In Gaza, the simplest of necessities, bread, has become a distant dream. As the Israeli blockade tightens and crossings remain closed, the Strip is gripped by an unprecedented famine. Flour, the backbone of daily sustenance, is now a luxury, with its scarcity and skyrocketing prices pushing families to the brink of starvation.

Gaza’s residents speak of a parallel war, one not waged with bombs, but with hunger. Ayman Jihad, a father searching daily for work, shared that if a person is lucky enough to earn a few dollars, they might afford a handful of flour. “If not,” he said, “their children sleep hungry.”

With sugar, tomatoes, and even cooking oil vanishing from the shelves, many are left grinding rice, lentils, or pasta to produce makeshift bread. Umm Mohammad, a mother of several children, receives barely a kilo of flour every few days. “Conditions are unbearable,” she said, her voice strained by fatigue and fear.

Teenager Mohammad Jarad walks to a community kitchen each day to collect a single plate of lentils for his siblings. “We sleep and wake up hungry,” he told reporters, describing how his family can rarely afford a single kilo of flour now sold for around $13, if they can find it at all.

The black market, fed by stolen humanitarian aid, has flour bags reaching Gaza only after their prices balloon to over $400, an impossible sum for most families, like that of young Mohammad Shomaly, who earns barely enough from a street stall to survive.

Since the full closure of Gaza’s crossings on 2 March, desperation has taken hold. Flour reserves have vanished, prices have soared, and more than two million Palestinians are now trapped in what aid groups describe as a man-made famine. With water unfit to drink and food supplies nearly depleted, Gaza’s children are growing up on hunger, fear, and fading hope. Bread, once the simplest comfort, is now a symbol of resistance and survival.