Bakeries finally reopen in northern Gaza as Palestinians continue to fight famine

Lines of thousands of Palestinians with pale faces covered with sweat and smoke. Lean and hungry bodies, standing in a long line for hours, almost the entire day, from morning until night, standing in place.

They are all residents and families of the northern Gaza Strip are happy today despite their exhaustion and hunger, which has continued for six months.

This is a day of satisfaction, as bakeries finally operated again this past week for the first time since the beginning of the war in October 2023. They were able to distribute bread to people who had been living through a famine during which they lost their loved ones and children.

Ahmad Abdel Rahman, 34, a father of five children, has been standing in line for four hours along with thousands who went to buy bread today. This is the first day that this bakery has opened its doors in seven months of war.

“I will not leave this place until I return to my family carrying bread fit for human consumption. We lived through difficult times, eating from the grass of the earth and making bread from animal feed. We hope to not eat this anymore; we hope to eat bread today,” Abdel Rahman told Mondoweiss.

Bakeries have closed their doors since the beginning of the war due to a shortage of flour, gas, and manpower. Israel also destroyed a large number of bakeries in Gaza, as the occupation deliberately created famine to force Palestinians to leave north Gaza.

The remaining bakeries are re-opening their doors after humanitarian aid has finally entered northern Gaza. The authorities in north Gaza have distributed it to the bakeries and the population to facilitate production and ease the burden of suffering during this famine.

Several mainstays are still missing in the north of the Gaza Strip, especially at affordable prices. Many vegetables, fruits, and flour, are now slowly available, but not everything people need.

The celebrations and pictures from northern Gaza, overjoyed at the availability of flour and food, make people feel sadness, not joy. This sadness comes from the fact that people are rejoicing over the simple fact they have food, which keeps them alive.

Ahmad Abdel Rahman says if bakeries had not re-opened their doors, many Palestinians would have been on the verge of losing their families to hunger. “We lived through difficult days, and no one looked at us. We were dying every day from starvation, from bombing, and from running behind the aid parachutes that the planes dropped over us. Aid was dropped from the aircraft into the sea,” he explained. “If we wanted to get food for our families, we had to go to the mouth of death, to the sea, to pick up the aid that fell there.”

“Many people died before our eyes trying to get food for their families. People stepped on each other due to the intense crowding, and no one paid any attention to them because everyone there was hungry and just thinking about how they could get food for their families.”

He says the Palestinians in Gaza have seen death, lived death, and died many times themselves during a single day, from bombing, hunger, and destruction. Now they can say that they have hope that bread will remain available and that bakeries will continue to work day and night to satisfy people’s hunger.

“I hid from my children because of their constant insistence and requests for food. I used to tell them that I was going out to bring them food, but I would go to the house of one of my brothers and spend hours there until I was sure that my wife was able to force the children to go to sleep hungry and when they slept, my wife would send for me to come home. I slept beside them, hungry like them, trying to swallow my tears,” Ahmad recalled. 

People in the North of Gaza tried eating whatever was available, including grass and animal fodder. They ate everything so as not to die. “Some said that we should catch cats scattered in the streets and eat them out of extreme hunger, but we did not reach that point.”

“We were hungry, but we always remembered that we should not lose our humanity and not let hunger force us to become monsters,” Ahmad said thankfully.

Many workers are working inside Kamel Ajour’s bakery in the middle of Gaza City on Al-Thalatheni Street; their numbers almost double those working before the war, given the vast numbers queuing outside wanting to buy bread.

One young man, Ahmad Ajour, who works in the bakery, told Mondoweiss that as soon as they obtained the flour, they opened the bakery’s doors and began producing bread for the people.

He says that throughout the war, the bakery had been trying with all its might to find the ingredients to make bread, “but we could not obtain anything. We were not able to open the bakery.”

But for this young man, these times are now blessed, as he can make bread and save families from starvation. “We will continue to produce bread if we get the necessary flour and gas,” he said.

He does not know precisely how long they will be able to keep the bakery going as they do not have a large stock of supplies, but it may be enough for all the families in northern Gaza to obtain a loaf of bread daily to feed their families.

“We work day and night to provide bread to people, and we try not to let anyone in front of our bakery return home sad and broken-hearted because they could not get bread for their children. We are working with all our energy so all children and families in the northern Gaza Strip can eat.”

The estimated time standing in line to get bread is 6 to 8 hours, and each person is allowed only one loaf of bread.

At the door of Ajour bakery stands Omar Jundia, 42, waiting to get bread. He has stood for 3 hours and thinks he has two more hours to go.

He says the bakery re-opening has given him hope to remain steadfast on his land. Omar refused to leave northern Gaza, even though his entire extended family had gone south since the beginning of the war for fear of bombing and destruction. When famine occurred in northern Gaza, nothing was left for people to eat. His family called him and urged him to go south to save some of the little food available in Rafah, but he refused and insisted on staying in northern Gaza.

“I did not want to go to the South because I know that what is happening now in northern Gaza will happen tomorrow in its South and that Israel wants to destroy and kill the entire Gaza Strip and its residents. I was confident that what was happening to us in the North would happen later in the South, so I decided to stay in my home and neighborhood. I endured bombing, death, and destruction, and I endured hunger for myself and my children, but I never chose to leave my home,” Omar explained. 

He says the hope raised by the bakery’s opening is that we will no longer die of hunger. “We may die from the bombing at any moment, anywhere in the Gaza Strip, but hunger was a difficult thing when I saw my children and other children unable to speak from extreme hunger. Their voices were suffocated because they could not even express and say that they were hungry.”

“Hunger was eating away at their bodies, and watching them was eating my heart and my soul,” the father of six said. 

“Now, I can sigh a little, saying that my children will no longer die hungry if the bakery continues to operate. Even if we know that it may not continue because Israel wants us all to die.”

Omar believes that the occupation will continue to kill Palestinians, harass them, and force them to leave their homeland. 

“This enemy wants nothing but death for us in all its monstrous forms, but we tell him that we are here standing in our land. The enemy has tried killing, death, starvation, and destruction and has not succeeded. They have been attempting to starve us, and we have lost our children from hunger, and we lost our dearest loved ones who died of starvation. We used to hear and see how hunger wiped out entire families, but we remained in our land and our homes to tell the Israelis that you could not defeat us, no matter how strong you were and no matter what methods you used to annihilate us. We will emerge from under the rubble and give birth to children who will someday conquer and defeat you.” 

Tareq S. Hajjaj
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter at @Tareqshajjaj.