In the wreckage of Gaza’s daily survival, even the smallest comforts have vanished. For the children of Abu Raed al-Bahri, a simple cup of tea with sugar, once an ordinary pleasure, has become a luxury their family hasn’t tasted in nearly two months. Sugar, if it appears at all in Gaza’s markets, now costs up to $100 per kilogram, forcing desperate families to buy it by the spoon.

This crisis is no accident. It is the result of a brutal, engineered starvation campaign, where Israel’s ongoing siege and closure of crossings have collapsed Gaza’s economy and cut off all but a trickle of essential supplies. The new aid system, run through a controversial U.S.-Israeli mechanism, has been widely condemned for fuelling black market chaos while leaving civilians to risk their lives at distribution points where shootings are frequent and food scarce.

Basic staples like flour and salt have vanished. Humanitarian convoys are either blocked, attacked, or intercepted. Markets fluctuate wildly, leaving displaced families unable to afford even rice or oil. “What madness is this?” asks one father, watching sugar sold for ten shekels a spoon.

As the siege stretches beyond 118 days, Gaza is starving, not from natural disaster, but from deliberate policy. More than 173,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since October 2023, and now the survivors face another slow death: famine. In a place where bread is rare and tea is bitter, even a spoonful of sugar is a reminder of what has been stolen.