Mediapart is publishing a series of reports regularly sent to it from inside the Gaza Strip by two young Palestinians. Nour Elassy, a 22-year-old journalist, who is also a poet and writer, and Ibrahim Badra, a 23-year-old journalist, translator and human rights activist, chronicle the grim reality of life and death in Gaza as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to wage a genocidal war against the population of about 2.1 million.
Ibrahim Badra has a bachelor’s degree in both English literature and translation from the Islamic University of Gaza. He was due to be awarded with the diploma on October 7th 2023, the day of the Hamas attacks against Israel when his world was turned upside down.
His family were originally from Jaffa. Following the 1948 creation of the state of Israel, and the ensuing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, they set up home in Sabra, a neighbourhood just west of Gaza City. Badra had lived through seven Israeli-Palestinian conflicts before the war that began in October 2023, following the Hamas attacks that month which left more than 1,200 Israelis – mostly civilians – dead.
His interests focus on literature, politics, education and translation. His work activities over the past year and a half have consisted mainly of defending human rights in Gaza, documenting the daily lives of the local population, and making their voices heard.
Below are Badra’s first two contributions to Mediapart, first appearing in French in May and June, and published here in their original English.
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In Gaza, bread is a dream, hunger is a weapon
(First published in French on June 5th)
“I crave hot bread with zaatar and oil.” That’s what my friend Mohammed told me when he visited. It’s been more than three months since he’s eaten bread, all because of the famine that has started again.
Famine is back—stronger than before. Famine isn’t a new policy. It’s a despicable policy pursued by the Israeli occupation for a long time, even before the war. But we used to stockpile supplies, hold out as long as possible, and help each other.
Because the [border] crossings – the only outlet to Gaza – have been closed for more than 90 days, we can’t hold out any longer. There’s no food available in the markets, not even flour. When we do find it, it’s very expensive, and not everyone can afford it. Before the war, it [editor’s note: a bag of flour] cost between 40 and 50 shekels (about 14 US dollars). During the war, the price increased 18 times or more, reaching 2,300 shekels (about 635 dollars).
Due to the severe economic conditions facing people in the Strip, especially families relying on daily income, new types of bread have been invented: macaroni bread, lentil bread, bean bread, and animal feed bread. The taste is terrible, but there’s no other choice. Despite the difficulty of eating it, we’re forced to eat it to avoid starving. Many families now rely on this bread daily. Some can’t even find the simple ingredients to make it.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Providing a bite of bread has become a daily struggle amid food shortages and skyrocketing prices. Even items we once relied on in emergencies such as canned food and rice – have disappeared or become unaffordable. Many families now survive on one small meal a day. Many children go to bed hungry.
Hunger is no longer just a feeling. It’s a constant condition that dominates our bodies and minds, stealing our energy, our dreams, and our most basic rights as humans. It’s not just numbers. The scene in the markets is miserable – empty shelves, closed shops, people searching for anything to eat, even just for one day. Even the bread we make from ingredients not meant for humans has become a dream in some tents and destroyed homes. All this is happening under the watchful eyes of a world that remains content to watch, issuing empty promises and shallow condemnations.
Despite all this, we still try to be resilient. We search for hope in small details; a piece of bread, a sip of clean water, the laughter of a child who momentarily forgets hunger. Our resilience isn’t because we’ve grown used to pain, but because we dream of a better life, of a day when fresh bread and olive oil will be on our tables again.
International organizations like UNRWA, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme are doing their utmost to face the crisis by distributing food aid and providing healthcare to children and displaced people. But with scarce resources, supply denials, and border closures, these efforts aren’t enough. Even as they try to protect children from famine and deteriorating health, the reality exceeds their capacity. Health conditions have deteriorated rapidly due to a lack of nutrition and clean water. Children are paying the highest price.
In 2024, the Palestinian Ministry of Health officially recorded the deaths of 33 children. By May 25, 2025, that number reached 58, all due to starvation and severe malnutrition. Most were severely underweight, almost skeletal, with pale skin and bulging eyes. This number isn’t just a number. It represents innocent souls who could have lived, dreamed, and grown –if only they had been given one loaf of bread each day.
While working in the displaced camps, we checked on children and looked at their drawings. These served as a small window into their broken world and suspended dreams. Most drawings told their stories without words—white tents soaked by winter rain, airplanes overhead, endless displacement, and children holding their mothers' hands in fear.
But the drawing that stuck with me most was from a little boy. With a trembling brush, he drew a warehouse filled with flour bags and food baskets, with people waiting in line.
He didn’t draw toys, gardens, schools, or homes – but flour and food.
Here, the painful question echoes: has food become a wish we draw instead of life?
Has a loaf of bread become a distant dream – like another child’s wish for a new bike or a school trip? That drawing, despite its simplicity, screamed the magnitude of the crisis. It wasn’t just a child’s imagination. It was a living testimony to the tragedy of an entire people struggling with hunger and siege. It was a muffled cry. Hunger has stolen even the innocent dreams of children, replacing them with painful wishes for bread or a bag of flour. The world is silent.
