Famine

Last week, a ceasefire was announced after two years of genocide in Gaza. The bombs have stopped falling, but the devastation remains. The majority of homes, schools, hospitals, universities, factories, and commercial buildings have been reduced to rubble. From above, Gaza looks like a grey desert of rubble, its vibrant urban spaces reduced to ghost towns, its lush agricultural land and greenery wiped out.

The occupier’s aim was not only to render the Palestinians of Gaza homeless but also unable to provide for themselves. Uprooting the dispossessed and impoverished, those who have lost their connection to the land, is of course much easier.

This was the goal when Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered my family’s plot of land in the eastern part of Maghazi refugee camp and uprooted 55 olive trees, 10 palms and five fig trees.

This plot of land was offered to my refugee grandfather, Ali Alsaloul, by its original owner as a place to shelter in during the Nakba of 1948. Ali, his wife, Ghalia, and their children had just fled their village, al-Maghar, as Zionist forces advanced on it. Al-Maghar, like Gaza today, was reduced to rubble; the Zionists who perpetrated the crime completed the erasure by establishing a national park on its ruins – “Mrar Hills National Park”.

Ali was a farmer and so were his ancestors; his livelihood had always come from the land. So when he settled in the new location, he was quick to plant it with olive trees, palms, figs and prickly pears. He built his house there and raised my father, uncles and aunts. My grandfather eventually bought the land from its generous owner, by paying in installments over many years. Thus, my family came into the possession of 2,000 square metres (half an acre) of land.

Although my father and his siblings married and moved out of their family home, this plot of land remained a favourite place to go, especially for me.

It was just two kilometres away from our house in Maghazi refugee camp. I enjoyed doing the 30-minute walk, part of which went through a complete “jungle”: a stretch of green populated with clover, sycamore, jujube and olive trees, colourful birds, foxes, leashed and unleashed dogs and many beehives.

Every autumn, in October, when the olive picking season began, my cousins, friends and I would gather to collect the olives. It was an occasion that brought us closer together. We would get the olives pressed and get 500 litres (130 gallons) of olive oil from the harvest. The figs and dates were made into jams to have for breakfast or for suhoor during Ramadan.

The rest of the year, I would often meet my friends Ibrahim and Mohammed between the olive trees. We would light a small fire and make a kettle of tea to enjoy under the moonlight, while we talked.

When the war started in 2023, our land became a dangerous place to go. The farms and olive groves around it were often bombed. Our plot was also hit twice at the beginning of the war. As a result, we could not harvest the olives in 2023 and then again in 2024.

When the famine took hold of Gaza in the summer, we started sneaking into the plot to get some fruit and some firewood for cooking, since a kilo of that cost $2. We knew that Israeli tanks might storm in at any moment, but we took the risk anyway.

Seven families – we, friends and neighbours – benefited from the fruit and wood of that land.

One day in late August, a friend of mine called me with a terrible rumour he had heard: the Israeli tanks and bulldozers had advanced into the eastern part of Maghazi and levelled it all, uprooting trees and burying them. I gasped; our lifeline was gone.

Days later, the rumour was confirmed. The Israeli army had uprooted more than 600 trees in the area, mostly olive trees. Those who had fled from the area shared what they had seen. What was once a lush green stretch of land had been bulldozed into a yellow, lifeless desert.

Earlier in August, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported that 98.5 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land had been damaged or made inaccessible. I guess the destruction of our plot shrank that 1.5 percent remaining land even further.

As Israel was completing the erasure of Palestinian agricultural land, it started allowing commercial but not aid trucks into Gaza. The markets were flooded with products with packaging covered in Hebrew.

Israel was starving us, destroying our ability to grow our own food, and then making us buy their products at exorbitant prices.

Ninety percent of people in Gaza are unemployed and can’t afford to buy an Israeli egg for $5 or a kilo of dates for $13. It was yet another genocidal strategy that forced the two million starving Palestinians in Gaza to choose between two horrible options: dying from hunger or paying to support the Israeli economy.

