2024: The year of death and hunger for 2 million people in Gaza.
While the world is celebrating the arrival of 2025, more than 2 million Palestinians are confined to a small area in a part of the world called the Gaza Strip, without any facilities or signs of life. In addition to enduring great suffering and hardship as a result of the terrible siege, dozens of them are condemned to die every day under the bombardments of the Zionist enemy or due to hunger and cold.
A terrible siege amid a genocidal war
The cost of living in the Gaza Strip has increased sharply over the past few months, amid the continuation of the Zionist regime’s genocidal war for the fifteenth consecutive month, and the heavy siege that this regime has imposed on Gaza, which does not allow the entry of basic goods and food into the region.
The occupying regime strictly controls the movement of trucks through the border crossings of the Gaza Strip, especially the Rafah crossing, and the number of trucks entering the region per day does not exceed 50 trucks; While the people of Gaza needed 500 trucks of humanitarian aid daily before the war.
Closing bakeries
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned in a recent report that bakeries, the only way to save hundreds of thousands of hungry Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, are on the verge of closing due to a shortage of flour and fuel. In addition, the heavy blockade imposed on Gaza and preventing food from entering the strip due to a sharp increase in demand compared to supply, have had a huge negative impact on the cost of living of Palestinians, forcing them to buy goods many times the price, and no organization effectively controls prices.
Surging costs
On the other hand, despite the efforts of government organizations to control prices and markets, inflation continues to rage in Gaza, which has a great impact on the food insecurity of about 2 million displaced people, all of whom are confined to a 35-kilometer area. Gaza residents, who previously lived in the entire 365-kilometer area of the Strip, are now displaced and forced to gather in a very small area.
According to data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, after more than a year of continuous aggression against the Gaza Strip, the cost of living index in the Strip has increased by 490 percent.
This situation reflects the sad reality that the residents of the Gaza Strip are experiencing. In addition to the terrible consequences of the Zionist regime’s genocidal war against the region for the second consecutive year, their livelihoods have been almost destroyed. The poverty rate in the Gaza Strip has also reached 90 percent, and the food insecurity rate has increased by the same amount.
This is while most of the residents of the Gaza Strip have become unemployed as a result of the war. According to a World Bank report, all residents of the Gaza Strip suffer from varying levels of poverty, and Gaza’s economic growth has decreased by 86 percent from October 7, 2023, to last September.