In early May, nine-year-old Omar Khaled arrived at the nearby community food distribution point, or Tekkya, in northern Gaza holding the small container he carried every day to collect food. Omar and his family have relied completely on aid kitchens to survive in Gaza for seven months, as his dad suffers from a severe illness that has left him unable to move or work. But when Omar arrived that day, workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK), which operates the Tekkya, told him there would be no more food until further notice. He walked home slowly, clutching his empty metal pot. Omar’s mother tells The Progressive she has no idea how she will feed her children.
For Omar and thousands of displaced children across Gaza, the daily trip to the Tekkya had become more than a routine; it was part of survival. Since the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023, these makeshift kitchens have provided a fragile lifeline to families who lost not only their homes but also their incomes, access to markets, and the ability to secure stable food supplies. That lifeline is rapidly disappearing.
World Central Kitchen (CC BY 4.0)
Children wait outside a World Central Kitchen site in Gaza, May 2025.
The Arabic word Tekkya has traditionally referred to charitable kitchens that serve meals to the poor. As Palestinians in the enclave try to survive after two and a half years of Israeli bombardment and amid Israeli siege, the term has come to mean something else entirely. What was once something that signified access to resources now refers to the places where entire families wait anxiously for a single meal a day, uncertain whether any food will be available tomorrow. The smell of cooked rice and beans that used to drift from Tekkya kitchens, which drew long lines of families each day, has dissipated. The pots that were filled with the only nutrients many Palestinians in Gaza could access are now empty.
In May, World Central Kitchen cooking operations came to a partial halt across large areas of Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis in central and southern Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced families without daily meals. The WCK—the largest provider of hot meals in Gaza—announced it would suspend most of its hot meal distribution operations in Gaza, stating the decision was “driven entirely by financial pressure” and did not “reflect any reduction in need on the ground.” The organization reduced the number of daily meals from one million to half a million and cut more than half of its local workforce. According to the organization, WCK has invested more than half a billion dollars in providing meals to Palestinians in Gaza.
“We specialize in emergency food relief, not long-term food security,” the organization stated in the announcement of the reduction. “The long-term responsibility of feeding Gaza cannot rest on the shoulders of one organization alone.”
World Central Kitchen (CC BY 4.0)
Chefs with the World Central Kitchen cook potato stew and pasta in Gaza, July 2025.
The closure of these kitchens has intensified fears of worsening hunger across the enclave, where humanitarian aid remains inconsistent and mass displacement continues to deepen the hunger crisis. The limited food that is available in markets throughout Gaza is sold at inflated prices, making it inaccessible to many families.
In December 2025, four United Nations agencies warned that without sustained expansion of food and agricultural assistance into Gaza, hundreds of thousands of people could slip back into famine conditions Palestinians in the enclave experienced during the war. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification projects that at least 132,000 children under five will suffer from acute malnutrition through June as Israel continues to ban humanitarian aid groups from entering Gaza.
Saher Abu Taha, a displaced resident currently living in Gaza City, says the suspension of the Tekkya kitchens threatens a basic human right: the right to food. He called for urgent intervention from the international community to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches the most vulnerable families in Gaza without impediment.
“We, like everyone else, depend entirely on the Tekkya,” Abu Taha says. “If we don’t get food from it, we cannot find anything to feed our children. Everything in the market is extremely expensive, especially vegetables and frozen foods.”
As aid operations continue to scale back and food supplies diminish, more children will return empty-handed, parents will skip meals, and families will remain trapped between displacement and hunger. For many Palestinians in Gaza, the question is no longer whether life will return to normal. It is whether the next meal will come at all.