Gaza needs bread and breath. But when aid stops, funerals begin

The recent pledge of aid to Gaza is a cruel illusion, and amounts to nothing other than another layer of death and suffering.

The reason that people in Gaza are dying is due to more than one reason. Lack of food and falling bombs are taking place in real-time. Because snipers still shoot. Ceasefires are still being rejected, writes Mohammed Mhawish [photo credit: Getty Images]

At sunrise, Abu Tamer left the tarp-covered structure where his family of six had been sheltering for weeks. He walked past rows of exhausted people sleeping in the open and past children combing the sand for scraps of food or firewood. The rumour had spread fast: trucks were arriving at the US-run humanitarian distribution site set up near the southern Gaza border in the city of Rafah. Aid was finally allowed into Gaza after almost twelve weeks of crossing shutdown.

He didn’t return. What was supposed to be a site for food and survival became, instead, a trap. Witnesses told me that shortly after the crowd formed, Israeli gunfire rang out. Some ran, and some dropped to the ground, while others were never seen again.

For weeks, there has been a shift in the international narrative around the food crisis in Gaza. “Aid is getting in,” some media outlets reported. “Things are improving.” But on the ground, that story feels like a cruel misrepresentation. What little aid has arrived is not only grossly insufficient, it has often lured people into danger. In some cases, it has even become the reason people are killed.

On paper, the situation seems to be improving. More trucks were crossing into Gaza over the past week or so. U.S. officials have celebrated the success of aid delivery corridors. Media headlines talked about “resumed deliveries” and “increased access.”

But such language hides a devastating reality: that many of these trucks are arriving into a place that has already been invaded by starvation, and in a context that remains as deadly as ever.

In March last year, Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinians attempting to retrieve flour from aid trucks, killing over 100 people in what became known as the “Flour Massacre.” Now, a similar horror has unfolded in southern Gaza.

In the city of Rafah and its surrounding areas, people tell me that approaching an aid convoy often means risking your life. Whether it’s airstrikes targeting supposed “Hamas hideouts,” gunfire from nearby tanks, or the chaos of stampeding crowds, aid has become a site of carnage. One man told me, “My cousin was shot in the leg just for standing near the trucks. He wasn’t even holding anything yet.”

One of the most striking examples is the now-abandoned US-run aid distribution site, established with great fanfare in early May 2025. Its purpose, the people were told, was to facilitate safe and neutral delivery of food to a population on the brink of famine. But the testimonies I’ve gathered from those who went there tell a much darker story.

People who approached the site were subjected to profiling. Some were questioned and others beaten. A few never returned. Several individuals I interviewed described being stopped by Israeli or foreign personnel, interrogated about their origins, their families, their presumed political affiliations. One man said he was told to strip for a “security screening” before being turned away.

Then, within days, the site was shut down. No explanation or accountability, just another promise of help turned into a source of trauma. What seemed to be a humanitarian corridor turned out a site for surveillance under the pretext of assistance. It was a choke point disguised as a lifeline.

On June 5, another massacre unfolded in southern Gaza after “gunfire was opened at crowds of people approaching the aid trucks.” Dozens were killed, many of them women and children, as they sought food or fled toward what they thought were safe zones.

The Israeli military claimed they were pursuing “terror suspects.” But none of the victims I’ve confirmed so far had any ties to armed groups. This was merely a breadline. The repetition of these killings cannot be incidental. It is part of the logic of collective punishment.

This is happening a year and a half into the Israeli war on Gaza. While Western media boasts about floating piers and drone-monitored aid corridors, these same countries continue to arm the same military that bombs hospitals, schools, and now aid lines. In the same breath that U.S. officials highlight humanitarian achievements, they veto ceasefire resolutions. They finance the continuation of a war while pretending to offer salvation.

The aid is not flowing because things are better. It is flowing in small, deadly trickles because the world is trying to maintain an illusion, that Gaza is being cared for and Palestinians are not being left to starve.

But those of us living it, or surviving it, know better. “They say aid is coming,” a man told me, “but we only see funerals.”

Such organizations like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, are they facilitating survival, or just giving cover to an unjust war?

Most NGOs are operating without guarantees of safety. Convoys are attacked. Humanitarian workers are targeted. Some international organizations remain silent or complicit, unwilling to risk their funding or access. When others speak up, they end up ignored.

Above all, the reason that people in Gaza dying is because of more than one reason. Lack of food and falling bombs are taking place in real-time. Because snipers still shoot. Because ceasefires are still being rejected. What the people want, what we all want, is breath and bread. The ability to walk without being hunted. The freedom to rebuild without burying our people again tomorrow.

I think often think about Abu Tamer and the way he walked that morning, hopeful despite it all. He didn’t think he was doing anything dangerous. He thought he was going to get a bag of food for his five children. His body was found in on the site two hours after the attack. His wife buried him with her bare hands.

No matter how “improving the situation” the world sees it, in Gaza, even the promise of aid has become a reason to fear. There is no safety in starvation or peace in piecemeal humanitarianism, and there is no salvation in a world that demands our death before it acknowledges our life.

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This article was first published by the author in The New Arab.