The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has again sounded the alarm over the catastrophic and rapidly deteriorating conditions in the Gaza Strip as Israeli military operations continue to cause death, displacement and destruction.
In an update on Friday, OCHA said that the starvation crisis is deepening across the enclave, with the local health authorities announcing that two more people had died from starvation the previous day.
Hunger and malnutrition increase the risk of illnesses that weaken the immune system, particularly among women, children, older people and persons with disabilities or chronic diseases, with deadly consequences.
Food scarcity also impacts pregnant and breastfeeding women, increasing the risk of their babies being born with health complications and affecting mothers’ ability to breastfeed.
Aid constrictions
The small trickle of supplies making it into the Strip is nowhere near adequate to address the immense needs as Israeli authorities continue to impose constraints on humanitarians and hamper their response.
Out of 15 attempts to coordinate humanitarian movements inside Gaza on Thursday, four were outright denied, three were impeded, one was postponed and two others had to be cancelled by the organisers, with only five missions facilitated.
Even though the limited amount of fuel received yesterday was fully allocated to community kitchens, healthcare and water and sanitation facilities, the fuel shortage continues as the quantities entering Gaza remain insufficient to maintain essential facilities.
UN preparations
Despite severe constraints, UN teams are prepared to ramp up aid delivery and address these severe needs as soon as they are allowed to do so.
For the UN to accelerate the delivery of food aid, health services, clean water and waste management, nutrition supplies and shelter materials, Israel must open its crossings, allow fuel and equipment in and permit humanitarian staff to operate safely.
The Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, said in a social media post on Thursday that “we must save as many lives as we can – and we have a plan.”
The plan he shared with Member States outlines the necessary steps to stop the horror and alleviate constraints on humanitarian operations.
Mr. Fletcher has also written to the head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the aid distribution model backed by Israel and the United States, reiterating that the UN is ready to engage with any partner to provide desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza.
He stressed that any such partnership must adhere to the globally accepted principles of humanity, impartiality neutrality and independence, with aid going where needs are greatest and without discrimination and that humanitarians answer to civilians in need, not the warring parties.
Mr. Fletcher also said that he welcomes dialogue on how to reach as many people as possible to alleviate suffering without causing harm.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday said he will officially announce France’s recognition of the State of Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September.
“Faithful to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine,” Macron said on X.
He underlined the urgency of ending the conflict in Gaza and providing aid to civilians affected by the war.
“The urgent priority today is for the war in Gaza to end and for the civilian population to be rescued,” he stated according to Anadolu.
“Peace is possible,” Macron stressed, calling for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and large-scale humanitarian assistance.
He also highlighted the need to “ensure the demilitarization of Hamas, secure and rebuild Gaza.”
Macron said the goal must be to “build the State of Palestine, ensure its viability, and enable it—by accepting its demilitarization and fully recognizing Israel—to contribute to the security of all in the Middle East.”
“There is no alternative,” Macron stated, stressing that the French people want peace and that achieving it requires a collaborative effort between Israelis, Palestinians, and international partners.
“The French people want peace in the Middle East. It is up to us, the French, together with the Israelis, the Palestinians, and our European and international partners, to prove that it is possible,” he added.
He said he conveyed his determination to move forward in a letter to the President of the Palestinian Authority, citing “the commitments made to me by the President of the Palestinian Authority.”
“Trust, clarity, and commitment. We will achieve peace,” Macron concluded.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials expressed outrage after French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France will recognize the State of Palestine during a UN General Assembly meeting in September.
In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu condemned Macron’s pledge as “rewarding terror,” referencing the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israel.
“I strongly condemn President Macron’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state next to Tel Aviv in the wake of the October 7 massacre,” the statement said, adding that such a move “rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became.”
“A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it,” he claimed.
“Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel,” he added.
Hamas welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron’s pledge Thursday to recognize Palestine as a state at the UN General Assembly in September.
The Palestinian group described the declaration as “a positive step in the right direction” toward justice for the Palestinian people and support for their right to self-determination and an independent state on all occupied Palestinian land, with Jerusalem as its capital.