Now, aid is finally supposed to start coming into Gaza under the ceasefire agreement. This may be a relief to many starving Palestinians, but it is not a solution. Israel has rendered us fully dependent on aid, and it is the sole power that determines if, when and how much of it enters Gaza. Per the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 100 percent of Palestinians in Gaza experience some level of food insecurity.

Much of Gaza’s agricultural land remains out of reach, as Israel has withdrawn from just a part of the Gaza Strip. My family will have to wait for the implementation of the third phase of the ceasefire deal – if Israel agrees to implement it at all – to see the Israeli army withdraw to the buffer zone and regain access our land.

We have now lost our land twice. Once in 1948 and now again in 2025. Israel wants to repeat history and dispossess us again. It must not be allowed to convert more Palestinian land into buffer zones and national parks.

Getting back our land, rehabilitating and planting it is crucial not just for our survival, but also for maintaining our connection to the land. We must resist uprooting.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Israeli forces have killed 53 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip and levelled 16 buildings in Gaza City, including three residential towers, as they ramp up an offensive to seize the northern urban centre and displace its population.

At least 35 of the victims on Sunday were killed in Gaza City, according to medics.

Two more Palestinians also died of malnutrition in the Strip, according to its Ministry of Health, taking the death toll from hunger to 422 since the beginning of Israel’s war.

In Gaza City, the Israeli military marked the al-Kawthar tower in the southern Remal neighbourhood as a target, before launching missile strikes that destroyed the building two hours later. The relentless bombardment has forced tens of thousands to flee.

“We don’t know where to go,” said Marwan al-Safi, a displaced Palestinian. “We need a solution to this situation… We are dying here.”

The Government Media Office in Gaza condemned Israel’s “systematic bombing” of civilian buildings, saying the aim of the offensive was “extermination and forced displacement”.

In a statement, the office said that while Israel was claiming to be targeting armed groups, “the field realities prove beyond doubt” that Israeli forces were bombing “schools, mosques, hospitals and medical centres”, and destroying towns, residential buildings, tents and headquarters of various groups, including international humanitarian organisations.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a post on X that 10 of the agency’s buildings have been hit in Gaza City in the past four days alone.

That includes seven schools and two clinics that were sheltering thousands of displaced people. “No place is safe in Gaza. No one is safe,” he wrote.

‘Nowhere in Gaza is safe’

As bombardments intensified, families were once again forced to flee south towards al-Mawasi, an area Israel has designated as a “safe zone” despite repeatedly attacking it.

Ahmed Awad told Al Jazeera that he had escaped northern Gaza on Saturday as “mortar shells rained down”. He described arriving at midnight to find “no water, no toilets, nothing. Families are sleeping in the open. The situation is extremely dire”.

Another displaced Palestinian, AbedAllah Aram, said his family faced a “severe shortage” of clean water.

“Food is scarce, and inside these tents, people are hungry and malnourished. Winter is approaching, and we urgently need new tents. On top of that, this area cannot handle more displaced families,” he said.

A third man said he has been unable to find shelter in al-Mawasi despite arriving a week ago. He described his ordeal as unbearable.

“I have a large family, including my children, mother and grandmother. Not only are missiles raining down on us, but famine is devouring us too. My family has been on a constant journey of displacement for two years. We can no longer endure the ongoing genocidal war or hunger,” he said.

“Above all, we have no source of income to feed our starving children. Displacement is as painful as eviscerating one’s soul out of the body.”

UNICEF, meanwhile, said that conditions in al-Mawasi were worsening on a daily basis.

“Nowhere in Gaza is safe, including in this so-called humanitarian zone,” Tess Ingram, the agency’s spokesperson, told Al Jazeera from al-Mawasi. “The camp is becoming more and more crowded by the day.”

She recalled meeting a woman, Seera, who had been ordered to evacuate Gaza City while pregnant. “She went into labour in Sheikh Radwan and gave birth on the side of the road while trying to find help, whilst evacuation orders were being issued for that area,” Ingram said.

“She is one of so many examples of families who have come here and now are struggling to access the basics they need to survive.”

