The journey of Gaza’s flour begins with a dust-covered truck, as the Israeli army allows it to cross the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Gaza and southern Israel. The truck has likely waited at the border for hours, after having its permit rejected several times by the Israeli Army.
Once through, it makes its way to one of Gaza’s few remaining bakeries. Travelling along rubble-strewn roads, the truck passes several checkpoints, all tightly controlled by the army.
At the bakery, the flour is unloaded, carefully weighed, and the bakers quickly get to work despite struggling to operate without electricity.
They mix the flour with their chapped hands. There is no fresh water or salt, just dry dough, baked in ovens powered by generators.
From there, the freshly baked bread is loaded into a small car and transported to distribution points. And this is where the disaster begins.
‘Mama, will we eat today?’
Khalil Al Khatib wakes at dawn and makes his way to the food distribution point at Al-Shati camp, along the coastline. At home, his wife and young son, Louai, wait for him to return with flour. It has been hours since he left.
“Inshallah, your father will bring flour home today,” his wife tells Louai.
But Khalil never returns. After waiting four hours in line, the Israeli army opens fire. A bullet pierces his heart, killing him instantly. His body is transported to Al-Shifa Hospital, where his file reads, 'martyred while waiting for food aid'.
He had been carrying only a plastic bag and his ration card. The flour has returned home, but in a white shroud.
On 22 July 2025, the United Nations reported that more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed by the Israeli army while attempting to collect food aid.
The number continues to rise daily, with those not killed by bullets dying in stampedes as thousands of panic-stricken Gazans clamour for food.
One of them was 16-year-old Hani, the son of Um Hani from northern Gaza. She and her son had gone to collect bread near the Netzarim Crossing when the crowd began to surge. Pushed back and crushed by hundreds of others, they both fell. Um Hani survived. Her son did not.
“All my son wanted was some bread,” she told The New Arab. “He just wanted to live, to see the sea and go back to school.”
Another incident took place last month, when 27-year-old Ahmed Khudr and his friend Ismail Hamdouna travelled from Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, to the Zikim Crossing.
Carrying only their ration cards, they headed to Zikim, a distribution point that has become notorious in recent weeks as a place where the Israeli army has repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians trying to access food. On 30 July alone, 51 Palestinians were killed and 400 injured near Zikim Crossing.
“On our way there, the Israeli army started shooting,” Ismail told The New Arab. “Ahmed was hit. He kept saying he was going to come home with bread. But his body was carried home instead.”
Food with worms, or no food at all
Alongside the violence, concerns have grown about the quality of food aid.
In recent weeks, photos and videos circulating on social media show flour filled with mould and worms, or laced with pills. At the end of June, the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was accused of distributing flour mixed with oxycodone.
Um Yousif, a mother in Gaza, told The New Arab she found worms in a bag of flour distributed by an international aid truck.
“We sifted the flour, baked it, and ate it,” she said. “I had no choice. Hunger made us eat something inedible.”
She added, “Are we eating poison? Are we feeding our children death without knowing?”
Flour on the black market
In Gaza, flour is no longer just a basic food item. It has become a form of currency in wartime, hoarded, traded, and sold in secret.
While thousands of Palestinians wait in queues for hours each day, flour is being smuggled in broad daylight and sold on the black market at prices far above its actual value.
According to local sources, a 25kg bag of flour now sells for 15,000 shekels (around £3,400) on the black market, a price well beyond what most Palestinians can afford.
These sources also told The New Arab that small smuggling networks are diverting flour from aid trucks. At certain distribution points, deliveries are deliberately delayed while portions are removed. This flour is then sold privately through intermediaries operating within neighbourhoods.
Despite efforts by local authorities to monitor distribution, the ongoing genocide and lack of regulation have led to a rapid increase in flour smuggling and black market sales — especially in Rafah and Khan Younis — where some Gazans report finding no flour at distribution points because it has all been looted.
Abu Majdi, a displaced Palestinian from Sheikh Ijlin in southern Gaza, described his experience of this growing injustice.
“I’ve registered my name three times at the distribution centre for food aid,” he said. “Each time, they say they are out of flour. Then, I see flour being sold in small shops in the market the next day for 600 shekels. How? Where did this flour come from?”
For many in Gaza, simply walking to collect flour has become a matter of life and death.
It is no longer just about food. The fight for flour has become a daily struggle for survival, caught between bullets and hunger, desperation and dignity.
Haya Ahmed is a doctor and freelance writer from Gaza