I’m a British aid worker in Gaza – families are eating grass to survive

“Families were telling me they were resorting to eating grass, or finding animal feed. The stuff you’d give to goats and horses,” says British aid worker Shaima Al-Obaidi.

“One mother told me that she’d grind the animal feed to try and make some sort of dough, to make bread. She’d cut it up into pieces, and her four children would live off one piece of that dough for a whole day.”

Al-Obaidi spent two months in Gaza as a humanitarian worker with Save the Children.

She flew out during a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, and remained there as the aid blockade began in early March.

Within two days, Al-Obaidi said that prices had doubled and bread was unaffordable for most families.

By the end of the month, there was no fresh fruit or vegetables in the market where she was staying in the central city of Deir Al Balah.

Shaima Al-Obaidi working in Gaza. (Photo: Save the Children)

“We were seeing high levels of malnutrition then, and then when the war resumed, the number just kept increasing and increasing,” Al-Obaidi says.

“I was speaking to a colleague only yesterday, and he said his situation is good because he can have one bread a day. That is considered a good situation.

“Another colleague said that they soak pasta in water, grind it, and then try to make that into bread, and then cut that into pieces and share it.

“They found an apple the other day, and they were so happy they cut it up into eight pieces and everyone in the family had one.”

Yasmine, a 22-year-old Palestinian mother, holds her malnourished two-month-old daughter as they await treatment at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis on 24 July 2025. (Photo: AFP via Getty Images)

Al-Obaidi said that nothing had prepared her for the scale of the devastation she would find in Gaza.

“It just felt endless. When that convoy entered Gaza, it felt like I was entering a sea of rubble. No buildings were standing,” she says.

“Children were waving at the convoy, but they were climbing on the rubble and they had no shoes on. It was cold, so I was in my big coat and hoodie, and they had no shoes. Fear had aged children. They didn’t look their age.”

‘It’s a massacre of the hungry’

Ahmed Matar, a 27-year-old living with his family in north Gaza, accused Israel of imposing a “deliberate and systematic policy of starvation against us”.

“Food, medicine, and clean water are blocked. Even when aid is allowed in, it is often dumped in dangerous, exposed areas near the border, where desperate people risk their lives to reach it. Almost every time, it ends in a new massacre of the hungry.”

Matar said he was “living through a nightmare that cannot be imagined”.

“People eat small amounts of vegetables or beans if they’re lucky, each person gets two pieces of bread a day,” he said.

Palestinians try to get food at a charity kitchen providing hot meals in Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City on June 18. (Photo by Omar AL-Qatta /AFP)

‏”Unemployment is over 95 per cent. There are no jobs, no income, no savings. Homes, businesses, and everything people owned are destroyed.”

Matar said that food prices had become “insane”, with a kilogram of tomatoes costing $30 compared to an average of £3 in the UK.

“How can we explain to our children that this hunger is not our choice? That we didn’t fail them? That the hunger gnawing at their bodies is not fate, but a weapon being used against them?”

Due to the dire situation in the enclave, Sir Keir Starmer said the UK is working with Jordan on plans to air-drop aid into Gaza and evacuate children needing medical assistance.

‘Man-made starvation’ in Gaza

Israel partially eased the aid blockade in mid May, but the UN’s humanitarian chief said it was still only permitting “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed”.

Israeli officials have blamed Hamas for any hunger in Gaza, saying it must apply pressure on the militant group to release the remaining hostages.

Palestinians collect what remains of relief supplies from the distribution centre of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, southern Gaza (Photo: Reuters)

COGAT, the Israeli authority for aid in the Strip, said that Israel allows and facilitates the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and that close to 4,500 trucks had “recently” entered Gaza, including baby food.

The agency accused the UN of “ignoring” aid in Gaza, saying there has been a “significant decline in the collection of humanitarian aid from the crossings by international aid organisations.”

But Tess Ingram, who has been working in Gaza for Unicef, told The i Paper that the agency’s requests for movements were frequently denied, and that aid workers were not given safe passage to collect and distribute the aid.

The IDF said it is “working to facilitate and ease the distribution of humanitarian aid” under “difficult and complex operational conditions.”

“As part of its operational conduct, the IDF draws lessons and conducts systematic learning processes in order to improve its operational response,” a spokesperson said.