In Gaza, even hunger is now weaponised. After months of complete siege, families have been left with no choice but to grind pasta, lentils, and chickpeas into powdery substitutes for flour, desperately trying to make bread—the one food that has long been the backbone of survival.

With the Israeli blockade strangling all humanitarian entry points, flour has vanished from markets and aid agencies alike. A sack, if found, costs more than what most can afford in a month. And so, in bombed-out kitchens and overcrowded shelters, Palestinians are becoming unwilling inventors of survival, turning to any edible grain that can be crushed and baked.

“We grind pasta with anything we can find,” says Um Mohammed from a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City. “It doesn’t taste like bread, it doesn’t feel like bread, but we have to eat.” Her children, like many others, now share a single hard loaf between them, sometimes for an entire day.

The reality on the ground is stark: no flour, no clean water, no electricity, and no aid. The daily soundscape is warplanes overhead, while stomachs growl below. In this silence of abandonment, every meal is an act of resistance.

According to rights groups, over 90% of Gaza’s population now faces severe food insecurity. Children, the elderly, and the ill are dying from hunger—casualties not of bombs, but of deliberate deprivation. Gaza’s tragedy is no longer only about war; it is about the slow, cruel orchestration of starvation.