Scream­ing in an­guish as the des­per­ate crowd crush­es them against a bar­ri­er, young chil­dren and adults fran­ti­cal­ly wave pots and pans at char­i­ty work­ers, beg­ging for a por­tion of some of the last food aid left in Gaza: Rice.

The chaos at the com­mu­ni­ty kitchen in Khan You­nis in south­ern Gaza on Fri­day was too over­whelm­ing for Niveen Abu Arar. She tried and tried, but the 33-year-old moth­er of eight didn’t get to the front of the crowd in time. She left with her pot emp­ty, and her eyes full of tears.

“Un­til when will life be like that? We’re slow­ly dy­ing. We haven’t eat­en bread for a month and a half. There is no flour. There is noth­ing,” said Abu Arar, whose ninth child, a 1-year-old boy, was killed in an Is­raeli strike near their home at the start of the war in 2023. “We don’t know what to do … We don’t have mon­ey. What do we get for them?”

She cra­dled a tod­dler in her lap as she spoke. With no milk to pro­vide, she poured wa­ter in­to a ba­by bot­tle and pressed it in­to her youngest daugh­ter’s mouth, hop­ing to stave off the ba­by’s hunger pangs.

With Is­rael block­ing any form of aid — in­clud­ing food and med­i­cine – in­to Gaza for the past two months, aid groups have warned that Gaza’s civil­ian pop­u­la­tion is fac­ing star­va­tion.

Is­rael has said that the block­ade and its re­newed mil­i­tary cam­paign aim to pres­sure Hamas to re­lease the re­main­ing hostages it still holds and to dis­arm. Aid groups stress that block­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid is a form of col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment and a vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Is­raeli au­thor­i­ties didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond when asked about ac­cu­sa­tions that star­va­tion was be­ing used as a weapon of war, but in the past they have ac­cused the Hamas mil­i­tant group gov­ern­ing Gaza of steal­ing aid.

UN food agency says its food stocks in Gaza have run out un­der Is­rael's block­ade

In an emer­gency call with re­porters on Fri­day to dis­cuss Gaza’s hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, aid groups de­scribed a ter­ri­to­ry near­ly out of food, wa­ter and fu­el, with prices for the mea­ger sup­plies re­main­ing sky­rock­et­ing be­yond the reach of many.

With near­ly the en­tire pop­u­la­tion re­liant on hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, ware­hous­es are emp­ty, com­mu­ni­ty kitchens are clos­ing down, and fam­i­lies are skip­ping meals.

A 25-kilo­gram (55-pound) bag of flour now goes for 1,300 shekels ($360), said Gha­da al Had­dad, Ox­fam’s me­dia co­or­di­na­tor in Gaza.

“Moth­ers in Gaza now feed their chil­dren one meal per day, din­ner, so they don’t wake up and com­plain they are starv­ing,” she said.

Am­jad Shawwa, the di­rec­tor of the Pales­tin­ian NGO net­work, said that more than 70 of their com­mu­ni­ty kitchens in­side Gaza would close with­in the week if the Is­raeli block­ade con­tin­ues.

Is­raeli airstrikes have al­so tak­en out large swaths of Gaza’s agri­cul­tur­al land and live­stock, mak­ing it near­ly im­pos­si­ble for the ter­ri­to­ry to pro­duce its own food, said Gavin Kelle­her, a hu­man­i­tar­i­an man­ag­er with the Nor­we­gian Refugee Coun­cil who re­cent­ly left Gaza. Even fish­er­man have been tar­get­ed, he said, killed in small fish­ing boats by Is­raeli naval forces.

“Is­rael has en­gi­neered a sit­u­a­tion where Pales­tini­ans can­not grow their own food or fish for their own food,” he said.

Kelle­her, whose or­ga­ni­za­tion co­or­di­nates the pro­vi­sion of shel­ter to Gaza, said that not a sin­gle aid group has any tents left to dis­trib­ute — as 1 mil­lion peo­ple in­side Gaza re­main in need of shel­ter giv­en the dev­as­ta­tion caused by the near­ly 19-month war.

In Khan You­nis, Mustafa Ashour said he had walked for an hour to get to the char­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty kitchen, and wait­ing for an­oth­er two hours be­fore he man­aged to get food.

“The sit­u­a­tion is hard in Gaza. The cross­ings are closed. It’s a full siege,” said Ashour, who was dis­placed from the south­ern city of Rafah. “There is no food. There is no wa­ter. There are no life ne­ces­si­ties. The food be­ing sold is ex­pen­sive and very lit­tle.”

As for Abu Arar and her fam­i­ly — left with­out a hand­out from the char­i­ty kitchen — an­oth­er fam­i­ly in a neigh­bor­ing tent took pity, and shared their own mea­ger por­tions of rice.

Keller of the NRC said that if Is­rael con­tin­ues its block­ade, “thou­sands of peo­ple will die, there will be a com­plete break­down of or­der, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works will come down and we will strug­gle to un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion be­cause it will be un­fold­ing in the dark.”

Ju­lia Frankel re­port­ed from Jerusalem. Fat­ma Khaled con­tributed to this re­port from Cairo.

By MO­HAMED JAHJOUH and JU­LIA FRANKEL

KHAN YOU­NIS, Gaza Strip (AP)