The bright pink jumper with a picture of Cinderella hangs off Jana’s skinny shoulders as she walks through the northern Gaza moonscape, piles of rubble, dirt and dust all around her. Clutching a large tub in her hand, the 12-year-old is on a mission: find food and water.
Jana Mohammed Khalil Musleh Al-Skeifi and her family say she has been responsible for getting supplies for them all since an Israeli sniper killed her older brother more than a year ago. Her parents are in poor health, so it now falls on her to provide for them.
Sparing her father the strenuous work, the slight girl carried two heavy buckets full of water all the way home, the knuckles of her fingers turned white from the heavy load, jeans soaked from the precious water sloshing about.
Finding food and water became difficult after Israel launched its brutal war in Gaza following the October 7 terror attack by Hamas and its allies. But the situation has become catastrophic since Israel imposed a total blockade on all aid more than 11 weeks ago.
A United Nations-backed report published earlier this month said that one in five people in Gaza are facing starvation as the territory, home to 2.1 million people, edges closer to man-made famine.
Israel said the blockade, along with a new military campaign, is intended to pressure Hamas to release hostages held in the enclave. But many international organizations have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
Getting clean water has been difficult for months because Israel restricts access to water treatment and desalination equipment, claiming that these items can be used to manufacture weapons.
Doctors without Borders, the humanitarian organization, said that more than two-thirds of the 1,700 water and sanitation items it sought to deliver to Gaza between January 2024 and early March 2025 were rejected by Israeli authorities.
“You can barely fill one bucket, because there’s no proper queuing system, and if you wait, you might not get anything. Sometimes we have to go without,” Jana said.
“I sit there for hours just waiting to fill one bucket. It’s an awful feeling.”
‘Drop in the ocean’ of need
The Israeli military announced Sunday it would allow a “basic amount of food” to enter Gaza as it launched its new major offensive in the strip. The reason, the military said, was the fact that a “starvation crisis” in Gaza would “jeopardize the operation.”
The following day, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated Israel had taken the step because its Western allies, including the United States, were threatening to withdraw their support for the country if it allowed Gaza to descend into a famine.
But only five trucks were allowed in on Monday, when humanitarian organizations said 500 a day were required just to feed those who need it the most. UN aid chief Tom Fletcher described the delivery as a “drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed.”
The hunger is becoming catastrophic. The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition since the start of the war.
Jana’s baby niece Janat was one of them, her family says.
‘Everyone was just watching’
But things changed when Janat was six weeks old.
On March 2, Israel imposed its total blockade on Gaza, preventing even the most basic supplies, including baby formula and medicines, from entering the strip.
Aya said that when food became scarce, she began to struggle to breastfeed Janat, who started to lose weight. The baby developed chronic diarrhea, became dehydrated and was soon so poorly that she needed medical attention.
At the same time, Janat’s mother was struggling too, weakened by the lack of food and clean water. Like many new mothers in Gaza in these conditions, she lost her milk – leaving her unable to feed her baby. The UN-backed hunger report said that almost 11,000 pregnant women in Gaza are already at risk of famine, and nearly 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women will need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition over the coming months.
“I pleaded to the whole world to save her. I just wanted someone to save her, to provide the milk she needed. But no one could help. Everyone was just watching,” Janat’s mother said.
But the baby girl died on May 4, before that was possible. At four months old, she was only 2.8 kilograms (6 lb 3 oz), barely more than her birth weight.
Medical evacuations from Gaza have been extremely rare, even more so since Israel restarted military operations after the collapse of the ceasefire in March.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said last week that some 12,000 patients in Gaza need medical evacuation, and that only 123 people have been evacuated since the blockade was imposed in March.
Flicking through photos of Janat, the day after the baby’s death, Jana became teary and upset. “They told us she couldn’t be treated unless she traveled abroad. We waited, they kept saying ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday,’ we waited until she died,” Jana said.
‘I feel like I’ve died’
After 18 months of war, every aspect of Jana’s life is filled with hardship.
She has too little food to eat and water to drink, no school to go to, no safe space to sleep. There is no electricity and the place she calls home is a half-destroyed house in Gaza City. Its walls are charred black from fire.
Jana used to live in a house where water came from a tap and light appeared with the flick of a switch. There was food, there was school, there was a dance performance during which she and her friends got to be the center of attention, wearing matching outfits and dancing as everyone clapped along.
A family video from the event looks like any other taken by proud parents of a child performing in public. It’s a bit shaky, zoomed in on Jana as she hops around.
Watching it amid the destruction, surrounded by bombed-out homes and piles of rubble, the footage looks like it came from a different universe.
Jana’s large family has been decimated by the war. She has lost a brother, a brother-in-law, a cousin and a niece, and is terrified of losing her mother who has thyroid cancer that cannot currently be treated in Gaza.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war over the past 18 months, roughly 4% of the strip’s population. This means that out of every 40 people living in Gaza before the war, one is now dead.
But there is little time to grieve for them when survival takes so much effort.
Hungry children jockey for food
Like many families in Gaza, they ground the pasta into flour to make bread, an attempt to make it last longer. Gaza has long since run out of flour.
The next day, when a nearby community kitchen gets supplies, a large crowd of hungry children assembles within minutes.
They watch the workers’ every move, eagerly awaiting the moment when the food is ready.
It is clear there isn’t enough for everyone, so the children jockey for the best spot, stretching their arms to get their pot as close as they can to the front, desperately trying to get the attention of those distributing the meals. Some are screaming and crying.
Jana is lucky. Two scoops of pasta with watery tomato sauce land in her tub. She looks exhausted and hungry, but happy.
As she walks home with the tub of steaming food, she does not touch it. Not until she gets home where her hungry siblings, nieces and nephews await.
Only then, sharing it with them, does Jana allow herself to tuck in.
