Residents of Gaza are facing increasingly dire circumstances as access to food and essential supplies dwindles. Families are resorting to desperate measures to survive, while aid distribution efforts are marred by violence and logistical challenges.

On May 15th, a resident of Syracuse, New York, video-called his family in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, with his wife, Maram. He reported that his relatives were eating a meager meal of plain white rice. “That’s the only type of food we’ve had for weeks,” her father, whom he calls Uncle Jaleel, said. He noted that what would typically feed two people had to sustain Maram’s parents and four siblings, as Israel had not allowed any trucks of food into gaza for seventy-five days. “They have nothing in them,” Uncle Jaleel said of nearby plates and a bowl.”We let ourselves imagine there is salad and some chicken and pickles as we chew the rice.”

Later that night, the Syracuse resident learned that explosions in northern Gaza sounded “like the end of the world.” His friend Sabir,sheltering in southern Gaza as October,2023,missed calls due to his phone charging. “I felt panic,” he told the Syracuse resident, after learning that air strikes on his family home had killed his four-year-old nephew and his five-year-old niece. (A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces said that the I.D.F. was not aware of this strike. When asked about the bombings of his relative’s neighbor’s house, the spokesperson said that the I.D.F. had conducted a strike on “terror infrastructure,” but was unaware of subsequent bombings.)

Rising Death toll and Displacement

The death toll on May 15th reached a hundred and forty-three, bringing the total as October 7th to over fifty-three thousand, according to health officials in Gaza. Many families, including relatives of the syracuse resident, were forced to flee southward.

“Death was very close to us, because of the intense shelling around us and the gunfire from Israeli soldiers.”

About a week later, Israel allowed approximately a hundred trucks of aid into Gaza. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed on X that Israel had sent ninety-two thousand aid trucks into gaza as October 7th. However, much of the aid came from the international community. Even if netanyahu’s figures were accurate, this would amount to fewer than two hundred trucks per day, falling short of the needs identified by humanitarian organizations.Before October 7th, several hundred trucks entered Gaza daily. Since then,much of Gaza’s cattle have been killed,and most of its farmland has been damaged or destroyed.

Aid Distribution challenges

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (G.H.F.), staffed by private security contractors and backed by the United states and Israel, began distributing food in southern and central Gaza. As the G.H.F. bypasses other aid organizations and coördinates with the Israeli military, much of the international community, including the United Nations, has condemned and boycotted these efforts.The U.S. Ambassador to Israel stated on CNN, “If you really care about feeding people, why do you care about what kind of truck takes it in there?”