Doha summit condemns ‘barbaric’ Israel

Meanwhile, the political fallout from Israel’s strike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar last week, which killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer, has continued.

Izzat al-Rashq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the “war criminal Netanyahu is attempting to shift the battle to the region, seeking to redraw the Middle East and dominate it in pursuit of mythical fantasies related to ‘Greater Israel’, which places the entire region on the brink of explosion due to his extremism and recklessness.”

He said the attack on Qatari soil was meant to “destroy the negotiation process and undermine the role of our sister state, Qatar”.

At a preparatory meeting ahead of a summit on Monday in Doha, Arab and Islamic leaders discussed ways to respond.

Reuters reported that a draft resolution seen at the meeting condemned Israel’s “genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, siege, and colonising activities”, warning that such actions threatened peace in the region and undermined efforts to normalise ties with Arab states.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani called Israel’s attack on Doha on September 9 “barbaric” and urged fierce and firm measures in response.

Sheikh Mohammed said that Arab nations supported “lawful measures” to protect Doha’s sovereignty and called on the international community to abandon “double standards” in dealing with Israel.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that “silence and inaction” had emboldened Israel to carry out crimes “with impunity”. He called on Arab and Islamic nations to hold Israel accountable for “evidenced war crimes”, including “killing civilians, starving the population and driving an entire population homeless”.

Adnan Hayajneh, a professor of international relations at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera that the regional mood had shifted. “The US has to wake up to the fact that you’ve got 2 billion Muslims around the world insulted, and it’s only the beginning. It’s not only the attack on Qatar, it is a continuation of destabilisation of the whole region,” he said.

US-Israeli relations

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that ties with the United States remained strong, despite Washington’s unease over the strike in Qatar. Hosting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that relations were “as strong and durable as the stones in the Western Wall”.

Rubio, before his departure, claimed that US President Donald Trump was “not happy” about the Israeli attack in Doha, but maintained that US-Israeli relations remained “very strong”.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said that Washington was trying to manage the fallout.

“The US is surely going to do some damage control, saying that the strikes on Doha are not going to change the relationship with Israel, but some conversations will need to be had,” she said.

Meanwhile, Israeli ministers have pledged to continue pursuing Hamas leaders abroad. Minister of Energy Eli Cohen declared, “Hamas cannot sleep peacefully anywhere in the world,” including in NATO member state Turkiye.

Another minister, Ze’ev Elkin, said: “We will pursue them and settle accounts with them, wherever they are.”

Israeli media later reported that Mossad chief David Barnea had opposed the Qatar strike, fearing it would derail ceasefire negotiations. A columnist in the Israeli newspaper Maariv wrote that Barnea believed Hamas leaders “can be eliminated at any given moment”, but had warned that attacking Doha risked torpedoing a deal to release captives Hamas had taken from Israel during its attack on October 7, 2023.

Since Israel began its war on Gaza after the Hamas attack, at least 64,871 Palestinians have been killed and 164,610 injured, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

Separately, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel’s Ministry of Defence is treating about 20,000 wounded soldiers, with more than half suffering from psychological trauma and estimates suggesting that by 2028, the figure could rise to 50,000.

UNICEF says “famine is absolutely ravaging Gaza City,” as aid workers at a nutrition centre warn parents have run out of options to feed their children. Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud visited the centre, where “the signs of famine are everywhere.”

Newborns are being forced to share an incubator at Gaza City’s al-Helou International Hospital as rising cases of acute malnutrition overwhelm the wards. Doctors say hospitals are running out of space amid Israel’s man-made famine.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has denounced the “endless catalogue of horrors” unfolding in Gaza after nearly two years of conflict, as Gaza’s civil defence reported dozens of new casualties from Israeli strikes.

As Israel’s military prepares to take control of Gaza City, the nation faces increasing domestic and international pressure to halt its offensive in the Palestinian territory, where the UN has officially declared a famine.

About two million Palestinians—the vast majority of the population—have been displaced at least once during the conflict, with humanitarian organisations warning against any expansion of military operations.

