‘Where in the world is food more expensive than London, Dubai, and New York?’ It sounds like a setup to a cheap joke but the harrowing answer is Gaza.
Under a suffocating Israeli blockade, food, fuel and humanitarian aid have become luxuries for Palestinians.
The result? People are starving. Not metaphorically, not gradually – literally. What little food remains has been pushed to black-market extremities, as shown by prices shared with Metro by Christian Aid workers on the ground.
A 25kg sack of flour is now more expensive than a Michelin-star dinner in Paris, costing as much as £414, compared to £8.80 before the start of the war.
A kilogram of sugar is £88, in stark contrast with the price of £0.60 less than two years ago.
Staples like oil, bread and eggs – when available – have all become entirely out of reach for Palestinians.
Speaking of the impact of the unfolding famine, Ranin Awad who works for Christian Aid’s local partner in Gaza, Women’s Affairs Centre (WAC), said: ‘My colleagues and I only eat one meal a day, depending on what we can afford and what is available. We are dealing with fatigue, dizziness, and overwhelming weakness.
‘Recent months have been filled with death, fear and displacement. It is like a nightmare that has devastated our hopes, memories, and houses.
‘Our home was destroyed and we were forced to flee many times. All of our memories have been obliterated.
‘My son was just a month old when the war began. He had a new, lovely room with pretty furniture and toys. There is nothing left for him now, all is ash.’
Gaza’s Health Ministry has recorded six more deaths in the past 24 hours due to famine and malnutrition, including two children.
This brings the total number of starvation deaths to 133, which included 87 children.
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), said: ‘People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses.’
He said that one in five children in Gaza City is malnourished – a number increasing every day that unhindered humanitarian aid is denied.
In a post on X, Lazzarini warned: ‘When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food and care disappears, and famine silently begins to unfold.
‘Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying if they do not get the treatment they urgently need.’
Amid the starvation, Egyptians have launched an initiative called ‘From sea to sea – a bottle of hope for Gaza’.
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Plastic bottles are being filled with grains, rice and lentils and hurled into the Mediterranean Sea in the hope that they will reach the enclave – even though the Israeli Defence Forces have banned Palestinians from entering the water.
While largely symbolic – aimed at highlighting Israel’s purposeful starvation of civilians, several bottles appear to have reached Gaza.
A video shared on TikTok by creator Saqer Abu Saqr, from the north of the enclave, shows him thanking Egyptians for sending him a bottle filled with yellow lentils.
Waving the gift, he says: ‘This came by the sea from the young people in Egypt. Thank you, may Allah bless you.’
Another Palestinian creator with some 2.5 million followers on Instagram, Mohamed Al Khalidi, shared a video titled ‘The most expensive city in the world.’
Walking through Gaza City’s crumbling streets, Mohamed highlights some of the prices of basic goods – £37 for a kilogram of flour, £66 for a kilogram of sugar, and £22 for a kilogram of lentils.
He says: ‘The famine is intensifying significantly. Even the simplest items now cost 10 times their normal price, and only a few things are available. Everything is scarce. I keep thinking about those who have no money at all.’
Israel has been facing growing criticism over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as indirect ceasefire talks in Doha between Israel and Hamas have broken off with no deal in sight.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the United Nations over the weekend to stop blaming his government for what the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described as ‘man-made mass starvation’.
This came hours after the military said it would pause operations for 10 hours a day in three areas – Al Mawasi, Deir al-Balah and Gaza City – and permit new aid corridors.
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates airdropped 25 tonnes of food and supplies to the enclave – which is still less than what one of the hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks stuck outside of Gaza could bring in if allowed.
But Lazzarini stressed that aid airdrops will not reverse the starvation and added: ‘They are expensive, inefficient and can even kill starving civilians. It is a distraction and screensmoke.
‘A manmade hunger can only be addressed by political will. Lift the siege, open the gates and guarantee safe movements and dignified access to people in need.
‘Allow the UN including UNRWA and our partners to operate at scale and without bureaucratic or political hurdles.
‘At UNRWA, we have the equivalent of 6,000 trucks in Jordan and Egypt waiting for the green light to get into Gaza.
‘Driving aid through is much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper and safer. It’s more dignified for the people of Gaza.’
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