These Palestinian mothers in Gaza gave birth Oct. 7. Their babies have known only war

AN NUŞAYRĀT – Rockets streaked during the morning sky in Gaza on Oct. 7 as Amal Al-Taweel moved quickly to the sanatorium in the within reach Nuseirat refugee camp, already in exertions. After a troublesome birth, she and her husband, Mustafa, in any case were given to carry Ali, the kid they spent 3 years looking to have.

Rola Saqer’s water broke that day as she sheltered from Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahia, a Gaza the city close to the place Hamas militants streamed around the border hours previous in the assault that kicked off the war. She and her husband, Mohammed Zaqout, have been looking to have a kid for 5 years, and no longer even the terrifying explosions throughout would prevent them from going to the sanatorium to have their child that evening. Saqer gave birth to Masa, a reputation that suggests diamond in Arabic.

The households emerged from the sanatorium to a modified international. On the babies’ 2d day of existence, Israel declared war on Hamas and its fighter jets swooped over the neighborhoods the place Ali and Masa have been intended to develop up. In the six months for the reason that youngsters have been born, the {couples} have skilled the rigors of early parenthood in opposition to the backdrop of a brutal battle.

The households’ properties have been leveled via airstrikes, and they have had no dependable refuge and scant get admission to to scientific remedy and child provides. The babies are hungry, and regardless of all the plans the {couples} made sooner than the war, they concern the lives they’d was hoping to provide their youngsters is long past.

“I was preparing him for another life, a beautiful one, but war changed all of these features,” Amal Al-Taweel informed The Associated Press on Wednesday. “We barely live day by day, and we don’t know what will happen. There is no planning.”

Saqer recalled the hope she had before the war.

“This is my only daughter,” she said, rocking Masa gently in a cradle. “I prepared many things and clothes for her. I bought her a closet a week before the war. I was also planning her birthdays and everything. The war came and destroyed everything.”

FROM NUSEIRAT TO RAFAH

The Al-Taweel family spent the first days of Ali’s life going between their home and relatives’ houses in search of safety. Nearby buildings kept being struck — first one next to Amal’s sister’s home, and then one next to her parents’ place.

As the family sheltered at home on Oct. 20, Israeli authorities issued an evacuation order warning that a strike was imminent and residents had 10 minutes to leave.

“I had to evacuate. I couldn’t take anything; no IDs, no university certificates, no clothes for my child — nothing,” Amal Al-Taweel said. “Even milk, diapers, and toys that I bought for my child.”

The family found temporary refuge at Amal’s parents’ house in central Gaza, where 15 family members took shelter.

Not far away, Saqer, her husband and daughter crammed into a relative’s two-bedroom house where more than 80 members of her extended family were staying. It became so crowded, she said, that her male relatives built a tent outside so that the women and children could sleep more comfortably indoors.

As Israeli ground troops advanced on central Gaza in December, both young families headed Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, which is now home to hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.

TENT CAMPS, NO FOOD

Like many who have sought refuge in overcrowded Rafah, the Al-Taweel family lived in a tent, where they stayed for over a month.

“It was the worst experience of my life; the worst conditions I have ever lived in,” Amal Al-Taweel said.

Israel has severely restricted aid deliveries of food, water, medicine and other supplies into Gaza during the war, which began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages.

Israel has exacted a terrible toll: More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials whose death count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and fighters. Israel’s offensive has pushed Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, displacing over 80% of the population and leaving more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation.

Ali, who was diagnosed with gastroenteritis before the family fled to Rafah, had chronic vomiting and diarrhea — signs of malnutrition that the U.N.’s main health agency says are now common in one of every six young Gazan children. He is underweight, at just 5 kilograms (11 pounds).

“I can’t even feed myself to properly feed my child,” said Amal Al-Taweel. “The boy is losing more weight than he gains.”

His parents fretted about the rashes on his face, trying to shield him from near-constant sun exposure in the tent.

Mustafa Al-Taweel spent months waiting tables at a Gaza City cafe to save up for baby food, toys and clothes. Now, he can’t buy his son even the simplest foods in Rafah. The war has brought shortages of the most basic necessities, with diapers and formula hard to find or unaffordable. They’ve had to rely on canned food provided by the U.N.

“His father was working every day to provide him with milk, diapers, and many other things he needed,” said Amal Al-Taweel. “Even the toys are gone. There’s nothing we can afford to provide him.”

Needing help, the Al-Taweels decided to return to Amal’s parents’ home in Nuseirat in February.

Not far from where the Al-Taweels lived in Rafah, Masa and her parents found a spot in the Shaboura refugee camp. They lived in a small tent the couple made by stitching together flour bags, Saqer said.

Muddy water pooled around the tent when it rained, and the area always smelled of sewage. Doing anything involved waiting in line, meaning a trip to the bathroom could take hours.

Masa grew sick. Her skin turned yellowish and she seemed to have a perpetual fever, with sweat beading on her small forehead. Saqer tried to breastfeed but couldn’t produce milk because she, too, was malnourished. Sores broke out across her breasts.

“Even when I endure the pain and try to breastfeed my daughter, what she drinks is blood, not milk,” she said.

Desperate, Saqer sold aid packets the family received from the U.N. to buy formula for Masa. Eventually, she decided to go back to Nuseirat to seek medical treatment for her daughter, leaving her husband behind to mind their tent and setting off in a donkey-pulled cart.

BACK TO NUSEIRAT

Both mothers tried their luck at the Al-Aqsa hospital once they arrived in Central Gaza. Saqer was lucky — doctors there told her that Masa had a virus and gave the baby medicine.

But they told Amal that Ali needed surgery for a hernia that they couldn’t perform. Like most other Gaza hospitals, Al-Aqsa is only conducting life-saving surgeries. After nearly six months of war, Gaza’s health sector has been decimated. Only 10 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still partially functioning. The rest have either shut down or are barely functioning because they ran out of fuel and medicine, were raided by Israeli troops or were damaged by fighting.

As the families ponder the future, they can’t imagine that their babies’ lives will be close to what they had envisioned. Saqer said that even if her family were able to return to their home in northern Gaza, they would find only rubble where their house once stood.

“The identical I suffered in Rafah; I can undergo in the north,” she said. “All of our lives shall be spent in a tent. It will indubitably be a difficult existence.”