“Gaza is piled with rubble, piled with bodies and piled with examples of what may be serious violations of international law,” Guterres told journalists on Thursday, emphasising the need for accountability.

On Thursday, massive plumes of smoke were rising above Gaza City following Israeli bombardments of the city’s outskirts, as captured in video footage.

Aya Daher, displaced from Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, told the AFP news agency she had no shelter and was “just waiting for God’s mercy” outside a local hospital.

“There were explosions all night. I was injured, my husband was injured by shrapnel, and my son was also wounded in the head. Thank God we survived, but there were martyrs,” she said.

Cindy McCain, head of the UN’s World Food Programme, warned that Gaza had reached “breaking point” and called for the urgent restoration of its network of 200 food distribution points.

Following a visit to the territory, McCain reported witnessing firsthand that “desperation is soaring”.

The UN formally declared a famine in the Gaza governorate last week, attributing it to “systematic obstruction” of humanitarian aid deliveries by Israel.

Famine has been declared in Gaza City and surrounding areas, with more than half a million Palestinians facing “catastrophic conditions”, according to a UN-backed monitor. As Israel advances its plan to seize Gaza City, what scars will famine leave on Palestinians for generations to come?

A global hunger monitor, backed by the United Nations, has declared famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas.

The confirmation that Israel has engineered a man-made catastrophe prompted outrage from many nations, with a notable exception.

Neither the White House nor the US State Department has uttered a word in response.

While Israel says it’s “an outright lie”, how much longer can the US remain silent?

Is that silence an implicit go-ahead for the Israeli military’s large-scale assault on Gaza City and the drip-feeding of aid?

Presenter:

Mohammed Jamjoom

Guests:

Jeremy Konyndyk – President of Refugees International

Mustafa Barghouti – Secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative

Matt Duss – Executive vice president of the Center for International Policy

United Nations official says Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing ‘hell in all shapes’ as Israel steps up its Gaza City assault.

Bones and skin are all that is left of seven-year-old Mai Abu Arar.

The Palestinian girl is one of tens of thousands of children facing malnutrition in Gaza as Israel’s man-made famine deepens with the Israeli military stepping up its assault on Gaza City.

Mai’s mother, Nadia Abu Arar, says her child was once lively and joyous, but she is now fighting for her life after drastically losing weight.

“The doctors told me that she isn’t suffering from any disease or from any past condition. They’re saying it’s all due to malnutrition and I haven’t seen any improvement in her situation at all,” Nadia told Al Jazeera.

Hunger has weakened Mai to the point that she can now only consume liquid food through a syringe.

Hisham Abu Al Oun, paediatric director at the Patient’s Friends Hospital in Gaza City, said Israel has been preventing the delivery of medicines to the enclave, which has made it challenging to treat patients suffering from malnutrition.

“Potassium chloride is the easiest medication that any doctor can prescribe. We don’t even have that. We have babies dying because we don’t have it. Sometimes supplies come in, but unfortunately, very little,” he said.

On Friday, a United Nations-backed hunger monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), confirmed for the first time that more than half a million people are experiencing famine in northern Gaza.

At least 289 people, including 115 childre,n have died due to starvation in the enclave so far.

Israel has been imposing a suffocating blockade on Gaza, allowing only a small amount of food through airdrops and the United States-backed group GHF, forcing Palestinians to risk their lives to reach aid sites deep inside areas under control of the Israeli military.

On Sunday, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN  Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing “hell in all shapes”.

“This will haunt us. Denial is the most obscene expression of dehumanisation,” Lazzarini said in a statement.

“It’s time for the Government of Israel to stop promoting a different narrative + to let humanitarian organisations provide assistance without restrictions & allow international journalists to report independently from Gaza.”

In its report, the IPC said Israel’s ongoing war has led to at least 1.9 million people being displaced twice as the Israeli siege resulted in a man-made famine.

Liz Allcock, a rights advocate with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), told Al Jazeera that hunger is affecting everyone in Gaza.

