DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Yasmin Eid coughs and covers her face, cooking a small pot of lentils over a fire fed with twigs and scrap paper in the tent she shares with her husband and four young daughters in the Gaza Strip.

It was their only meal Wednesday — it was all they could afford.

“My girls suck on their thumbs because of how hungry they are, and I pat their backs until they sleep,” she said.

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Displacement and Hunger in Central Gaza

After being displaced five times, the Eids reside in central Gaza, where aid groups have relatively more access than in the north, which has been largely isolated and heavily destroyed since Israel began waging a renewed offensive against the militant group Hamas in early October. But nearly everyone in Gaza is going hungry these days. In the north experts say a full-blown famine may be underway.

On Thursday, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, accusing them of using “starvation as a method of warfare” — charges Israel adamantly denies.

In Deir al-Balah, the Eids are among hundreds of thousands sheltering in squalid tent camps. The local bakeries shut down for five days this week. The price of a bag of bread climbed above $13 by Wednesday, as bread and flour vanished from shelves before more supplies arrived.

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Aid Distribution Challenges and Food Shortages

The United Nations humanitarian office warned of a “stark increase” in the number of households experiencing severe hunger in central and southern Gaza. The amount of food Israel has let into Gaza the past seven weeks has plummeted, now at nearly the lowest levels of the entire war.

Even less than that is reaching the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians because of the many obstacles to distribution, aid groups and the U.N. say – including restrictions on movement by the Israeli military, ongoing fighting, damage to roads, and theft. Armed men robbed nearly 100 aid trucks last weekend in southern Gaza, close to Israeli military positions. Israel blamed Hamas but appears to have taken no action to stop the looting, while Hamas said it was the work of local bandits.

For the Eids, hunger is the daily routine

For months, Yasmin and her family have gone to bed hungry.

“Everything has increased in price, and we cannot buy anything,” she said. “We always go to sleep without having dinner.”

She misses coffee, but a single packet of Nescafe goes for around $1.30. A kilogram (2 pounds) of onions goes for $10, a medium bottle of cooking oil for $15 — if available. Meat and chicken all but vanished from the markets months ago, but there are still some local vegetables. Such sums are astronomical in an impoverished territory where few people earn regular incomes.

Crowds of hundreds wait hours to get food from charities, which are also struggling.

Hani Almadhoun, co-founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, said his teams can offer only small bowls of rice or pasta once a day. He said they “can go to the market on one day and buy something for $5, and then go back in the afternoon to find it doubled or tripled in price.”

Its kitchen in the central town of Zuweida operated on a daily budget of around $500 for much of the war. When the amount of aid entering Gaza plummeted in October, its costs climbed to around $1,300 a day. It can feed about half of the 1,000 families who line up each day.

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Israel’s Response and Aid Delivery Challenges

Israel says it places no limits on the amount of aid entering Gaza and has announced a number of measures it says are aimed at increasing the flow in recent weeks, including the opening of a new crossing.

But the military’s own figures show that the amount of aid entering Gaza plunged to around 1,800 trucks in October, down from over 4,200 the previous month. At the current rate of entry, around 2,400 trucks would come into Gaza in November. Around 500 trucks entered each day before the war.

Israel blames U.N. agencies for not retrieving the aid, pointing to hundreds of truckloads languishing on the Gaza side of the border. The U.N. says it often cannot reach the border to pick up aid cargos because the Israeli military denies requests for movement and because of ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order. As a result, it says, only about half the incoming aid is distributed.

The war started Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led fighters stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are dead, and Hamas militants have repeatedly regrouped after Israeli operations, carrying out hit-and-run attacks from tunnels and bombed-out buildings.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many of the dead were fighters.

The United States warned Israel in October that it might be forced to curtail some of its crucial military support if Israel did not rapidly ramp up the amount of aid entering Gaza. But after the 30-day ultimatum expired, the Biden administration declined to take any action, saying there had been some progress.

Israel, meanwhile, passed legislation severing ties with UNRWA. Israel accuses the agency of allowing itself to be infiltrated by Hamas — allegations denied by the U.N.

Israeli news outlets have reported that officials are considering plans for the military to take over aid distribution or contract it out to private security companies. Asked about such plans Wednesday, government spokesman David Mercer said “Israel is looking at many creative solutions to ensure a better future for Gaza.”

Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister who was seen as a voice of moderation in the far-right government before being fired this month, warned on X that handing over aid distribution to a private firm was a “euphemism for the beginning of military rule.”

As that debate plays out in Jerusalem, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) away from central Gaza, most Palestinians in the territory are focused on staying alive in a war with no end in sight.

“I find it difficult to talk about the suffering we are experiencing. I am ashamed to talk about it,” said Yasmin’s husband, Hani. “What can I tell you? I’m a person who has 21 family members and is unable to provide them with a bag of flour.”