Gazans Describe Search For Food and Wonder If It Will Get Worse

On most mornings before the war, Suhail Al-Asaad, a body builder, could be found at his kitchen counter in Gaza City, eating an omelet of eight egg whites before speed-walking along the waterfront and heading to the gym to lift weights.

That waterfront now lies in ruins. Mr. Al-Asaad and his family, like so many others, were displaced from their home by Israel’s intense bombardment and invasion and now sleep in a tent in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. He spends his days struggling to find food for himself, his wife, their three children and his sick mother.

Breakfast, of any kind, is elusive. Eggs are a luxury.

As famine looms over Gaza’s 2.2 million people, their tenuous survival has become a little harder for many this week. World Central Kitchen, the charity group founded by the chef José Andrés, suspended its relief efforts there after seven of its workers were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Monday. Since the start of the war in Gaza in October, the aid group said, it had delivered more than 43 million meals there.

Mr. Al-Asaad knows many people relied on meals from World Central Kitchen, which often consisted of rice and beans and sometimes meat or chicken. His family rarely got the meals “because the demand was more than the supply,” Mr. Al-Asaad said in an interview on Friday. Those who received them regularly, he added, would struggle to find a replacement.

Under pressure from President Biden, Israel has agreed to open more routes for aid convoys, but it remains unclear when that might happen. Aid agencies and multiple nations say they are working on supplying more food through the two southern border crossings that have been in use, but some Gazans doubt it will be enough to meet the enormous need, with many families now getting little or nothing.

“I can’t describe our situation. We are clinging to life, and that’s it,” said Mohammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who is also sheltering with his family in a tent in Rafah.