“It plays out in the entirety of the [Gaza] Strip and on a daily basis. It’s not only children, small children … It is also elderly people who are unable to get access to any kind of food. It is also healthcare staff, aid workers who are fainting on the job because they don’t have enough sustenance to keep them going,” she said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that people in Gaza are experiencing starvation, blaming aid agencies and Hamas for not delivering supplies to people in the territory.

The UN has said that despite the growing amounts of aid ready for delivery at crossings near Gaza, Israel has not granted aid agencies the necessary authorisation to deliver and distribute the assistance.

Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reports from inside the main UNRWA warehouse in Gaza City, showing the completely empty shelves where food aid used to be stored. The UN officially declared famine in Gaza on Friday with Israeli-imposed food insecurity and starvation having reached critical levels.

Famine in Gaza from Israel’s deliberate starvation policy has pushed more than half a million people into immediate danger.

Yet Israel is intensifying its war, backed by the United States and other Western allies.

How can an engineered famine be allowed happen in the 21st century?

Presenter:

Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Dr Tarek Loubani – Emergency physician and medical director at the Glia Project

Tess Ingram – Spokesperson for the UN children’s agency, UNICEF

Michael Fakhri – UN special rapporteur on the right to food

Al-Mawasi, Gaza Strip – Sweat streams down Tareq Abu Youssef’s face as he struggles through his gym workout on makeshift bodybuilding equipment, each movement more laboured than it should be.

The 23-year-old Palestinian deliberately keeps his training sessions minimal, a painful reduction from the intensive routines he once loved – but in a territory where nearly everyone is starving, maintaining muscle mass has become an act of survival and resistance.

“I have dropped 14 kilograms, from 72kg to 58kg (159lb to 128lb), since March,” Abu Youssef said, referring to when Israel tightened its siege by closing border crossings and severely restricting food deliveries. “But if eating has become an abnormality in Gaza, working out for bodybuilders like us is one rare way to maintain normalcy,” he tells Al Jazeera.

His story reflects a broader humanitarian catastrophe: Across Gaza’s 365 square kilometres, 2.1 million Palestinians face what aid agencies describe as deliberate, weaponised hunger.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that virtually the entire population faces “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity, with northern Gaza experiencing famine conditions. Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, has documented severe acute malnutrition cases throughout the Strip, describing the crisis as “man-made” and deliberately imposed. The World Food Programme warns that without immediate intervention, famine will spread across all of Gaza, while millions of tonnes of aid are parked at Israel-locked border crossings.

Even when aid trucks manage to enter through Israel’s heavily restricted crossings, distribution of food and other essential items remains nearly impossible due to ongoing military operations and widespread destruction of infrastructure.

During Abu Youssef’s extended rest breaks in between machines – now five times longer than before Gaza’s famine began – he runs his hands over his chest, arms, and shoulders, feeling the devastating muscle loss that mirrors the physical deterioration of an entire population.

“Starvation has completely affected my ability to practice my favourite sport of bodybuilding,” Abu Youssef says in a tent gym in al-Mawasi, located in Gaza’s overcrowded southern “safe zone”. “I now come to train one day, sometimes two days, a week. Before the war, it was five to six days. I’ve also reduced my training time to less than half an hour, which is less than half the required time.”

Where he once bench-pressed 90-100kg (200-220lb), Abu Youssef now barely manages 40kg (90lb) – a decline that would be concerning for any athlete but devastating in a context where such physical deterioration is becoming the norm across an entire society.

A gym among the refugees

The makeshift facility where Abu Youssef trains exists inside a tent in al-Mawasi, now home to roughly one million displaced Palestinians living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Here, amid sprawling refugee camps, coach Adly al-Assar has created an unlikely sanctuary, using equipment salvaged from his destroyed gym in Khan Younis.

Al-Assar, a 55-year-old international powerlifting champion who won six gold medals at Arab championships in 2020-2021, managed to rescue just 10 pieces of equipment from the more than 30 destroyed when Israeli forces bombed his original facility. The tent gym covers barely 60 square metres (650 sq ft), its plastic sheeting stretched over two uneven levels of ground, surrounded by refugee tents and sparse trees.

