A.S.

A 25-year-old mechatronics engineering graduate from a-Shuja’iyah neighborhood in Gaza City

I was displaced with my family, 18 of us in total, at the beginning of the war. We have been living in the central Gaza Strip ever since.

During the war, I looked for work to support myself and my family. For a year and a half, I worked for UNMAS, an organization that locates and assists victims of explosive remnants of war and residual explosives. As part of my work, I helped collect data on the victims, take their testimonies and deliver financial and material aid. After a year and a half, my contract ended and remained unemployed for three months.

On 9 January 2026, I started working with World Central Kitchen, as a cook in their Salam kitchen in the city of Deir al-Balah. I would work from 7:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. The kitchen employed cooks, sanitation workers, dishwashers and meal prep and measurement staff. We prepared food for displaced people in camps throughout the Strip.

The kitchen prepared a variety of dishes, including meat and rice, peas, cauliflower, potatoes, okra, beans, lentils and pasta. When the food was ready, the pots were taken by truck to the IDP camps, where the meals were distributed. The kitchen also had a dedicated department for coordinating and distributing the food to the camps.

When I started working for the organization, it had six kitchens across the Gaza Strip: two in the north, two in the central part and two in Khan Yunis. At that time, the kitchens produced large quantities of food, as part of a program for providing about one million meals a day. The large camps got two or three pots of food a day.

At the end of April 2026, one of the kitchens in the north of the Strip, on a-Shuhadaa Street, closed down. The roughly 60 workers from there were reassigned to other kitchens.

On 20 May 2026, the World Central Kitchen management announced layoffs of about 480 of 1,870 workers in the kitchens. I was among them. They told us the reason was a lack of funding, with no further information. We signed termination of employment papers, but we still haven’t received the money that was promised to us as part of the severance arrangements.

Two days ago, two more kitchens were shut down, the Deir al-Balah kitchen and the Asdaa kitchen, and another 350 or so people were laid off. All the workers in these kitchens were let go: managers, cooks and operations staff. The Salam kitchen, where I worked, is still operating for now.

Following the closures and layoffs, the quantity of food produced has dropped significantly, and today, only about 45,000 meals are prepared in each of the kitchens. Each pot contains about 80-90 meals, and one meal is usually enough for only two or three people. But each family receives one meal, and for large families of five people or more, that’s not enough. Also, the meals are distributed only once a day.

The scaling back has hurt hundreds of people who lost their income, and the displaced families who depend on community kitchens for most of their food. Today, about two million people are living in the Gaza Strip in harsh conditions, and the aid provided through the kitchens is not enough to meet their needs.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 22 June 2026