“Their food makes people feel like they’re at home.” World Central Kitchen is serving meals in Gaza again

CNN — Dozens of Palestinian children eagerly queued for a meal in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, as aid workers unloaded huge pots of stew and rice from parked trucks in the bright sunshine.

CNN footage from the distribution site for a sprawling shelter for displaced people showed World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers serving the children on Wednesday. More children peered from high balconies where clothes hung over clotheslines.

Palestinian mother Um Hassan told CNN that her toddler was grateful for the plate of hot rice; their family had been surviving on canned food for weeks.

The World Central Kitchen, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on fighting hunger around the world, resumed work in Gaza this week after a hiatus following a series of Israeli military attacks that killed seven staffers in April and the world was condemned. Israeli forces have previously taken responsibility for the deaths, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making rare public acknowledgment and vowing to investigate the “tragic incident.”

World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres wrote on Wednesday that returning to Gaza after losing his staff was not easy, but that the organization could not “stand aside” while people in Gaza suffered.

“The decision… to resume food supplies in Gaza is both the hardest and the easiest we can make,” Andres wrote on X. “Difficult, because only a month has passed since seven of our WCK colleagues were killed in a IDF attack. These humanitarian heroes risked everything to feed people they did not know and would never meet. And yet simple, because the need is so great. We cannot stand by while so many people are so desperately searching for the essence of life.”

Human rights groups have long warned of a widening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as a result of the Israeli army’s seven-month onslaught, launched in response to the October 7 Hamas-led terror attacks. More than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since May 1, according to the local health ministry.

According to the UN, more than 1.9 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced over the course of the war, with many finding shelter in overcrowded tent camps that could not provide adequate access to sanitation or food.

The entire population of more than 2.2 million people is now at risk of famine, and at least 30 children in Gaza have died from malnutrition and dehydration, according to the Ministry of Health.

A local WCK worker, Ashraf Al Sultan, told CNN on Wednesday that people at the shelter in Deir al-Balah were clearly struggling.

“Since yesterday, after we resumed work, we could see people’s desperation. The people have no food and we are all displaced,” he said.

“The food from (The World Central Kitchen) makes people feel at home. It’s decent food, it’s clean. They also treat people well.”

“I haven’t had a hot meal for a month because the kitchen team was affected. We only had canned food,” Zaki Sobeh, a young boy at the displaced persons site, told CNN on Wednesday after receiving his plate of food.

“I say thank you and may God protect them.”

Human rights groups have repeatedly warned that Israel’s strict restrictions on passage into Gaza are reducing crucial supplies and drastically hampering aid efforts in the Palestinian territory.

In March, United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk warned that Israel’s continued restrictions on aid to Gaza could amount to the war crime of starvation.

Israel says there is “no limit” to the amount of aid that can enter Gaza, but its inspection regime on aid trucks has led to the removal of only a small portion of the amount of food and other supplies that entered Gaza daily before the war. come in now.

Shortly after the deaths of World Central Kitchen workers in April, Israeli officials agreed to open the Erez border crossing into northern Gaza to allow aid deliveries. Food shortages were at their worst there after Israel concentrated its military offensive there in the early days of the war.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described the opening of Erez as “essential” to “increase the volume of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.”

But efforts to increase aid have also repeatedly run into problems. At least 48 aid trucks were blocked on Wednesday after Israeli settlers attacked an aid convoy heading to Gaza via the southern Kerem Shalom border crossing, according to Jordanian authorities.

The US State Department also said on Thursday that an aid delivery that passed through the Erez border crossing earlier this week was temporarily intercepted by Hamas, which controls the isolated enclave, before being retrieved by the United Nations.

CNN’s Jennifer Hansler, Tim Lister, Eugenia Yosef, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Jonny Hallam contributed to this report.