What New and Expecting Mothers are Facing in Gaza: “You’re a Good Girl,” Says Likaa Saleh
Manal woke up from a nap in Rafah. “Have you made a poo-poo?” asks her mother, Likaa Saleh, 24, as she opens a flimsy diaper that was hard to find and is several sizes too small.
The 5-month-old begins to cry. Her skin is Peeling because of the tight material of the diaper rubs, and it won’t go away, even though her tush has a rash. “No, no, no,” Saleh soothes her. I will put some cream on you and you’ll no longer be pained. You’re a good girl.
What new and expecting mothers are facing in Gaza? — The case of Rhonda Abd Al-Razeq, a pregnant mother in Deir al Balah, Gaza
That’s the case for Rhonda Abd Al-Razeq, a pregnant 26-year-old who is living at a shelter in Deir al Balah. In the northernmost part of Gaza, she and her husband farm mulberries, onions and potatoes. Over the last several months, they’ve stayed at different shelters, leaving after each one came under fire from Israeli airstrikes, she says. At her current shelter, 60 people are sleeping in the same room.
There’s not enough milk for her, so I can’t teach her to eat or feed her. I don’t sleep at night because I’m thinking all the time. I’m very sad.
“Those who pay the highest price in war are mothers and kids,” says Hiba Tibi, the program director for CARE, an aid organization that helps women and children in Gaza. “They are becoming less and less hopeful. They are giving up.”
“They see in almost all the shelters, babies that are born and dying before even getting registered,” says Tibi. They aren’t counted in life.
Source: ‘Struggle, struggle, struggle.’ What new and expecting mothers are facing in Gaza
The Gaza Health Clinic: What New and Expecting Mothers are Facing in their Pregnancy in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive on Oct. 7
Only about a third of the territory’s hospitals are still partially functioning, since Israel launched its assault on Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel. The Israeli military’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 32,400 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
“It’s really bad and it’s becoming worse and worse every day,” says Maram Badwan, the lead physician at the clinic, who is also displaced from her home. Most of the children and women we treat are in tents and they lack electricity and clean water. She sees many cases of malnutrition and dehydration, as well as other diseases, she and her staff have seen.
There is a limited supplies of medicine and Vitamins for patients at the clinic, but it also gives free echocardiograms. Women come from all over Gaza. For many, it’s the first doctor’s visit in their pregnancy.
Source: ‘Struggle, struggle, struggle.’ What new and expecting mothers are facing in Gaza
The cries of a newborn baby in a crowded urban enclave: a desperate mother and her three young children
She and her family were all affected by the disease, as well as several other people within her family. “If there was cleanliness, would I have gotten hepatitis?” she asks, exasperated. “The water we drink is itself dirty. What would happen if we didn’t get a disease?
While visiting Badwan, Abd Al-Razeq discovered that she was also very sick, and yet the baby’s heartbeat was strong despite her being hypertensive.
Arvind Das, who recently led a team of medics from the International Rescue Committee into Gaza, said that all across the enclave he witnessed women giving birth in overcrowded shelters.
There is no privacy. There is no dignity,” he said, holding back tears. “You have literally 1.5 meters of space, and that’s where pregnant women are meant to deliver the children.”
The noise from Israeli planes and drones makes it hard for Sanad to sleep, she says. So does their crowded living situation: Abdel Hadi, the new baby and her three older children are staying with relatives, a large extended family crammed in together, sleeping three on a mattress.
“Sanad is crying all of the time, no stop,” she says. I can’t afford to buy him enough clothes since his diaper is too big and leaks a lot, but I can afford the hot water to bathe him.
Lkaa is trying to get Manal to eat something. She doesn’t have a lot of money so she has boiled potatoes. With some coaxing, she gets her baby to stop crying and take a soft potato. As Manal stops crying and eats a meal, her constant worry about her daughter’s future is a thing of the past.
Gaza stave off hunger any way they can: A case study of the Tafesh family in the ruined streets of Gaza City
People in the shattered streets of Gaza City buy and sell canned food, small amounts of flour and grain, and household items in makeshift markets.
The Tafesh family goes to the stalls every day for inexpensive eats, but everything is expensive. Most people don’t have an income with no jobs.
The price of rotten-looking potatoes is more than $10 and Tafesh is surprised. The two pounds of rice are no longer less than $2.
Israel launched a heavy bombardment in the north after it was attacked by Hamas. Tafesh was stuck: Most of her family members were in the south, and her husband was away for work. She heard stories of people being killed while trying to evacuate south, so she decided to stay.
Food shortages in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can, a Gazan man tells the Orbital Observatories
Until it ran out, first there was flour. Then we could get wheat, and that ran out. Then corn kernels. Then we tried animal feed. He says that his mother makes pudding with water and starch and he eats it.
According to UNICEF, acute malnutrition has doubled among children under age 2 in the last month. At least 23 children have starved to death, according to Gaza’s health authorities. There aren’t hospitals in most of the north, and experts think the actual number of malnutrition is much higher.
Her husband and several other people were killed in an Israeli airstrike in November when her family hid at a UN school. The airstrike that killed her brother hit the house where she and her children were staying. One of her daughters died in a third airstrike.
Israel began cutting off all supplies in the first two weeks of the war. Under international pressure, it has since allowed some aid in, but nowhere near what’s needed, aid groups say. Israel says it isn’t limiting aid.
With the recent collapse of public order in the north, it has been rare for aid to get there, and people are running out of even last-resort foods such as animal feed.
Source: Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can
Living in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can: A homeless woman’s story of survival in a seawater-boiling storm
She can find plants and weeds, but she forages for them. Then she boils them — sometimes in seawater — to make a soup just to keep the hunger pangs at bay.
“Some of the foods we are now forced to feed our children — may God spare you — I mean the donkeys refuse to eat it,” Saed says. “The animal feed is tasteless. It’s like chewing on wood, and it’s hard to digest.”
The mother of the daughter who suffers from anemia is unsure how much longer she can go on. “If the bombs don’t kill us, the hunger will.”
In Beit Lahia, 59-year-old Marwan Saleh cares for his grandchildren. He says he has lost more than 60 pounds in the last few weeks. Before the war, he used to walk for miles along the beach. Now he says he can’t go more than a quarter mile.
Source: Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can
Help Israel to Keep the Ugly in the Slump: A Case Study of Famine and the Israeli Food Insufficiency
We used to eat the grass and weeds, but then they stopped. We grind the pits of Dates to make a sort of coffee and eat Succulent. “They taste absolutely horrible, but we have to eat it to stay alive.”
There are Israeli soldiers who watch the plants grow near the border. Saleh goes, knowing he could be shot, but there’s nothing else for his family to eat.
“Bring us the aid in a normal way, not from the air or the sea, where the people have to clamber and fight for it.” Help us in a way that is honorable, and not in a bad way.
The report by the world’s leading experts on hunger last week made it clear that Gaza would be ravaged by famine as a shocking 1.1 million people are experiencing food insufficiency.