the eastern and central part of the “Netzarim corridor,” announcing that movement between the north and south of Gaza is only allowed via the coastal Al Rashid road.

“Hunger is crueler than guilt”

Alongside the bombardment and forced displacement, an escalating humanitarian crisis is quickly spiraling out of control as a result of the Israeli siege. Since March 2, the Israeli government has banned the entry of humanitarian aid and any other supplies across all crossings into Gaza—the longest closure since October 2023.

The total blockade has severely depleted medical supplies and available medicines and cut off fuel for generators to produce electricity. This has caused extreme food shortages, leading to skyrocketing prices for basic goods.

Due to these blighted economic conditions, local markets have sharply hiked the prices for vegetables, and meat and poultry have become completely unavailable. The price of potatoes, for example, has soared from 4 shekels ($1.1) per kilogram to 45 shekels ($13), while onions rose from 6 shekels ($1.7) to 35 shekels ($10) per kilogram.

Residents have resorted to foraging for wild plants to survive. After her husband was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in June, Taghreed al-Habeel, 42, is the sole provider for her family of seven. "We have no other choice," she told Drop Site. “We used to live on canned food, but it's all gone. We can't afford vegetables from the market because of the insane prices. Now we search for wild plants like mallow and purslane just to fill our children's bellies," she said. "My kids ask me when we'll eat chicken or meat again, and I have no answer."

The World Food Program warned on Thursday that hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are “at risk of extreme hunger and malnutrition as humanitarian food stocks in the Strip dwindle and borders remain closed to aid. Meanwhile, the expansion of military activity in Gaza is severely disrupting food assistance operations and putting the lives of aid workers at risk every day.”

The suffocating siege has driven people to seek out other unconventional sources of food. After his home was destroyed in the war, Ali Musbah, a young man displaced to a tent near the coast west of Gaza City, recently came upon a sea turtle washed ashore by the waves. Desperation led him to slaughter and eat it.

"The turtle weighed about 50 kilograms," Musbah told Drop Site. "I managed to get around 5 to 6 kilograms of meat from it. My wife cooked it like shawarma, and we shared the food with five other starving displaced families."

Musbah used to work as a fisherman before the war. "We used to catch fresh fish, shrimp, and squid. Now, we only dream about them,” he said. “With fishing banned and the crossings closed, all we have left are canned foods filled with preservatives that have wrecked our health."

"I know the turtle might be an endangered species,” he added. “But hunger is crueler than guilt. I didn’t choose this path—it was forced on us."

The blockade has caused bakeries and kitchens to close down due to a lack of cooking gas, while the UN refugee agency UNRWA said its remaining stocks of flour would only last a few more days.

“Every day that passes without the entry of aid means more children go to bed hungry, diseases spread, and deprivation deepens,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UNRWA, said in a statement. “Every day without food inches Gaza closer to an acute hunger crisis.”

Meanwhile, Gaza’s decimated health care system, which has been systematically targeted by the Israeli military, is struggling to cope with hundreds of casualties, a severe drop in medical stocks, and a lack of equipment, blood units, and personnel. The health ministry in Gaza has said that 80% of patients in Gaza cannot find the most basic medicines. On Sunday, Israeli forces bombed a surgical unit at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis—the largest functioning hospital in Gaza, killing two people, including a 16 year-old boy.

Access to water has also been severely restricted with Israel targeting water wells and sewage networks—causing widespread thirst and outbreaks of disease. A joint statement from the Palestinian Water Authority and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel has destroyed over 85% of Gaza's water and sanitation facilities, either completely or partially, rendering them inoperable. On March 9, Israel also cut off the electricity supply to Gaza, forcing a major desalination plant to slash its water output, severely limiting the amount of drinking water available to 600,000 people in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis.

The Government Media Office warned of rising rates of hunger and malnutrition as a result of the Israeli blockade. "The Gaza Strip is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe amid the ongoing genocide and international silence," the government office said in a statement. "This policy deepens the worsening crisis, at a time when our Palestinian people are suffering from a systematic policy of starvation."