Anwar Hamad

A 38-year-old mother of six and UNRWA employee from Jabalya Refugee Camp, Anwar described the hunger and worsening conditions since Israel blocked humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip in early March 2025

My husband, Jamal Hamad, 39, and I have six children: Nagham, 15, Shatha, 13, Jawad, 11, 'Abd al-Wahab, 10, Sila, 4, and 'Alaa, 1, who was born during the war. The past year and a half, we’ve been living in a hell of war and destruction: bombings, killing, starvation, and being displaced again and again.

At the beginning of the brutal war on Gaza, we and my husband's family left our homes in eastern Jabalya Refugee Camp and moved to the home of relatives in western Gaza City. We stayed with them for 45 days of fear and panic, surrounded by fire and bombings. Everywhere we went, leaflets were dropped from the air ordering us to evacuate. There was no safe place.

Later, we were displaced again with my husband's family to an apartment in al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip. There were 35 of us in an 80-square-meter apartment. The situation there was catastrophic, no less than in the north.

After we were displaced, hunger spread throughout the Gaza Strip. We lived without meat, vegetables, or fruit — products that almost completely disappeared from the markets. A 25-kilogram sack of flour sold for nearly 300 shekels, compared to 30 shekels before the war. We are a big family, and all we ate was canned food and grains. We usually had one meal a day, at most two.

At some point, the Israeli military ordered everyone to evacuate [...] We all left, under fire, and walked to the city of Rafah. But there, the situation was even worse [...] I was pregnant with 'Alaa at the time. On the first night in Rafah, we slept under the open sky because we couldn’t find shelter. Later, we slept in other people's tents.

At some point, the Israeli military ordered everyone to evacuate the al-Maghazi and al-Bureij refugee camps in the center of the Strip. We all left, under fire, and walked to the city of Rafah. But there, the situation was even worse — we were thrown into the unknown. I was pregnant with 'Alaa at the time. On the first night in Rafah, we slept under the open sky because we couldn’t find shelter. Later, we slept in other people's tents.

About a week later, we rented a small apartment in the Tel a-Sultan neighborhood, along with my husband's family. We crammed 35 people into it, hungry, tense and afraid, under bombardments. To cook for the children, my husband and I lit a fire. I was nine months pregnant and weighed only 55 kg because I was eating just one meal a day — lentils, fava beans or falafel. When I went to the hospital to give birth, the doctors couldn’t believe I was pregnant. My baby girl was born weighing only 2 kg due to the lack of food.

I remember that on the day I gave birth to my daughter 'Alaa, I ate falafel, and for lunch I ate some halva in the hope it would help me breastfeed her. I was constantly hungry. I didn’t eat any vegetables, fruit or meat, and was afraid I wouldn’t make enough milk. It was especially hard because infant formula was almost impossible to obtain.

'Alaa cried all the time. Jamal, my husband, would go out looking for formula for her, but only managed to get a single tin from time to time, which was enough for only a week.

After the invasion of Rafah, we were displaced again, this time to a tent in Khan Yunis. The constant displacement made our suffering much worse. My husband, my kids and I lived in that tent for eight months. We suffered from the lack of food, the daily struggle to find some, and the misery of living in a tent that offered no protection at all.

The tent was full of insects, flies and mosquitoes. I found them on my kids’ bodies day and night. We also suffered from stray dogs that roamed near our tent and in the surrounding streets.

But the hunger overshadowed everything. We ate only canned food, fava beans, lentils and noodles. I feel like our stomachs have shrunk and atrophied because we haven’t been eating healthily, only canned goods and grains.

After the ceasefire was declared in January 2025, we waited a bit and then, on 20 February, we went back north. Went to our home in eastern Jabalya RC, which was still in a reasonable condition. We brought a few cans of food and some grains with us and rationed them carefully, in case the crossings would be closed again and we would have nothing to eat.

As we feared, when the war started again in March, the crossings closed again and food disappeared from the markets. Now, it’s complete hunger here. We are eating only canned food again, and sometimes just bread, mainly in the mornings. For lunch, we eat canned fava beans or rice, and we have no dinner at all. Even lentils have completely disappeared from the markets. There is almost nothing to buy, and when lentils are available, a sack costs 400 shekels.

