By Hiba Yazbek NYTimes News Service
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JERUSALEM — One day after Israel began halting the entry of all goods and humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip, Palestinians there are already feeling the effects of the sweeping measure, with prices of essential goods on the rise.

“It was a complete shock,” Iman Saber, a 24-year-old nurse from northern Gaza, said of Israel’s decision on Sunday to block aid and commercial shipments.

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Already, said Saber, who has been living in a tent with her father, a cancer patient, and her mother and sister, prices for sugar, oil and chicken have gone up, and hopes raised by the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have proved fleeting.

“We couldn’t wait for shops to reopen and prices to drop, to feel some relief,” Saber said in a phone interview. “But now everything is becoming expensive again.”

Israel’s halt on goods and aid, including fuel, was aimed at pressuring Hamas into accepting its new proposal for extending the ceasefire, which paused the war in Gaza after 15 months of fighting and has since expired.

Hours before the border closure was announced, Israel proposed a seven-week extension during which Hamas would have to release half the remaining hostages seized during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war.

The United Nations and several aid groups sounded the alarm over Israel’s decision to block the supply shipments.

“Humanitarian aid is not a bargaining chip for applying pressure on parties,” the aid group Oxfam said in a statement, calling Israel’s decision “a reckless act of collective punishment, explicitly prohibited under international humanitarian law.”

Israeli officials have said that the government believes that the aid and goods that have entered Gaza in recent months meant there were enough supplies for several more months.

But in Israel, five nonprofit organizations filed a motion to the High Court of Justice calling for an interim order barring the government from cutting off the supply of aid to

On Monday, the Gaza Interior Ministry urged people to report price increases in markets and shops, as well as any merchants who appeared to be trying to turn the situation to their advantage. A day earlier, the ministry said it would take “strict measures against anyone who raises prices.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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