It called the French stance “a political development that reflects growing international conviction in the justice of the Palestinian cause and the failure of the Israeli occupation to distort facts or suppress the will of free nations.”
Hamas added that such international steps “represent political and moral pressure” on Israel.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also welcomed Macron’s decision, describing the move as “historic.”
In a statement, the ministry noted that the decision “reflects a commitment to international law and resolving the conflict through political means to implement the two-state solution under UN resolutions and to achieve peace in the region and the world.”
The ministry urged other countries to recognize Palestine and participate actively in the upcoming UN conference in New York, while also taking practical steps to ensure the preservation of the two-state solution.
It described Macron’s announcement as “a victory for Palestinian diplomacy and Arab efforts, particularly those led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to secure broader international recognition of the State of Palestine.”
Macron said in a post on X that he will officially announce France’s recognition of the State of Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September.
“In line with our historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine,” he said.
Nearly one person in three is not eating for days. Food aid is the only way for most people to access any food – as the cost of a one-kilogram bag of flour has surged to over USD100 in local markets.
Sameh described how people — sometimes 20,000 to 30,000 at a time — wait all day in the heat. When the gate opens, they surge forward, crashing through barbed wire, trampling over each other, trying to grab whatever they can from the aid.
I watched a video last week that I wish I couldn’t see: A small boy, no older than nine, crying over the body of his martyred mother in front of a journalist’s camera. His eyes were red, his shoulders shaking, dust still clinging to his face.
“She went out to bring us aid,” he said. “She never came back.”
That boy is Ahmed Zidan. And I haven’t been able to forget his face since. His mother had left that day just to get food. That’s all: A little flour, a few canned goods, if she got lucky. But she never returned. She was killed in western Rafah, surrounded by gunfire, panic, and chaos.
Ahmed’s mother was just trying to feed her children. But like so many others, she became a victim of what the world dares to call “The American humanitarian aid.”
Ahmed’s tearful face was shared on the news, across social media, and around the world. But for him, it wasn’t a story, it wasn’t content, it was the moment his world collapsed.
Don’t go, says Ahmad Zeidan holding his mother’s shoes after she was killed: it’s a lie, a lie | the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a firing squad pic.twitter.com/QwcU9udAZJ
When the first Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) site opened on May 26, 2025, it came with bold promises. It was billed as the solution of four centralized aid hubs, guarded by US private contractors, coordinated with Israeli oversight, and allegedly designed to bring order to the chaos of Gaza’s hunger crisis.
According to Israeli and US officials’ claims, aid was supposed to flow safely to the most vulnerable. But just two days later, tanks, tear gas, and bullets greeted the crowds who gathered in Rafah. Instead of food, they found death. So far, nearly 900 Palestinians have been killed and over 5,000 wounded recorded at aid sites. Mothers, children, and elders are all caught between hunger and bullets.
It’s hard to explain the feeling of being watched while trying to survive, of having your basic needs locked behind fences, guards, and guns. And with any wrong move, you could be shot.
They called it online “the real-life Squid Game.”
And honestly? They’re right. Because in Gaza, we run for food and get shot for it. Not for prize money, but for a bag of flour. It’s not an exaggeration; it’s the daily reality for the hungry in Gaza.
Israa is from Khan Yunis, but today she lives in a tent in Al-Mawasi, one of Gaza’s last so-called “safe zones.” Her family was forced to flee months ago. “We’ve lost our home,” she said, “but losing Abdullah… that broke something deeper.”
Abdullah was her cousin — 31 years old, an orphan, and a caretaker to his younger siblings. He lived with his younger brother and sister in the tent. The rest of the family is scattered, most of them are married and displaced in different parts of Gaza.
He used to work as a cleaner, even during the war, hired by Doctors Without Borders when everything else shut down. He was engaged to be married at the end of July. “His fiancée was sewing her wedding dress,” Israa told me. “Now, she’s burying his clothes.”
On July 3, 2025, Abdullah went to the American aid center in Khan Younis. He went there almost every day. “Not because he wanted to,” Israa said, “but because he had to. There was no other way to feed the family.”