Famine is not a natural disaster. It’s not a coincidence. Famine is a policy. A despicable, deliberate policy used by the occupation to collectively oppress the people of Gaza. Part of a long series of blockades and strangulation. Preventing the entry of food, medicine, and clean water has become a tool of slow death. Its goal is clear: to break people’s resilience and starve them into surrender.
International institutions are screaming through reports and warnings. But governments are watching – or issuing empty statements that fail to protect the hungry or save children dying from hunger. Markets are empty. Stomachs are empty. People are running after scraps of life, while the world remains trapped in political interests and calculations.
Gaza today is facing its largest humanitarian disaster in decades. The world has not witnessed such genocide and starvation—while a piece of bread is being used as a weapon.
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Who would water the new plants?
(First published in French on May 22nd)
I was with my mother behind the building, and the damaged apartment where we were living in the Bani Suhaila neighbourhood of Khan Yunis [editor’s note: in the south of the Gaza Strip]. We rented that place after the great return to the north, when we lost our home in Gaza City, and we suffered a lot from living in a tent. But now we are living in a tent again.
On this day of April 14th, we were planting new mint in the ground behind the building. My mother and I were watering the old plants – basil, tomatoes, coriander, and peppers – and we were very happy to see the progress of the plants’ growth.
Due to the rapid spread of starvation, we started planting because there were no other choices and we needed to meet some of our basic needs.
Suddenly, we heard the sound of an explosion from the leaflet dropped by the occupation planes. This was the sound we hated to hear most, even more than the sound of missiles, because the leaflets usually meant a new evacuation and displacement.
My brother Zakaria went to check what was in the leaflets. They fell on different areas, and it was announced that some areas of Khan Yunis, including the area where we were living, had to be evacuated.
We didn’t know what to do. We were tired of everything – the constant displacements, the endless journey of moving, and walking for long hours searching for a new place, food, or water. All these thoughts kept racing in our minds. Should we stay or leave? We didn’t know, but we started to see what our neighbours would do. Everyone was apparently going to stay, but then confusion showed clearly on their faces, and signs of exhaustion from the continuous displacement and the thought of living inside tents again.
There were those who said they would stay, and there were those who said, “Enough with what we have martyred and enough with what we have lost. We must leave.” Honestly, this made sense because we had lost a lot of family, friends, homes, memories even of ourselves, and our future.
We called my uncle’s house in [the neighbourhood of] Hamad City in Khan Yunis, to let them know that we would temporarily stay with them until we could think things through and search for a new place.
We began packing our bags; everyone had a bag for clothes and important documents, and each person had their own water bottle. With every new displacement, my mother always told us to put our ID card in the front pocket of our pants, so that if anyone were martyred, they could be easily identified.
Then she went to knead some bread to take with us, because we never knew what would happen or what we might face.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
I remember one time when we slept all night on the street, next to cars parked along the road. It was literally one of the worst nights of my life, part of the never-ending journey of displacement. We had only some bread, two bottles of water, and one blanket. There were nine of us, including my uncle Yacoub’s family.
After preparing ourselves, my brother and I went to find any available means of transportation. We found a donkey cart, so we loaded it with one mattress and the bags for each person and set off for my uncle’s house. When we arrived, they welcomed us with warm hugs.
My mother refused to stay long because their house was too close to Salah El-Din Street, which was dangerous. The occupation forces could enter the city at any moment. They had prepared some zaatar pastries and hot bread for us.
The next morning, we set off on a new journey, searching for a new place. We walked for hours, first to Street 5, then to Al-Rasheed Street (Sea Street) in Khan Yunis, and then to Al-Nus Street and the Fesh Fresh area. After seven to eight hours of searching, we couldn’t find a suitable place because there was no water near to the areas we found.
We returned to my uncle’s house, exhausted. I wasn’t hungry, I just wanted to sleep. I washed my face and feet and went to bed.
At 3 am, we woke up to the sound of a fire belt—multiple missiles being fired by several planes at the same time. Usually, 8 to 12 missiles are fired, and sometimes more, depending on the number of planes involved in the fire belt.
We waited until morning, and my uncle asked if we could find a place for him as well. He wanted to leave his house and join us. We called my aunt Intisar, who was displaced in Deir al-Balah. She said she would check in their camp. Her area was good, with a water desalination station just two streets away, and it was close to the sea. We could use water from the station or directly from the sea.
After a short time, my aunt called back and said she found a place. We went to inspect it, and we started preparing the land to set up two tents.
That evening, we returned to my uncle’s house, and we agreed to move the next day in the afternoon. But we needed to arrange for a truck to transport our things. My uncle said he knew a friend, Abu Ahmed, who had a small truck. We began preparing everything we could take with us; mattresses, blankets, carpets, wood, a water tank, and a bucket for transporting water.
My uncle contacted Abu Ahmed, and we arranged for him to come pick us up at 1 pm. My mother, my uncle’s wife, and the girls started preparing bread, peas, and rice to take with us. At 1pm we began loading our things onto the truck and headed to Deir al-Balah. But a question lingered in my mind: who would water the new plants?
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Editing by Graham Tearse