I would send the children to get food from a soup kitchen sometimes. They would stand in line for two hours and only come back with some lentils, rice or noodles. Sometimes, by the time it was their turn, the food would already be gone and they would return empty-handed. Many soup kitchens have now closed because they can’t get food, either. I stopped sending my children to soup kitchens since a house next to one was bombed. It’s too dangerous.

Sometimes the children want candy so much, but obviously I have no way to get them any. It’s very frustrating when they ask and I can’t give them anything — candy, food, fruit. Sometimes I lose my temper at them because I feel so helpless.

Two days ago, I baked bread. We dipped it in water with soup powder and ate it. My husband, my children and I are all pale and skinny and constipated from eating so little. We all complain of tiredness all the time, and our bones have even started hurting.

I’m still breastfeeding 'Alaa, because I can’t wean her when formula is barely available. I try to eat anything I can get my hands on so that my body will continue to produce milk. 'Alaa weighs only 7 kg now, which is extremely low for her age.

We get water from a truck, but we don’t know where it comes from and its polluted. When the truck comes, my children haul the water containers up from the ground floor to the fourth floor. It’s a huge effort for children who are thin and starving. We drink very little. On days when the truck doesn’t come, we barely drink at all.

But my biggest problem at the moment is that my eldest daughter, Nagham, has a wheat allergy and can’t eat anything containing wheat. We used to buy her special food, but those products disappeared from the markets at the beginning of the war. Only once during the entire war did I manage to get her some cornflour. I bought 10 kg for 300 shekels. That lasted us one month. Since then, Nagham has been eating only rice and cheese, morning, noon and evenings. She ate canned fava beans but then began getting stomach aches, headaches, diarrhea and vomiting, and I was afraid it was because of the beans. She was sick for a week. Now she eats only rice. During the ceasefire, a few suitable products were brought in and I bought some, but they have since disappeared again. Nagham is severely underweight and still goes from constipation and diarrhea to headaches and back again. She is very thin and anemic, and her lips are white. I can’t get her vegetables or fruit, or dairy products, and she can’t digest canned food.

We’re also suffering terribly from having no cooking gas, which means we have to cook over an open fire. That forces us to buy wood that’s very overpriced, when it’s even available. We’ve been breathing smoke for a year and a half. Sometimes I feel like I’m suffocating and have chest pain just from sitting by the fire and the smoke for hours.

I think about my children all they time. About the deprivation they are suffering and about how all they can think about is food. They’ve forgotten what fruit or chicken taste like. They eat only bread, za'atar, fava beans, and whatever we can get from the soup kitchen. I can bear my own hunger, but how can little children handle going to sleep hungry every night?

I am a clerk with UNRWA, but I can’t withdraw my salary from the bank because there’s no cash. Money can only be withdrawn through merchants, who charge a 30% commission. For every 1,000 shekels, they take 300 shekels as commission. That leaves us very little money. I go to the market, and even if there are vegetables, I can’t afford to buy them. A kilo of tomatoes costs 30 shekels, but it wouldn’t be enough for a family of eight. Other than canned food, I can’t afford to buy anything. We long for just one bite of chocolate or a biscuit, but it’s beyond our means.

The hunger we’re experiencing now is the worst we have faced since the war began. It’s destroying us. We all wander around weak and thin. I go to sleep fantasizing that in the morning I’ll hear the war has ended. We are exhausted. There’s no point in elaborating — no words can express what we are going through.

How long will this go on? I am just one of two million people trapped in the Gaza Strip. We are facing bombings and killings, hunger and thirst. I long to bring home a potato or an eggplant! We have reached a point where we dream day and night of vegetables and meat. They have turned us into people who dream only of food.

Now, the military has declared our area in eastern Jabalya RC a red zone from which we must evacuate. But we have nowhere to go. Everywhere is dangerous and nowhere is safe. There is bombing and shelling from tanks here day and night.

We are starving in Gaza, we are dying here! Every day we follow the news hoping to hear that the crossings have opened and aid has entered, that the war is over. But no! Every day is worse than the one before. The crossings are not opening, and the war is not ending. We are facing a death sentence — from hunger or from bombings.

* Testimony given to B'Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 20 April 2025