That day, an Israeli artillery shell struck the crowd. Abdullah was killed instantly.
“It wasn’t random,” Israa said. “They were aiming at the people. He told us before he left, ‘If I don’t come back today, forgive me.’ It’s like he knew. Like he could feel it.”
When we heard the news, the family was shocked. “We couldn’t believe it. Even now, it doesn’t feel real. He had dreams. He wanted a family. He wanted peace.”
Why do people still go to these centers? Israa answered without hesitation: “Because people are starving. There’s no other choice. We know it’s dangerous. But what’s worse, dying slowly from hunger, or all at once from a bomb?”
I ask if there’s anything she wants to say to the world. She looked at me tired, but clear. “Tell them we are not numbers. Tell them Abdullah had dreams. A fiancée. A wedding date. A heart. He was human. We all are. But this world doesn’t treat us like that anymore.”
Sameh is 40, from Beit Lahia, now displaced in Al-Shati refugee camp. When I spoke to him, he didn’t start with anger. He started with exhaustion, the kind that comes from hunger, from fear, from waiting in line not for bread, but for a chance at it.
“They starved us for over 100 days,” Sameh told me. “No food was allowed in. Nothing. Then they opened these so-called American aid centers protected by Israeli soldiers and said, “It’s not food. It’s a trap.”
He was talking about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation centers. Sameh made his way to the Wadi Gaza center near Netzarim in the middle of the strip. “It was like a playground surrounded by barbed wire, and the aid was inside. They open the gate at random. No one knows when. It could be in the morning or at night. A green flare means the center is open. Red means it’s closed. If it’s daytime, you hear a drone announce it. And that’s when the chaos begins.”
Sameh described how people — sometimes 20,000 to 30,000 at a time — wait all day in the heat. When the gate opens, they surge forward, crashing through barbed wire, trampling over each other, trying to grab whatever they can from the aid.
He said it never lasts more than ten minutes. “I’ve gone twice. The first time, I left with nothing. The second time, I found a few things on the ground — a kilo of lentils, a kilo of chickpeas, a kilo of peas, and some salt. That’s what I brought home to my kids.”
Sameh told me that only about 10% of these people actually get anything. Organized gangs always push to the front, looting the best items — flour, sugar, oil — and then reselling them at outrageous prices.
He said the Israeli army watches and lets it happen. In fact, it feels like they want it that way. “There’s no safety. No system. Just weapons, fear, and starvation. The gangs take what they want. The rest of us crawl on the ground like animals. That’s what they made us.”
Sameh has seen more than just hunger. “I saw a young man next to me get shot in the leg. He fell down and screamed, but no one could help him — they were too busy trying to grab food. Another time, a boy no older than 17 — he was right next to me — took a sniper bullet between the eyes. Dead. Just like that. Another guy next to him was hit in the chest.”
Sameh paused before adding something that shook me. “You know what? I’d rather die trying to feed my children than watch them die of hunger in front of me. I have no money. I can’t buy anything. If I don’t go, we starve. If I do go, I might not come back.”
He said Israel allows this violence to continue because it wants disorder. When trucks entered through Netzarim or Zikim in the north, he said, the tribes once organized a secure delivery to UN warehouses.
It worked — until Israel blocked it. “They don’t want dignity. They want panic,” he told me. “These centers are just a show. They open them so the world can say, ‘Look, Gaza is getting help.’ But what does that help even mean if we can’t reach it? If we have to risk our lives just to get a bag of flour? What kind of aid is this, if we can’t even survive the line to receive it?”
Sameh’s voice didn’t crack when he told me this. It hardened. Because in Gaza today, even hope feels like something we have to fight for.
Creating Monsters
Sabri is 23. He’s the oldest of five, and ever since his father died, he’s had no choice but to become everything — brother, provider, protector. “I walked from Al-Shati camp to Rafah,” he said. “I left at 4 in the afternoon. I didn’t get back until 3 the next day.”
Twenty-three hours. All of that — the walking, the waiting, the risk — for just three kilos of flour. But it’s not just the distance. It’s what you face when you get there.
