Gaza Herald_ Two years after Gaza was plunged into famine, the reopening of supermarkets across the Strip has brought what some call a bitter irony. Chocolate bars, potato chips, and soft drinks fill the shelves, while essential foods and medicines remain absent.
For residents like Monther al-Shrafi, the scene is surreal. “Can you imagine that there’s chocolate in Gaza but no antibiotics? Fruits but no wound dressings or sutures?” he said, standing among aisles lined with luxury snacks that once seemed like “a dream” during the starvation crisis. “We have shelves of sugar, but we don’t have meat, chicken, fish, or eggs, the basics of a healthy diet.”
Ceasefire without sustenance
When the October 10 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect, Israeli authorities partially reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing, Gaza’s main commercial gateway, for the first time since the army sealed it on March 2, triggering mass starvation that killed hundreds.
The reopening raised hopes of recovery, but what followed was a tightly managed flow of selective goods. Israel allowed in wheat flour, rice, pasta, canned corn, potatoes, butter, processed cheese, jam, candies, soft drinks, and cigarettes, far from constituting balanced nutrition. But animal proteins and fresh produce remained virtually banned. Eggs, dairy products, and fresh meat are still missing, while limited frozen chicken and beef arrive sporadically at prices far beyond most families’ reach.
“When frozen chicken appears, it costs around 80 shekels per kilo, about $25,” Shrafi explained. “People here are forced to eat whatever is available, not what’s healthy. There’s no recovery after famine, just survival on unhealthy food.”
Even essential medicines remain out of reach. Shrafi described moving from one pharmacy to another searching for antibiotics and painkillers for his daughter’s infected toe. “The shelves are empty. When you do find medicine, it’s at prices no one can afford. Ordinary people have been crushed under two years of extermination.”
A health system on the brink
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Israel continues to block or restrict critical medical shipments, even after the ceasefire. “Drug shortages have reached 56 percent, with medical consumables at 68 percent and laboratory supplies at 67 percent,” said Zahir al-Wahidi, who heads the ministry’s Health Information Unit. “Orthopedic surgeries face an 83 percent shortage, open-heart surgeries 100 percent, and kidney treatments 80 percent. The situation is catastrophic, especially in emergency, anesthesia, and intensive care units.”
Traders and aid agencies say every item that enters Gaza requires Israeli approval. Some requests are ignored for weeks; others are outright denied. This bureaucratic chokehold, coupled with targeted bans on specific foods, has created a warped market where chocolates are plentiful but infant formula and antibiotics are luxuries.
“What entered Gaza in the past year is only a fraction of what’s needed, just a few small shipments that barely cover months of deprivation,” Wahidi said.
‘They are forcing us to gain weight’
The limited trickle of goods has revived street markets with bright displays of candy, coffee, and pastries. But beneath the surface, health experts warn of a new crisis, one of forced malnutrition.
“These products are mostly carbohydrates, sugars, and starches,” said Abdallah Sharshara, a lawyer and researcher from Gaza. “Israel is controlling the food economy so that people consume what it allows: sweets, processed cheese, and cheap calories instead of balanced, nutritious food.”
According to Sharshara, this policy has an insidious logic: to hide the visible signs of starvation. “There’s now an abnormal increase in people’s weight,” he said. “It’s as if the occupation is trying to conceal the starvation it caused by creating the opposite image, one of rapid, unnatural weight gain.”
Sharshara himself lost 20 kilograms during the blockade, but since the ceasefire, he has regained weight quickly. “I eat the same portions I used to, but now I’m gaining weight because all I can buy are carbohydrates and processed foods,” he explained. “They’re forcing us to gain weight systematically.”
Manufactured illusion of normalcy
On social media, Gazans echo the same observation: an illusion of abundance masking the reality of deprivation. “People post photos of pizza and sweets, but the essentials, meat, eggs, milk, are still banned,” Sharshara said. Fishermen are confined to narrow waters off the coast, cutting off one of Gaza’s few protein sources.
“This is how Israel crafts its propaganda,” he continued. “They allow limited goods to enter to claim that the blockade has ended. But when you calculate the quantities against Gaza’s population, the per-person share is microscopic. It’s not aid, it’s a psychological operation.”
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, Israeli authorities have banned 430 essential food categories, including eggs, red and white meat, fish, cheese, fruits, and nutritional supplements. Many of these items, vital for children, the sick, and pregnant women, remain excluded from import lists.
The result, say experts, is a deliberately engineered diet that sustains life without restoring health, a system designed to keep Palestinians alive but dependent, visible but malnourished.
Siege 2.0: From famine to control
While Israel and its Western allies present the reopening of Gaza’s crossings as humanitarian progress, Palestinians describe it as a shift in tactics from starvation to controlled dependency. The blockade now operates not only through restriction, but through manipulation of what people can eat, buy, and survive on.
In this new phase, Gaza is not dying of hunger; it is being reshaped through it. The return of chocolate and cola is not a sign of recovery, but of domination disguised as normalcy.
“Israel wants to show the world images of full markets, not empty stomachs,” said Shrafi. “But when you look closely, you see that we’re still trapped in the same siege, only now, it tastes like sugar.”