“During this imposed famine, everything changed,” al-Assar explains, his own body weight having dropped 11kg from 78kg to 67kg. “Athletes lost 10-15 kilograms and lost their ability to lift weights. My shoulder muscle was 40 centimetres, now it’s less than 35, and all other muscles suffered the same loss.”

Before the current crisis, his gym welcomed over 200 athletes daily across all ages. Now, barely 10 percent can manage to train, and only once or twice weekly.

One of those regular visitors to his makeshift gym is Ali al-Azraq, 20, displaced from central Gaza during the war’s early weeks. His weight plummeted from 79kg to 68kg – almost entirely muscle loss. His bench press capacity dropped from 100kg to just 30kg, back lifts from 150kg to 60kg, and shoulder work from 45kg to barely 15kg.

“The biggest part of the loss happened during the current starvation period, which began months ago and intensified in the last month,” al-Azraq says. “I actually find nothing to eat except rarely a piece of bread, rice, or pasta in tiny quantities that keep me alive. But we completely lack all essential nutrients and important proteins – meat, chicken, healthy oils, eggs, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and others.”

The unemployed young man had hoped to compete in official Palestinian arm-wrestling championships before advancing internationally. Instead, he describes the current starvation as “the harshest thing we’re experiencing as Gazans, but athletes like us are most affected because we need large quantities of specific, not ordinary food”.

Training through trauma

Yet for these athletes, the tent gym represents more than physical training – it’s psychological survival. Khaled Al-Bahabsa, 29, who returned to training two months ago after being injured in Israeli shelling on April 19, still carries shrapnel in his chest and body.

“Sports give life and psychological comfort. We were closer to the dead even though we were alive,” al-Bahabsa says. “But when I returned to practice my [gym] training, I felt closer to the living than the dead, and the nightmares of genocide and hunger retreated a little.”

He was stunned to discover the gym among the tents and trees. “I considered that I got my passion that war conditions forced me to give up. Bodybuilding isn’t just a sport – for me and many of its players, enthusiasts, and lovers – it’s life.”

Twenty-two months of relentless bombardment by the Israeli military has killed more than 62,000 people, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health, demolished expansive parts of the besieged territory, and displaced the sweeping majority of its people. Those alive are trying to survive dire humanitarian conditions in the near-absolute absence of food.

Al-Assar has adapted his training methods for famine conditions, strictly instructing athletes to minimise workouts and avoid overexertion. Rest periods between sets now extend to five minutes instead of the usual 30 seconds to one minute. Training sessions are capped at 30 minutes, and athletes lift no more than half their pre-famine weights.

“The recommendations are strict to shorten training duration and increase rest periods,” al-Assar warns. “We’re living a deadly starvation crisis, and training might stop altogether if circumstances continue this way.”

On a daily basis, athletes experience complications including collapse, fainting, and inability to move, the coach told Al Jazeera. “We’re in real famine with nothing to eat. We get zero nutrition from all essential and beneficial foods – no animal protein, no healthy oils, nothing. We get a tiny amount that wouldn’t satisfy a three-year-old of plant protein from lentils, while other foods are completely absent.”

But the bodybuilders keep working out anyway.

Even when Israeli air attacks landed just metres from the gym, athletes continued showing up. “I’m hungry all the time and calculate my one training day per week – how will I manage my food afterward?” says Abu Youssef, a street vendor who once aspired to compete in a Gaza-wide bodybuilding championship that was scheduled for two weeks after the war began in October 2023.

Youssef, who was excited at the opportunity to compete and was in full training for the championship, had his dream destroyed when the war “turned everything upside down”. Now, the few loaves of bread he manages to buy from his weekly earnings barely fill him up.

“Despite that, I didn’t lose hope and train again to regain my abilities, even if limited and slow, but the famine thwarts all these attempts,” he says.

For al-Bahabsa, displaced from Rafah with his family, simply reaching the training site represents hope for restoring life generally, not just physical fitness.

“We aspire to live like the rest of the world’s peoples. We want only peace and life and hate the war and Israeli occupation that exterminates and starves us. It’s our right to practice sports, participate in international competitions, reach advanced levels, and represent Palestine,” he said.

