Palestinians turn to communal ovens to bake bread in Gaza

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Every morning, Azza Ashour kneads dough for her five children before carrying it to a communal oven at the school where her family has been sheltering.

The 31-year-old mother has little money, no regular income and no husband at home. She explained that he has been detained by the Israeli army since May 2024, one of thousands of Palestinians locked away without trial by Israel.

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Azza makes the dough stretch as far as possible, sometimes filling the bread with cheese or a little chocolate. If there is little else to feed the children, the bread itself becomes the meal.

“One piece of dough can keep my children going for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she said.

Azza is from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, an area destroyed by Israel during its genocidal war. The family was first displaced to southern Gaza, before eventually settling at Cairo School in western Gaza City. It has been turned into a displacement centre where they have lived for around a year.

She is now responsible for managing the household and caring for all five children.

“I have been managing a family on my own for three years,” she said. “It’s a huge responsibility.”

Her family receives canned food assistance from the World Food Programme, but sometimes only once a month or every two months.

With little money for food and no income of her own, bread has become central to how she feeds her children.

The cost of cooking is another obstacle. Azza says she cannot afford to regularly buy firewood or fuel, which has become too expensive for her family.

That’s where the communal oven comes in. Supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), it allows the displaced to bake their dough for free.

Before the oven, Azza says buying bread could cost her about 15 shekels ($5) a day.

“Honestly, this oven is the most important thing,” she said. “Bread is so valuable to us.”

Displaced women turn to communal ovens to bake bread as the cost of cooking fuel and firewood continues to rise, sometimes costing more than the food itself [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

From feeding children to earning for them

A few steps from where Azza collects her bread, Randa Adwan is working as a baker.

The 38-year-old mother of seven wakes up at about 5:30am to prepare dough for her children before they leave for school. By 7am, she begins her shift at the oven, baking for families until noon.

She pauses, wiping her face with a towel. The heat and the hours of work are taking their toll.

“It is tiring. It really is tiring,” she said. “I go home and sleep. My hands hurt, my back hurts, I have headaches. It is exhausting.”

Randa has a bachelor’s degree in education. She never imagined that she would one day find herself working at a communal oven, baking bread for displaced families.

But the circumstances of the war left her with little choice, she said.

Working at the bakery is a privilege. With few jobs available in Gaza and Palestinians desperate for any kind of income, bakers are selected through a lottery for a one month work placement.

This is Randa’s second time being chosen and she earns 70 shekels ($23) a day.

“It is good for us because there is no money,” she said. “Firewood is expensive, the situation is difficult and thank God I was selected. At least I have something to spend on my children.”

Before the war, Randa’s husband ran a shop and supported her and their seven children. Now he is unemployed and Randa has had to take on the responsibility.

“Now I have to provide everything for me and my children… food, clothes, water, everything,” she said.

Randa Adwan works at a communal oven at a school shelter in Gaza, baking bread for displaced families [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

A bakery inside a shelter

The oven at Cairo School is part of an ICRC programme supporting communal ovens in schools and shelters across Gaza.

At the shelter, 220 households live permanently and six ovens operate there. Nearby communities can also access the service.

The ICRC pays for the ovens and the wages of the workers who operate them. Families prepare their dough and bring it to be baked between 7am and noon.

Each oven can produce up to 200 loaves a day, according to the ICRC.

Across Gaza, the organisation supports 179 communal ovens. From January to June, they produced 9.2 million loaves for about 44,000 people.

“For people that have no place to stay, they have no purchasing power to buy necessities in the market,” said Matthew Manguet, the ICRC’s Livelihoods Manager.

“Even the goods that are available in the market are quite costly, so they cannot afford them.”

The project emerged during the war for displaced people in need.

“During the conflict, there was a lack of access to bread and people, due to displacement, didn’t have the space to cook their own food,” Manguet said. “They don’t have access to cooking fuel, firewood.”

The ovens also provide a small source of paid work for women such as Randa, at a time when traditional sources of income have been disrupted.

The communal oven burns firewood, sometimes mixed with used cooking oil, to help fuel the flames and keep the oven hot [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]

Manguet said more than 80 percent of people in Gaza have no job, while access to agriculture and fishing – important sources of livelihoods before the crisis – remains limited as a result of Israeli restrictions and damage inflicted during the war.

The demand for the ovens is also changing as displacement continues. Manguet said the ICRC has been increasing the number of ovens across Gaza as more families arrive at shelters.

“We’re even increasing the number of ovens across the Strip based on the number of people that continue to be displaced,” he said. “So we don’t see a decrease, at least in the near future.”

For the ICRC, the ovens are only one response to needs that remain much larger than the programme itself.

“It’s a small drop in the ocean,” Manguet said. “But it makes a difference.”

For families living in small tents with little space to cook, access to an oven can determine whether the food they have can become a meal.

Back at the school, that difference is measured in dough, bread and the hours women spend making both possible.

Randa returns to her tent after each shift to her seven children, trying to meet their needs with what little she earns.

She says families here are all living through the same struggle, trying to get through each day and secure even the most basic food and water.

“Any initiative that helps improve our lives means a lot to us. Life is very difficult and displacement is painful. There are so many things we need just to live.”