Sabri told me the crowds are like groups. “At the front, there are gangs. They’re not like us. They come to steal the valuable stuff and throw the rest on the ground.”
Behind them, a few desperate people try to collect what’s left. And the ones who truly need the aid? They usually leave empty-handed. Sabri was one of them. “Some people don’t even go for food,” he told me. “They just collect the empty cardboard boxes to burn for fire.”
He said he was lucky this time. He got something. But that luck came with a price. “The shooting started in front of me. People were screaming and trying to cover. But I stayed. Because my brothers were hungry. What else could I do?”
Hunger doesn’t scare him anymore, not the way the silence at home does, when his siblings look at him with tired faces, waiting for food. “I didn’t care if I died. I just wanted to come back with something.”
Then, Sabri said something that stuck with me: “This war — this way of helping — it’s made monsters out of people. People kill each other for a sack of flour. That’s what they’ve done to us.”
He says that it’s normal now. Like that’s what life should be: risking death for food.
But it’s not normal. Nothing about this is.
It feels like a game, but we are not playing. What kind of help is this? Where feeding your family feels like breaking the law; where aid comes wrapped in barbed wire and guarded by snipers; Where people must risk their lives just to eat.
How did we get to a place where a single bag of flour can cost someone their life? Where hunger turns people fight each other, forget who they are — just to survive.
If the world truly wants to help Gaza, start by treating us like human beings.
We don’t need pity, we need protection; we need a future; we want to live, not die trying to eat.
We are not players in a game; we are not your footage; we are not actors in a show, we are not numbers on a screen.
At the end of Squid Game, the player 456 whispers: “We are not horses. We are humans. Humans are…”
He never finishes. Neither do we. Because in Gaza, we’re never given the chance.
An Israeli political source familiar with negotiations on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip said Saturday that Tel Aviv is, for the first time, conducting talks with Hamas on the possibility of ending the war, said a media report.
“This negotiation is different than the ones that brought about the previous deals,” said the source, according to the Haaretz newspaper.
“While the previous deals dealt with the release of the hostages … this deal touches on the issue of ending the war. Therefore, everything is interconnected. This is a very complex deal,” he said.
The source added that a proposed agreement includes a 60-day ceasefire during which 10 living Israeli hostages would be released, and intensive negotiations on ending the war would begin, according to Anadolu.
He said the talks “touches on issues of how the war will end or continue, what will happen in Gaza and how all the hostages will be returned. Within the framework of the deal, there is an entire clause that deals with issues to be discussed regarding the end of the war. Both parties can add topics, and they will be discussed within the 60-day cease-fire.”
The source claimed that “the Israeli delegation embarked to Doha with a broad scope of action and a satisfactory mandate. There is enough flexibility to reach an agreement, without compromising on issues such as Israel’s security needs.”
Israeli media outlets, including the public broadcaster, KAN, reported Friday that Israel is considering sending a second delegation to Doha if the Palestinian side agrees to discuss the deal’s details, amid mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the US.
The proposals reportedly include a 60-day ceasefire, during which 10 living hostages and 18 bodies would be released, with final negotiations on ending the war to resume during the truce.
Despite gaps on issues such as the mechanism for aid delivery and Israeli troop deployment, Israeli sources still see the deal as possible, according to the Israeli broadcaster.
US President Donald Trump announced late Friday that 10 hostages in Gaza would be released soon.
Trump, whose administration offers unconditional support for Israel in its war on Gaza, did not provide details.
During the last 21 months, multiple rounds of indirect negotiations have been held between Israel and the Palestine resistance group, Hamas, to reach a ceasefire and carry out prisoner exchanges.
Two partial agreements were reached in November 2023 and in January.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, avoided finalizing the latest agreement and resumed the war on March 18.
Hamas has repeatedly stated its willingness to release all Israeli hostages “in one batch” in exchange for ending the genocide and a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza.
Rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, the Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since the end of 2023, killing nearly 59,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
The relentless bombardment has destroyed the enclave and led to food shortages and the spread of diseases.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
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