The tent gym, despite its limitations, serves as what al-Assar calls a challenge to “the reality of genocide, destruction, and displacement”.

As he puts it: “The idea here is deeper than just training. We’re searching for the life we want to live with safety and tranquility. Gaza and its people will continue their lives no matter the genocide against them. Sports is one aspect of this life.”

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.

Gaza health authorities say nearly 200 people, including 96 children, have died of hunger in Gaza, as the starving population battles against the odds to get food from dangerous airdrops and deadly aid hubs run by the GHF.

As Israel’s man-made famine under the ongoing blockade tightened its grip on the enclave, hospitals recorded four more deaths from “famine and malnutrition” on Thursday – two of them children – bringing the total to 197.

Amid the mounting death toll, World Health Organization (WHO) director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that about 12,000 children younger than five were suffering from acute malnutrition in July – the highest monthly figure ever recorded.

The scenes in Gaza City are “apocalyptic”, said Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili, with hundreds of people scrambling for scraps from aid pallets airdropped among the rubble of destroyed buildings.

“Here the fight is not over food, but for survival,” he said.

Mustafa Tanani, a displaced Palestinian at the scene, said that some of the food had failed to land and was “hanging up high” between the buildings, making it “too risky” to try to reach. “It’s like a battle here. We come from far away and end up with nothing,” he said.

“Everyone is carrying bags of aid, and we don’t even manage to get anything. The planes are dropping aid for nothing. Look where they threw it. Up there, between the buildings. It’s dangerous for us,” he said.

Children at risk

Two children died of hunger in Gaza on Thursday, including a two-year-old girl in the al-Mawasi area, according to Nasser Hospital.

Raising the alarm over chronic child malnutrition, the United Nations said that its partners were able to reach only 8,700 of the 290,000 children under age five who desperately needed food and nutritional supplements.

Amjad Shawa, the head of the NGO Network in Gaza, told Al Jazeera Arabic that at least 200,000 children in the Gaza Strip suffer from severe malnutrition, with many deaths caused by a lack of baby formula and nutritional supplements under Israel’s blockade, in place since March.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said that only 92 aid trucks entered the enclave on Wednesday, far less than the 500-600 that the United Nations estimates are needed daily to meet basic needs.

Most of the aid that did make it in was prevented from reaching its intended recipients due to widespread “looting and robbery”, as a result of “deliberate security chaos” orchestrated by Israel, said the office.

‘Orchestrated killing’

As the hunger crisis deepened, Doctors Without Borders, better known by its French-language acronym MSF, called for the closure of the notorious US- and Israeli-backed GHF, which runs deadly aid hubs where more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed trying to reach food.

The NGO published a report on Thursday featuring testimony from front-line staff that Palestinians were being deliberately targeted at the sites, which they said amounted to “orchestrated killing and dehumanisation”, not humanitarian aid.

MSF operates two healthcare centres – al-Mawasi and al-Attar clinics – in direct proximity to GHF sites in southern Gaza, which received 1,380 casualties within seven weeks, treating 71 children for gunshot wounds, 25 of whom were under the age of 15.

“In MSF’s nearly 54 years of operations, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians,” said the report.

MSF patient Mohammed Riad Tabasi told Al Jazeera he had seen 36 people killed in the space of 10 minutes at a GHF site. “It was unbearable,” he said. “War is one thing, but this … aid distribution is another. We’ve never been humiliated like this.”

Deadly strikes

As the population battled for survival, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News his country intended to take military control of all of Gaza.

On Thursday, Israel continued to launch deadly air strikes on residential areas, killing at least 22 people.

In Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported that a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed five civilians.

An attack on the municipality of Bani Suheila, east of southern Gaza’s Khan Younis city, killed at least two people, according to a source from Nasser Hospital.

Six others were killed in earlier attacks in the Khan Younis area. One child died while attempting to retrieve airdropped aid there.

In northern Gaza’s Jabalia, at least one person was killed, according to a local medical source.

Palestine’s Wafa news agency reported several deadly attacks in Gaza City, one targeting a tent in the city’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood that killed at least six people.

