Emergency kitchens in the Gaza war: The challenge of feeding 90,000 displaced people every day

How to feed hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from Israeli troops in Gaza with nothing but the clothes on their backs? The figure of the neighborhood chef is essential to what are known as mobile or improvised cooking points. They are set up with the cooperation of citizens in camping areas, private homes, backyards, gardens, or small businesses. The objective, in view of the fundamental and urgent need for food, is to achieve the greatest proximity to a population that has been living in a war zone for months, is malnourished, has hardly any access to basic resources and experiences serious difficulties in searching for food in areas far from the places where they drop their meager belongings and set up their stall to survive.

The advance of Israeli troops on Rafah, in southern Gaza, and the consequent displacement of a million Gazans to other areas has made operations very difficult, says Rafeek el Madhoun, head of the U.S.-based NGO Rebuilding Alliance in the Strip, during a telephone interview. Faced with a larger number of displaced people, the organization has had to relocate its teams to safer areas, look for new warehouses, and step on the gas to double the number of rations to the current 90,000 hot meals it provides per day.

Until a few days before Israeli tanks arrived in Rafah, the organization had managed to keep 15 care points open in the west of the city (this newspaper has not been able to confirm whether the situation remained stable after the incursion into the urban center). “The bombs were falling very close to our kitchens,” explains Mohamed Hamooda, a nutritionist and one of the NGO’s chief cooks in Rafah, by video conference. One of the main objectives is not to endanger the local population or the volunteers and workers, so, as far as possible, they set up in places they consider safe.

“We go to a new camping area and check what pots and utensils they have. Then we provide them with the food for cooking and the families themselves and the neighborhood chefs get to work,” explains the head of Rebuilding Alliance. “With eight large pots, we can prepare 5,000 servings of rice,” he adds.

For this, the NGO receives food from the United Nations World Food Program. But the military’s arrival in Rafah has triggered “fear and stress” among his teams, says the supervisor. The Israeli bombing that killed seven members of the NGO World Central Kitchen (WCK), founded by Spanish-American chef José Andrés, with whom they collaborate on the ground, in Deir al-Balah on April 1 remains fresh in their memories. “That attack left us all devastated,” El Madhoun admits.

El Madhoun laments there is hardly any meat or chicken and that vegetables have skyrocketed in price. Potatoes, for example, cost 27 shekels ($7.36) a kilo. “These are basic foodstuffs, especially for children,” he notes. What the NGO essentially receives these days from the UN and ends up preparing on the menus are lentils, pasta, rice, vegetable oil, tomato concentrate, and little else.

At least until before Israeli tanks rolled into the city, El Madhoun traveled daily to Rafah from Deir al-Balah, in the center of the enclave, to supervise the emergency kitchens. The 90,000 meals they prepare amount to twice as many as before the Israeli offensive in Rafah was launched. “We have given the order to our teams to redouble the effort and increase our capacity to prepare hot meals in the west and north of Rafah, in the town of Khan Younis, as well as in Al Mawasi,” explains El Madhoun, referring in the latter case to the large encampment area to which Israel is trying to forcibly move Gazans with orders contrary to international law.

On the day this interview was conducted, May 10, the NGO was planning to open two or three new cooking sites. The flow of people coming up from the south, El Madhoun adds, reaches as far as Deir al-Balah. There, they had just set up a kitchen in a camping area with newly settled families around the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ hospital. Their aim is to keep the population eating while moving and settling in these new encampments.

Prices to flee to areas considered safer have also skyrocketed due to the lack of vehicles and fuel, Osama, a 31-year-old local journalist, explains from Rafah via phone messages. He says it is necessary to pay 300 shekels (about $82) for a seat on crowded public transport, and 1,000 ($273) in a car.

“Every day we have to pay more for transportation,” agrees El Madhoun, describing how logistics have been complicated by Israel’s closure of the two border crossings, the one from Israeli territory, Kerem Shalom, and the one from Egypt, near Rafah, the only supply routes from the outside. This is a challenge because the NGO always tries to open its cooking points in safe areas so that the inhabitants do not have to move, but the resources available to them due to the border closure are increasingly strained and the task is becoming more and more complicated, he admits.

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