Gaza’s new year begins with a struggle for survival and dignity | Israel-Palestine conflict

Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat, Gaza Strip – In her tent made of cloth sheets with a roof lined in white plastic tarp, Sanaa Issa tries to steal a quiet second along with her daughters.

Sanaa spoke to Al Jazeera because the new year approached, and with a ceasefire formally in place in Gaza. However, mendacity on a moist blanket in a tent with rain pouring down, Sanaa doesn’t have an enormous quantity to be constructive about.

“We didn’t know whether or not responsible the battle, the chilly, or the starvation. We’re transferring from one disaster to a different,” Sanaa instructed Al Jazeera, describing a harsh yr she, and different displaced Palestinians like her, have confronted within the Gaza Strip.

Amid worsening humanitarian situations, the once-ambitious hopes of Palestinians in Gaza, goals of a greater future, prosperity, and reconstruction, are gone. Of their place are fundamental human wants: securing flour, meals and water, acquiring tents to protect them from the chilly, accessing medical care, and easily surviving bombardments.

For Palestinians like Sanaa, hope for the brand new yr has been lowered to a each day battle for survival.

Sanaa is a 41-year-old mom of seven, who has been solely answerable for elevating her youngsters after her husband was killed in an Israeli strike in November 2024, on the finish of the primary yr of Israel’s genocidal battle on Gaza.

“Duty for the kids, displacement, securing foods and drinks, making robust choices right here and there. Every little thing was required of me without delay,” Sanaa, who fled along with her household from al-Bureij to Deir el-Balah, each in central Gaza, mentioned.

Sanaa’s greatest problem in 2025 was securing “a loaf of bread” and getting her palms on even a kilogram of flour on daily basis for her household.

“Through the famine, I slept and wakened with one want: to get sufficient bread for the day. I felt I used to be dying whereas my youngsters had been ravenous earlier than me, and I might do nothing,” she mentioned bitterly.

The seek for flour ultimately noticed Sanaa resolve to go to the US-backed GHF support distribution factors that opened on the finish of Could throughout Gaza.

“At first, I used to be scared and hesitant, however the starvation we reside by way of can power you to do belongings you by no means imagined,” Sanaa mentioned, describing her weekly visits to the help factors.

Visiting the websites, which the US and Israel supported as alternate options to long-established support organisations, was inherently harmful. Greater than 2,000 Palestinians had been killed in and round GHF websites, in keeping with the United Nations, earlier than the GHF formally ended its mission in late November.

However going to the websites wasn’t only a danger to Sanaa’s life, it was a path that “took away her dignity”, leaving lasting scars.

On one event, Sanaa was hit by shrapnel in her arm whereas ready for support on the Netzarim distribution level in central Gaza, and her 17-year-old daughter was injured within the chest on the Morag level east of Rafah.

However her accidents didn’t cease her from making an attempt once more, though she started to go alone, leaving her youngsters behind in relative security.

Desperation

The battle in Gaza led to extreme interruptions in meals and humanitarian support, the final of which started in late March 2025, ultimately resulting in the declaration of a famine. It continued till October 2025, progressively easing after the ceasefire announcement.

Throughout this era, the United Nations formally declared a state of famine, confirming that components of Gaza had entered catastrophic starvation phases, with acute shortages in meals, water, and drugs, and excessive charges of malnutrition amongst youngsters and pregnant ladies.

Hundreds of residents needed to seek for meals utilizing harmful strategies, together with by ready for lengthy hours on the GHF websites.

“Starvation lasted a very long time; it wasn’t a day or two, so I needed to discover a resolution,” Sanaa mentioned. “Every time, folks crowded of their a whole lot of 1000’s. Some would spend the evening there, a whole lot of 1000’s of displaced folks – males, ladies, youngsters, young and old.”

“The scenes had been completely humiliating. Bombing and heavy gunfire on everybody, to not point out the pushing and combating amongst folks over support.”

The crowds meant that Sanaa typically returned to her tent empty-handed, however the uncommon occasions she introduced again a number of kilos of flour felt like “a pageant”, she recalled.

“One time, I acquired 5 kilos [11 pounds] of flour. I cried with pleasure returning to my youngsters, who hadn’t tasted bread for days,” she added.

Sanaa divided the 5 kilos over two weeks, generally mixing it with floor lentils or pasta dough. “We wished to recite a spell over the flour so it might multiply,” she mentioned with darkish humour.

