In Gaza, Scavenging Trash Becomes a Daily Ritual to Cook Meals

For hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians in Gaza, the daily struggle to prepare a meal now begins at the garbage dump. Families must choose between digging through refuse for anything burnable or waiting in long lines at the territory's few charity kitchens.

The Kahlout family, living in a tent near a dump, has assigned the task to 12-year-old Omar. Each day, he walks to the site, digs with his bare hands, and fills a worn sack with plastic and other combustible scraps. He then carries the load back to the tent he shares with seven other family members. The proximity to the dump means rats frequently swarm their shelter.

This grim routine is the reality for many of Gaza's 2 million residents, who remain in displacement camps and damaged buildings ten months after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took hold. The family's father, Adam, expressed deep skepticism about the ongoing talks to end the war, saying, "The truce is only in the media." He noted that the family survives on humanitarian aid packages and meals from charity kitchens.

However, those kitchens are overwhelmed. Each family is reportedly entitled to just one piece of fish with rice, and many people leave with empty pots. This scarcity persists even as the Israeli government maintains that sufficient food is being allowed into the territory, which remains largely isolated from the outside world.