Residents have resorted to foraging for wild plants to survive. After her husband was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in June, Taghreed al-Habeel, 42, is the sole provider for her family of seven. “We have no other choice,” she told Drop Site. “We used to live on canned food, but it’s all gone. We can’t afford vegetables from the market because of the insane prices. Now we search for wild plants like mallow and purslane just to fill our children’s bellies," she said. “My kids ask me when we’ll eat chicken or meat again, and I have no answer.”

The suffocating siege has driven people to seek out other unconventional sources of food. After his home was destroyed in the war, Ali Musbah, a young man displaced to a tent near the coast west of Gaza City, recently came upon a sea turtle washed ashore by the waves. Desperation led him to slaughter and eat it.

“The turtle weighed about 50 kilograms,” Musbah told Drop Site. “I managed to get around 5 to 6 kilograms of meat from it. My wife cooked it like shawarma, and we shared the food with five other starving displaced families.”

Musbah used to work as a fisherman before the war. “We used to catch fresh fish, shrimp, and squid. Now, we only dream about them,” he said. “With fishing banned and the crossings closed, all we have left are canned foods filled with preservatives that have wrecked our health.”

“I know the turtle might be an endangered species,” he added. “But hunger is crueler than guilt. I didn’t choose this path—it was forced on us.”