Marwan al-Awadeya and his family are one such family. They have taken to eating the leaves of prickly pear cactuses to ward off hunger.
While the fruit of prickly pear cactuses are commonly eaten around the Mediterranean, the thick leaves are only ever consumed by animals, mashed up in their feed.
"Today, we can (still) find cactus. In a week, the cactus will no longer be available, and we will live on nothing. We will die. I, in approximately one month - and I have a photo - have lost some 30 kilograms this month. One month. I have lost 30 kilograms. Why? Because there is no food. This is our food now in the northern Gaza Strip. There is nothing else. Everything is gone. There is nothing left."
A crane lifts equipment from the ruins of Kamel Ajour's smashed out bakery.
The destruction here underscores one reason starving people are reduced to eating raw cactus leaves in the enclave.
Ajour's business is not alone, most bakeries in the area lie in rubble.
Bread will be critical to any sustained effort to relieve Palestinian hunger.
One in six children in northern Gaza is wasting from malnutrition.
People have had to bake bread themselves as best they can over fires made with wood salvaged from ruined buildings.
They make bread from animal feed and birdseed. Most say they can only eat once a day at most.
Aid is flowing into southern parts of the Gaza Strip, though too slowly to avert a hunger crisis even there.
And it barely makes it to northern areas that are further from the main border crossing and only accessible through more active battle fronts.
Israel has said the failure to get enough aid into Gaza to meet humanitarian needs is due to U.N. distribution failures.
