In a Gaza gripped by famine and fear, even hope has become a weapon. As starvation tightens its hold, desperate families are left chasing rumours, false whispers of flour, gas, or relief, spread online by faceless sources preying on the hunger of millions. None of it is real. None of it arrives.

Social media channels flooded with claims of cooking gas deliveries and UN flour stocks have ignited brief sparks of hope across Gaza, only to extinguish them in despair. No gas has entered. No official distribution has begun. The only thing being pumped into Gaza is confusion, as those who spread these lies trade in the pain of the displaced, for attention, for control, or worse, for chaos.

Families already cooking with overpriced firewood now confront the added torment of false promises. “We wait, we pray, and still nothing,” said one mother in Mawasi. “We’re tired of rumours, we want bread.” UNRWA and other agencies have had to step in and publicly deny the false claims, warning that such misinformation only erodes trust and complicates already fragile humanitarian efforts.

Behind the fog of rumours lies a deliberate strategy: engineered starvation. Gaza’s aid system has been dismantled and replaced with an opaque Israeli-American mechanism, where civilians are summoned to collection points that often become targets. Trucks are diverted, aid is looted, and families return empty-handed or not at all.

More than 173,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since October 2023, and now those left behind are made to suffer further, not only by bombs and blockade, but by deceit. In a place where survival depends on a grain of truth, false hope has become its own form of cruelty.