Israel Total Blockage pf Gaza Has Created Catastrophic Conditions

By Erika Solomon and Rawan Sheikh AhmadPhotographs and Video by Saher Alghorra

Saher Alghorra reported from northern Gaza.

The New York Times

May 5, 2025

It has been more than 60 days since Israel ordered a halt to all humanitarian aid entering Gaza — no food, fuel or even medicine.

As the phone calls pour in, Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, is running out of answers.

The longer Israel’s total siege of the enclave grinds on, the more doctors call to ask where they can find medicine to keep patients alive. Some patients call him up themselves — people with treatable heart problems or kidney failure — to ask: If there is no medicine, what else can they try?

“There’s no advice I can give them,” he said. “In most cases, those patients die.”

Israel says it will not relent until Hamas releases the hostages it still holds after a two-month cease-fire collapsed in March. It has argued that its blockade is lawful, and that Gaza still has enough available provisions. 

But humanitarian groups and European officials accuse Israel of using aid as a “political tool” — and warn that the total blockade violates international law.

A woman surrounded by rubble crouches on the ground and tends to a piece of bread cooking on small object below.

Preparing bread. Bakeries have been forced to close and flour supplies have been running out.

The severity of the siege means it now affects nearly every part of the lives of the roughly two million people trapped inside Gaza, compounding the struggles of a population that has lived for nearly two decades under the partial blockade imposed by Israel and backed by Egypt after Hamas seized control of the enclave in 2007.

People scattered around a makeshift market. Some vegetables are set out on a table.

Locals say the prices of the food still available in markets are astronomical for an impoverished population largely unable to work amid the war.

As supplies of clean water, food and medicine dwindle, preventable diseases and illnesses are surging — and so is the likelihood of dying from them, doctors say. 

Aid groups are raising the alarm in increasingly drastic messages, warning that the humanitarian support for Gazans is “on the verge of total collapse.”

“To the Israeli authorities, and those who can still reason with them, we say again: Lift this brutal blockade,” said Tom Fletcher, the U.N. humanitarian chief. He added: “To the civilians left unprotected, no apology can suffice. But I am truly sorry that we are unable to move the international community to prevent this injustice.”

Every morning, Gazans brace for a daylong struggle to obtain life’s necessities.

Ahmed Mohsen, 30, a construction worker, spends around two hours a day standing in line to fill his pot. On the day he spoke to The New York Times, all he received was plain rice.

Bakeries have been forced to close. Late last month, the U.N. agency that assists Palestinian refugees said its flour supplies had run out, and the World Food Program said it had delivered the last of its supplies to food kitchens.

The only food available to many Gazans — particularly those among the 90 percent of the population that is displaced and mostly living in tents — comes from local charity kitchens, some of which have been looted as the hunger crisis deepens.