(29 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gaza City, Gaza Strip – 16 July 2025
1. Various of food supplies obtained from Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution points displayed for sale on streets of Gaza City
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Omar Ammar, citizen:
"Life here is lacking. Those who leave to get aid, go face death and come back to sell those items for us at high prices. We can’t survive on them nor can we afford them."
3. Various of merchants
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Nagwa Ghanem, displaced Palestinian:
"All the products are expensive and we know that it is all American aid and was distributed for free. But the merchants are selling them for high prices. They should have mercy on the children and people’s condition. But there is no mercy in this country."
5. Various of merchants
6. Wide of markets
STORYLINE:
Since Israel’s offensive led to a security breakdown in Gaza that has made it nearly impossible to safely deliver food to starving Palestinians, much of the limited aid entering is being hoarded by gangs and merchants and sold at exorbitant prices.
A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of flour has run as high as $60 in recent days, a kilogram of lentils up to $35. That is beyond the means of most residents in the territory, which experts say is at risk of famine and where people are largely reliant on savings 21 months into the Israel-Hamas war.
"Those who leave to get aid, go to death and come back to sell those items for us at high prices," said Palestinian Omar Ammar. "We can’t afford it."
Israel’s decision this weekend to facilitate more aid deliveries — under international pressure — has lowered prices somewhat but has yet to be fully felt on the ground.
Bags of flour sold by local vendors often bear U.N. logos, while other packaging has markings indicating it came from the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — all originally handed out for free. It’s impossible to know how much is being diverted from those in need, but both groups acknowledge they can’t track who receives their aid.
The U.N. says up to 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, aid groups and media outlets say their own staffers are going hungry, and Gaza’s Health Ministry says dozens of Palestinians have died from hunger-related causes in just the last three weeks.
When the U.N. gets Israeli permission to distribute aid, its convoys are nearly always attacked by armed gangs or overwhelmed by hungry crowds in the buffer zone controlled by the military.
In the alternative delivery system operated by GHF, an American contractor, Palestinians often run a deadly gantlet.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops while seeking food since May, mainly near the GHF sites, according to the U.N. human rights office, witnesses and local health officials. The military says it has only fired warning shots when people approach its forces, while GHF says its security contractors have only used pepper spray or fired in the air on some occasions to prevent stampedes.
GHF says it has installed separate lanes for women and children at all of its sites and is ramping up programs to deliver aid directly to communities.
The U.N. and major aid groups have refused to cooperate with GHF, saying it violates humanitarian principles.
U.N. officials have called on Israel to fully lift the blockade and flood Gaza with food. That would reduce the incentive for looting by ensuring enough for everyone and driving down prices.
Production by Wafaa Shurafa
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