Leading agency shuts its Gaza soup kitchens amid continued Israeli aid ban

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza  — Israel’s ongoing blockade of humanitarian assistance for Gaza forced a leading aid group on Thursday to shut its community soup kitchens, facing empty warehouses and no replenishment of supplies in the war-battered enclave.

The US-based World Central Kitchen was serving 133,000 meals per day and baking 80,000 loaves of bread over the past weeks, but said it was forced to suspend operations since there is almost no food left in Gaza for the organization to cook.

Israel has faced growing international pressure to lift an aid blockade that it imposed in March after the collapse of a ceasefire deal. Israel has accused agencies, including the United Nations, of allowing large quantities of aid to fall into the hands of the Hamas terror group, which seizes supplies intended for civilians for its own forces.

Israel stopped allowing aid into Gaza on March 2 after the first phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal ended, leading many organizations to warn of severe malnutrition and hunger in Gaza. Jerusalem argued that Hamas diverted much of the aid that entered during the six-week truce, but said that the 650 trucks per day were enough to feed the population for an extended period. Israel says it won’t allow food, fuel, water, or medicine into the territory until it puts in place a system giving it control over the distribution.

The IDF reportedly plans to transition away from wholesale distribution and warehousing of aid and to instead have international organizations and private security contractors hand out boxes of food to individual Gazan families, according to Israeli and Arab officials familiar with the matter. The UN and aid groups have rejected the proposal, while the US is said to be working to persuade them to cooperate.

Organizations briefed on the initiative have expressed heavy skepticism, arguing that it fails to adequately address the humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged enclave and requires them to be complicit in the “weaponization” of aid by Israel.

Gaza’s population is already battered by 19 months of war triggered on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which rules Gaza, led a devastating invasion of southern Israel.

In April, the World Food Program said its food stocks in Gaza had run out under Israel’s blockade, ending a main source of sustenance for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the territory.

Malnutrition and hunger are becoming increasingly prevalent in the Gaza Strip as Israel’s blockade enters its third month. Aid agencies say a shortage of food and supplies has driven the territory toward starvation, and supplies to treat and prevent malnutrition are depleted and quickly running out.

Community kitchens such as the ones run by World Central Kitchen are a lifeline for hundreds of thousands for their daily meal, but many are shutting down due to a lack of supplies.

At those still open, chaotic scenes of desperate men, women, and children fighting to get meager rations are common. Bakeries have closed, while water distribution is grinding to a halt due to a lack of fuel.

Since the start of the war, World Central Kitchen said it has served more than 130 million meals and baked 80 million loaves of bread. The organization also said on Thursday there was no flour left in its mobile bakery.

“Our trucks — loaded with food and supplies — are waiting in Egypt, Jordan and Israel, ready to enter Gaza,” said José Andrés, the celebrity chef who founded the organization. “But they cannot move without permission. Humanitarian aid must be allowed to flow.”

COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing aid to Gaza, said the blockade would continue unless the Israeli government changed its policy.

Since the start of the year, more than 10,000 children have been admitted or treated for acute malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization. The increase was particularly dramatic in March, with 3,600 cases — an 80 percent increase, compared to the 2,000 children in February, UNICEF reported.

Nearly half of the 200 nutrition centers around Gaza have shut down because of displacement and bombardment.

An April 2024 Israeli strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy killed seven aid workers, for which the IDF apologized.

Then, in December, the organization fired 62 workers after Israel said that dozens of staff were linked to terror groups.

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