Inside her tent in the “Al-Samedeen” displacement camp west of Gaza City, 32-year-old Sanaa Halawa sits with her hand on her swollen belly, now in her eighth month of pregnancy. She contemplates the fate of her unborn baby, hoping he will be born alive, yet fearing he may be born amid the bombardment — or never be born at all.
“Every day I wake up and ask myself: Will I live long enough to give birth? Will this child get to let out his first cry, or will he suffocate inside me before he ever sees the light?” Halawa says, trying to dispel her fears.
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Halawa was displaced three months ago from her home in Gaza’s eastern Shuja’iya neighborhood after Israeli warplanes completely destroyed it. She was in her fifth month of pregnancy at the time and was forced to flee on foot with her husband and three children under heavy bombardment. On the way, a shell landed nearby, knocking her to the ground violently.
“I screamed and fell. I couldn’t move. All I could think in that moment was that I would die with my baby inside me, and that our burial would be a mass grave without a farewell.”
Halawa suffers from gestational diabetes and was supposed to follow up at Al-Shifa Hospital, but she could not reach it due to the difficulty of transportation for pregnant women.
“I went once to a field hospital and begged the doctor to examine me. He told me: There is no ultrasound machine, no medication for diabetes, go back to your tent and wait for delivery. Delivery? On what ground? And under which sky?” she says with bitterness.
“I am dying slowly. I feel contractions, sometimes I see blood. I can’t sleep from the pain and fear. No milk, no food, no medicine — only silence and bombs.”
The closer the delivery date, the greater Halawa’s terror. “I’ve heard of women giving birth in tents whose babies died because no one could help them. If my baby comes to life, will he find an incubator? Or will he suffocate and die before my eyes?”
“All I want is for my baby to be born alive, and for me to hear his cry — not the sound of bombs. I want to live. Is that too much to ask?”
“I Bled on the Road Without Care”
In a small, partially destroyed room west of Gaza City’s Al-Rimal neighborhood, 27-year-old Iman Saleem sits wearing a loose black dress and a white headscarf stained with dust from the bombardment. She clutches a photo of an unborn baby.
Iman was six months pregnant when she was forced to flee with her husband and young daughter from Gaza’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, leaving behind their home, memories, and dreams of motherhood — shattered on the road of death.
“I only wanted to give birth in peace… to hear my baby’s heartbeat, not the roar of bombs, to choose clothes for him — not to search for a tiny shroud,” she says.
Al-Zaytoun was one of the most heavily bombed neighborhoods in Gaza after the war began in October 2023. On the morning of their displacement, a shell fell just meters from their home, shattering the windows and partially collapsing the roof.
“I felt my heart explode. I held my belly and screamed. I thought only of my baby — was he hurt? Did he survive?” she recalls the first moment of terror that would change her fate.
Her husband grabbed a small bag, and they left on foot with hundreds of families heading west toward Al-Rimal. The road was filled with rubble, smoke, and corpses. While walking, she felt sharp pain in her lower abdomen, followed by sudden bleeding.
“There was no doctor, no ambulance, no water. I bled on the road and no one asked about me.”
“I miscarried my baby while lying on the ground — no medicine, no doctor, no mercy. I felt my soul leave with him,” she says, pointing to a spot on the ground where the miscarriage happened.
Her case was never recorded in any hospital, and she received no treatment. Days later, her body began to deteriorate from untreated pain and infection.
Iman had hoped her baby would be a boy named “Ahmad,” after her late father. She had already started sewing clothes for him by hand.
“Ahmad never came. I didn’t hold him, I didn’t kiss him. Wars don’t leave us children — they only give us graves,” she says, gripping a piece of fabric she had sewn for her unborn child.
Dr. Salah Abdul Ati, head of the International Commission to Support Palestinians’ Rights (ICSPR), warned of an unprecedented health and humanitarian catastrophe threatening the lives of 55,000 pregnant women in Gaza, amid the ongoing Israeli assault and tightened blockade that has led to the total collapse of the health system.
He stated that about one-third of pregnant women in Gaza have high-risk pregnancies and face the danger of giving birth without any medical care or equipped hospitals, putting their lives and their newborns at immediate risk of death.
“Most births today are taking place in tents, destroyed homes, or in the streets, with no medical supplies, fuel shortages, and absent healthcare staff,” he said.
A factsheet released by the Commission revealed that Gaza records around 130 births daily, over a quarter of them by cesarean section — often in unsafe conditions due to shortages in staff and equipment.
In the first half of 2025 alone, there were 17,000 recorded births, including 2,600 miscarriages and 220 stillbirths, in addition to 21 newborns dying within their first hours of life.
There were also 67 cases of congenital malformations, most notably the case of baby “Malak Al-Qanoo,” born without a brain after her mother was exposed to radiation from the bombardment. Over 2,500 newborns were admitted to incubators, 1,600 babies were born underweight, and 1,460 premature births were recorded.
Abdul Ati further noted that pregnant women are living in tragic psychological conditions, with the complete absence of psychological and social services after specialized centers were destroyed and medical staff displaced.
Between 10% and 20% of pregnant and breastfeeding women suffer from severe malnutrition, while 21 nutrition treatment centers for children have been shut down.
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