Two Years of War, Deprivation and Loss: Gaza’s Families Endure the Unimaginable

October 03, 2025

Nearly two years since the horrific Hamas attack on Israel killed over 1,100 people and ignited war in Gaza, families in Gaza remain trapped in an endless cycle of starvation and violence. With famine confirmed, essential infrastructure in ruins, and a new Israeli military offensive pushing 1 million people south, survival is a daily struggle amid what the International Association of Genocide Scholars and a United Nations Commission of Inquiry recently deemed is genocide. 

Gaza has become a hellscape: More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 160,000 injured. Untold numbers of people remain entombed under the rubble. Nearly the entire population is facing extreme hunger as malnutrition claims lives daily and parents spend their days in pursuit of anything to nourish their families. The remaining hospitals that haven’t been destroyed can barely function. Clean water is scarce and disease and waterborne illness are spreading. The territory lies in waste, with 90% of homes damaged or destroyed and families displaced repeatedly with no safe refuge. Children suffer the worst — from hunger, trauma, and a future that is being erased.   
 
Since October 2023, Mercy Corps and its local partners have reached more than 385,000 people with food, clean water, hygiene supplies, shelter materials, cash, and psychosocial support. Yet ongoing access restrictions are choking off humanitarian response and have left us trying desperately to get permission to bring in items essential to survival. Israel continues to block or delay the entry of humanitarian items while lives hang in the balance just miles from the border.  

Mercy Corps Chief Executive Officer, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, says:  

“Every day, people in Gaza are dying from bombardment, hunger, and disease while the world watches. For two years, families have endured relentless loss of loved ones, of homes, of safety, and of the simple dignity of daily life. They are losing what little hope in humanity they have left. Children are growing up knowing nothing but fear and deprivation, while parents make impossible choices just to try to keep them alive.  

“The current restrictions prevent us from helping at the scale needed and it is unbearable to stand by and watch this catastrophe unfold. It is an entirely man-made crisis that can be stopped. We urgently call on the international community, all parties to the conflict, and all those with influence to act now: to secure an immediate and lasting ceasefire; to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure as well as aid workers; to restore essential services; to release the hostages to their families; and to guarantee safe, sustained humanitarian access. Those who have endured unrelenting suffering over the past two years deserve more than symbolic gestures: they need concrete action now to give them a chance to survive, rebuild their lives, and recover hope for the future.”  

Mays, a Mercy Corps team member in Gaza, says: 

“Over the last two years, conditions on the ground in Gaza have deteriorated to an unspeakable level. Not a minute goes by without the sound of drones and explosions in the background — the soundtrack of loved ones being killed and dreams being erased. There is no one in Gaza who has not lost a loved one to this violence. Families face constant forced displacement, but there is nowhere safe to go.” 

“The entire strip faces mass starvation and famine, most families eat at most one meal a day, with parents sacrificing their food for their children. Families are having to ration their water, forced to choose between having water for their children to drink or to bathe in. Humanity is failing Gaza.” 

Areej, a Mercy Corps team member in Gaza, says: 

 “Two years filled with fear, hunger, and uncertainty, never knowing what tomorrow would bring or when the nightmare would end. We longed for the simple right to rest, to sleep peacefully without rockets, shelling, or the deafening roar of aircraft above us. But what broke me most was not hunger or fear, it was psychological torment.” 

 Zain, a Mercy Corps team member in Gaza, says: 

 “I don’t think we have the privilege of thinking about tomorrow. Tomorrow, for me, feels featureless — blank. I still don’t feel like the person I was before. My priorities have shifted; my plans are on hold. It’s as if I can’t even imagine a tomorrow until this madness ends. Every plan, every dream feels irrelevant.”  

Since October 2023, Mercy Corps and our local partners have reached over 385,000 people in Gaza with emergency support, including food, cash, hygiene supplies, clean water, shelter kits, and psychosocial assistance. We are actively providing safe drinking water to displaced families and are poised to deliver thousands more kits and supplies, which currently remain blocked. We are ready to deliver lifesaving assistance to over 160,000 people — and to support millions more through our partners — as soon as borders open and our supplies are permitted to enter.  

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