A two-month cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which ended March 18, paved the way for humanitarian aid into Gaza, including a Mennonite Central Committee shipment of food for 4,000 families, plus comforters and hygiene supplies.

“When I saw the comforter, I wanted to hold it in my arms and keep my children warm with it,” said Khayria, 60 years old, whose 11 children and 25 grandchildren are living with her in a bombed-out house. “At night, your heart feels like it’s going to stop because of the cold.”

In February, Khayria (her full name is not used for her security) tended a cooking pot of greens over an open fire. The smoke could escape because one wall of her house was gone, opening the one remaining room to the outdoors.

Through the opening, Khayria could see broken-down buildings and rubble where her relatives once lived. Twenty of them have died since the Israeli military’s invasion in 2023.

She has tried to make the room look like a home by hanging pictures on a concrete wall riddled with bullet holes.

Khayria was relieved to be home, even if only in the remnants of her house. For much of the last 18 months, her family had moved around Gaza together to escape the Israeli military’s air and ground assault.

Al-Najd Developmental Forum, an MCC partner, distributed goods to families like Khayria’s.

In addition to three comforters, Al-Najd gave her a box of food and a relief kit, a five-gallon bucket of hygiene supplies. The comforters and supplies were made or donated by MCC volunteers. The food was funded from MCC’s account at the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, with matching funds from the Government of Canada and the Humanitarian Coalition.

“This will help me a lot,” Khayria said, noting that the food and comforters were most needed. “The bucket will help us with the water delivery. The soap will help us to bathe or wash.”

Many other organizations brought supplies into Gaza during the cease-fire. Before the cease-fire, many couldn’t deliver supplies because of arbitrary restrictions on aid by Israel.

“It was a welcome relief to have the eight-week pause and have a flood of all of this aid getting in at the same time,” said Seth Malone, MCC representative for Jordan, Palestine and Israel, with his wife, Sarah Funkhouser.

The cease-fire brought a few bright spots to Khayria’s family after they moved back to their damaged house.

“We received a parcel that contains food for my children and me. Thank God for this parcel,” she said. Rice, ­cereal, sardines and cans of meat are very expensive.

The food package also included a container of chocolate spread.

“The children in Gaza have gone without school, playtime, access to their regular routines for nearly a year and a half,” said Annie Loewen, MCC interim disaster response director. “We’re providing a small treat to give them a sense of a normal childhood, to remind them that there is still a bit of joy among the confusion and displacement they see every day.”

Khayria says the children were delighted with the sweetness. One girl said, “‘Spread out a lot, Granny.’”

The comforters reminded Khayria of how her life used to be. The house with one remaining room is the third their family has built. The first two were destroyed by previous Israeli invasions.

“I don’t know what kind of life this world has brought us. It is a tragedy,” she said. “The young people were doing well, but now they are too ­broken. They became very angry, and you can’t talk to them because of what they have witnessed, from distress.”

She is enduring, she said, because God is with her.

“What helped me is praising God,” she said. “May God be kind to us.”

She hopes that their family can rebuild their house, that she will see all her children get married and that happiness will return.

In early March, Israel closed Gaza’s crossings to humanitarian aid. On March 18, Israel broke the cease-fire by launching a new air and ground campaign in Gaza, including in the area where Khayria and her family were living.

On March 25, MCC learned that Khayria and her family were forced to flee again. They headed to the beach along the Mediterranean, taking nothing with them, just like the first time they were forced from their home in 2023.

“A permanent cease-fire is the only way forward,” Malone said. “Look what we can do when Israel is not actively bombing people.”

Malone said they are working to get MCC’s next shipment of food into Gaza for 4,000 families. The shipment is inspected and ready to go when circumstances change.