Outside the Zadna Bakery in central Gaza one recent afternoon, the long lines of people waiting for bread were threatening to dissolve into chaos at any minute.
A security guard shouted at the crowds that pushed toward the bakery door to wait their turn. But no one was listening.
Just a few steps away, scalpers were hawking loaves they had gotten earlier that day for three times the original price. The sunset meal that breaks Muslims’ daylong fast during the holy month of Ramadan was approaching and across Gaza, bread, water, cooking gas and other basics were hard to come by — once again.
Lines had not been this desperate, nor markets this empty, since before the Israel-Hamas cease-fire took hold on Jan. 19. The truce had allowed aid to surge into Gaza for the first time after 15 months of conflict during which residents received only a trickle of supplies.
But no aid has gotten in since March 2. That was the day Israel blocked all goods in a bid to pressure Hamas into accepting an extension of the current cease-fire stage and releasing more hostages sooner, instead of moving to the next phase, which would involve more challenging negotiations to permanently end to the war.
Now, the aid cutoff, exacerbated by panic buying and unscrupulous traders who gouge prices, is driving prices to levels that few can afford. Shortages of fresh vegetables and fruit and rising prices are forcing people to once again fall back on canned food such as beans.
Though the canned food provides calories, experts say, people — and children in particular — need a diverse diet that includes fresh foods to stave off malnutrition.
For the first six weeks of the cease-fire, aid workers and traders delivered food for Gazans, many still weak from months of malnutrition. Medical supplies for bombed-out hospitals, plastic pipes to restore water supplies and fuel to power everything also began to flow in.
Data from aid groups and the United Nations showed that children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers were eating better. And more centers started offering treatment for malnutrition, the United Nations said.
These were only small steps toward relieving the devastation wrought by the war, which destroyed more than half of Gaza’s buildings and put many of its two million residents at risk of famine.
Even with the sharp increase in aid after the truce began, Gaza health officials reported that at least six newborn babies had died from hypothermia in February for lack of warm clothes, blankets, shelter or medical care, a figure cited by the United Nations. The reports could not be independently verified.
Most hospitals remain only partly operational, if at all.
Aid groups, the United Nations and several Western governments have urged Israel to allow shipments to resume, criticizing its use of humanitarian relief as a bargaining chip in negotiations and, in some cases, saying that the cutoff violates international law.
Instead, Israel is turning up the pressure.
Last Sunday, it severed electricity supplies to the territory — a move that shuttered most operations at a water desalination plant and deprived about 600,000 people in central Gaza of clean drinking water, according to the United Nations.
The Israeli energy minister has hinted that a water cutoff might be next. Some wells are still functioning in central Gaza, aid officials say, but they supply only brackish water, which poses long-term health risks to those who drink it.
Israel had already closed off all other sources of electricity that it used to provide for Gaza, a measure that followed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that began the war. That left essential services to run on solar panels or generators, if power was available at all.
Now there is no fuel coming in for anything, including generators, ambulances or cars.
Israel argues that about 25,000 truckloads of aid that Gaza has received in recent weeks have given people sufficient food.
“There is no shortage of essential products in the strip whatsoever,” the Foreign Ministry said last week. It repeated assertions that Hamas is taking over the aid entering Gaza and that half the group’s budget in Gaza comes from exploiting aid trucks.
Hamas has called the aid and electricity cutoffs “cheap and unacceptable blackmail.”
Gaza residents say that, for the moment, at least, they do have food, though often not enough.
But supplies that humanitarian groups amassed in the first six weeks of the cease-fire are already dwindling, aid officials warn. That has already forced six bakeries in Gaza to close and aid groups and community kitchens to reduce the food rations they hand out.
The order to block aid also cut off Gaza’s access to commercial goods imported by traders.
In the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, a street market was quiet this week as the vendors’ stocks of fruits, vegetables, oil, sugar and flour ran low. Vegetable sellers said the price of onions and carrots had doubled, zucchini had nearly quadrupled and lemons cost nearly 10 times as much. Eggplants were hard to find and potatoes impossible.
As a result, the sellers said, the few customers who still came bought only a couple of vegetables, not by the kilogram as many once did. Others had not had the means to buy anything for months.
Many Gazans lost their jobs and spent their savings to survive the war. When prices skyrocketed, they were left almost completely reliant on aid.
Yasmin al-Attar, 38, and her husband, a driver, wandered from stall to stall in the Deir al-Balah market, looking for the cheapest prices on a recent day. They have seven children, a disabled sister and two aging parents to support.
It had been hard enough to afford the bare minimum of ingredients for iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, Ms. al-Attar said. But with fuel blocked, it was also getting tough to find fuel for her husband’s car and for cooking.
“Just three days ago, I felt a little relief because prices seemed reasonable,” she said. Now, the same money would only be enough for a much smaller quantity of vegetables.
“How can this possibly be enough for my big family?” she said.
That night, she said, they would probably make do with lentil soup, with no vegetables. And after that? Maybe more canned food.
Stall owners and shoppers alike blamed large-scale traders for the shortages, at least in part, saying they were hoarding supplies to push up prices and maximize their profits. Any vegetables available at reasonable prices were being snapped up and resold for much more, said Eissa Fayyad, 32, a vegetable seller in Deir al-Balah.
It did not help that people rushed out to buy more than they needed as soon as they heard about the Israeli decision to blockade aid again, said Khalil Reziq, 38, a police officer in the city of Khan Younis in central Gaza whose division oversees markets and shops.
Hamas police officers have warned businesses against price-gouging, vendors and shoppers said. In some cases, Mr. Reziq said, his unit had confiscated vendors’ goods and sold them for cheaper on the spot.
But such measures have done little to solve the underlying supply problem.
Beyond the immediate challenge of supplying food, water, medical supplies and tents to Gazans — many thousands of them still displaced — aid officials said their inability to bring in supplies had set back longer-term recovery efforts.
Some had been distributing vegetable seeds and animal feed to farmers so Gaza could start raising more of its own food, while others had been working on rebuilding the water infrastructure and clearing debris and unexploded ordnance.
None of it was easy, aid officials said, because Israel had restricted or barred items including the heavy machinery required to repair infrastructure, generators and more. Israel maintains that Palestinian militants could use these items for military purposes.
For many Gazans now, the focus is back on survival.
“There’s no bombing at the moment, but I still feel like I’m living in a war with everything I’m going through,” said Nevine Siam, 38, who is sheltering at her brother’s house with 30 other people.
She said her sister’s entire family had killed during the fighting. Her children ask her to make Ramadan meals like the ones they remember from before the war. But without an income, she can get nothing but canned food in aid packages.
Where she is, she said, there are no celebrations and no festive decorations for the holy month.
“It feels as if the joy has been extinguished,” she said.
Erika Solomon, Ameera Harouda and Rania Khaled contributed reporting.