The second attack targeted a separate residential area in the city, killing a woman and injuring others, said Wafa.

“Israel’s military escalation continues without any sign of abating. And civilians are still bearing the brunt of this conflict,” said Abu Azzoum.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,258 people.

The US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has visited aid distribution sites in Gaza amid mounting global outrage over deepening famine in the Strip. The aid sites, run by the controversial US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, have been linked to over 1,000 deaths since May. Witkoff said his visit aims to help President Donald Trump shape a plan “deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.

July 26 (UPI) — Israel Defense Forces are taking new steps to improve the delivery of aid to Gazans, who the IDF says are not subject to famine despite contrary reports.

Aerial aid drops will resume and include seven pallets of flour, sugar and canned food, while pauses in fighting will enable the safe movement of U.N. convoys that contain food and medical supplies, the IDF announced Saturday in a post on X.

Israel also reconnected a power line from Israel to a desalination plant in Gaza that will increase daily water output to nearly 22,000 cubic yards.

“The IDF emphasizes that there is no starvation in Gaza,” the IDF post says. “This is a false campaign promoted by Hamas.”

The U.N. and international aid organizations are responsible for food distribution in Gaza and for ensuring Hamas does not receive any, which the IDF says commonly steals humanitarian aid for personal use and profit.

Hamas accused of attacking aid distribution sites

Hamas has targeted GHF aid distribution sites with deadly violence, including a July 16 incident that killed 19 Gazans at a Khan Younis site and a July 5 grenade attack that injured two U.S. aid workers, according to the non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Such attacks occurred as Hamas struggles to raise funds and is incapable of rebuilding its collapsed tunnels or paying its fighters, former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer Oded Ailam told The Washington Post on Monday.

Hamas did not prepare for more than a year of war when it attacked Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, and is struggling to provide basic services for Gazans, Gazan analyst Ibrahim Madhoun said.

Hamas previously depended on revenues from taxing commercial shipments and seizing humanitarian goods for funding by deploying plainclothes Hamas personnel to take inventory at crossings into Gaza and warehouses and markets, The Washington Post reported.

U.N. and European Commission officials and others from international organizations say there is no evidence of Hamas stealing aid.

Officials with the U.S. Agency for International Development said they found no evidence of Hamas stealing aid for Gazans, ABC News reported on Saturday.

USAID investigated 150 reported incidents of stolen aid from October 2024 until May and said the perpetrators could not be identified in most cases in which aid was seized.

An unnamed Gazan contractor, though, told The Washington Post that over the past two years he witnessed Hamas charge local merchants about $6,000 each to receive aid or lose their trucks and threatened to kill or condemn those who did not cooperate.

The contractor claims he knew at least two aid truck drivers who Hamas killed for refusing to pay the designated foreign terrorist organization to deliver aid intended for Gazans.

U.N. aid trucks halted inside Gaza

While claims of Hamas intercepting aid deliveries to raise funds are disputed, the United Nations says it has thousands of tons of aid sitting idle.

The United Nations recently halted 950 trucks inside Gaza that holding a combined total of 2,500 tons of food near the Kerem Shalom crossing, Johnnie More, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation executive chairman, opined in The Wall Street Journal on Friday.

“Since we began our operations in May, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has repeatedly called for the U.N. and its affiliate agencies to combine efforts with us to feed the people of Gaza,” Moore said.

“As of Friday morning, hundreds of trucks loaded with food from the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations were sitting idle inside Gaza,” he wrote.

“The food is there, the people are starving, and yet it isn’t moving to them fast enough to meet the need.”

Moore said video footage shows many of the trucks have been looted or abandoned, and their drivers are walking away.

Officials with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency blame the GHF for what UNRWA calls a “constructed and deliberate mass starvation.”

The GHF is incapable of addressing the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza and called air drops the “most expensive and inefficient way to deliver aid” to Gazans, according to UNRWA.

The agency says it has the equivalent of 6,000 trucks of food and medical supplies “Stuck” in Egypt and Jordan.