A heavy silence adopted as Sanaa adjusted the plastic tarp over her tent towards the robust wind, then mentioned:

“We witnessed humiliation past measure? All this for what? For a loaf of bread!” she added with tearful eyes. “If we had been animals, maybe they might have felt extra pity for us.”

Regardless of the hardships she has endured and continues to face, Sanaa has not misplaced hope or her prayers for Gaza’s future.

“Two years are sufficient. Every year has been more durable than the earlier one, and we’re nonetheless on this spiral,” she added. “We would like correct tents to shelter us in winter, a gasoline cylinder to prepare dinner as a substitute of burning wooden, we wish life and reconstruction.”

“Our fundamental rights have turn out to be distant needs at yr’s finish.”

The one survivor

Sanaa’s husband was one of many greater than 71,250 Palestinians killed by Israel through the battle.

Twenty-year-old Batoul Abu Shawish can rely her father, mom, two brothers and two sisters – her entire speedy household – amongst that quantity.

Batoul comes into the brand new yr wishing for just one factor: to be along with her household.

Her heartbreaking loss got here only a month earlier than the top of the yr, on November 22.

Regardless of the ceasefire, an Israeli bomb struck the house her household had fled to in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

“I used to be sitting with my two sisters. My brothers had been of their room, my father had simply returned from outdoors, and my mom was making ready meals within the kitchen,” she recalled, eyes vacant, describing the day.

“Straight away, every thing turned to darkness and thick mud. I didn’t realise what was taking place round me, not even that it was bombing, as a result of shock,” Batoul added, as she stood subsequent to the ruins of her destroyed house.

She was trapped beneath the particles of the destroyed house for about an hour, unable to maneuver, calling for assist from anybody close by.

“I couldn’t consider what was taking place. I needed I had been lifeless, unaware, making an attempt to flee the considered what had occurred to my household,” Batoul mentioned.

“I known as for them one after the other, and there was no sound. My mom, father, siblings, nobody.”

After being rescued, she was discovered to have extreme accidents to her hand and was instantly transferred to hospital.

“I used to be positioned on a stretcher above extracted our bodies, lined in sheets. I panicked and requested my uncle who was with me: ‘Who’re these folks?’ He mentioned they had been from the home subsequent to ours,” she recalled.

As quickly as Batoul arrived on the hospital, she was rushed into emergency surgical procedure on her hand earlier than she might find out about what had occurred to her household.

“I stored asking everybody, ‘The place is my mother? The place is my dad?’ They instructed me they had been high quality, simply injured in different departments.”

“I didn’t consider them,” Batoul added, “however I used to be additionally afraid to name them liars.”

The next day, her uncles broke the information to Batoul that she had misplaced her mom and siblings. Her father, they instructed her, was nonetheless in crucial situation within the intensive care unit.

“They gathered round me, and so they had been all crying. I understood by myself,” she mentioned.

“I broke down, crying in disbelief, then mentioned goodbye to them one after the other earlier than the funeral.”

Batoul’s father later succumbed to his accidents three days after the incident, leaving her alone to face her grief.

“I used to go to the ICU on daily basis and whisper in my father’s ear, asking him to get up once more, for me and for himself, however he was utterly unconscious,” Batoul mentioned as she scrolled by way of pictures of her father on her cell phone.

“When he died, it felt as if the world had gone utterly darkish earlier than my eyes.”

‘The place is the ceasefire?’

Israel mentioned that it performed the strikes in Nuseirat in response to an alleged gunman crossing into Israel-held territory in Gaza, though it’s unclear why civilian houses in Nuseirat had been due to this fact focused.

In response to Gaza’s Authorities Media Workplace and the Ministry of Well being, round 2,613 Palestinian households had been utterly worn out through the battle on the Gaza Strip up till the announcement of the ceasefire in October 2025.

These households had all of their members killed, and their names erased from the civil registry.

The identical figures point out that roughly 5,943 households had been left with solely a single surviving member after the remainder had been killed, an agonising reflection of the dimensions of social and human loss attributable to the battle.

These figures could change as documentation continues and our bodies are recovered from beneath the rubble.

For Batoul, her household was something however extraordinary; they had been recognized for his or her deep bond and love for each other.

“My father was deeply connected to my mom and by no means hid his love for her in entrance of anybody, and that mirrored on all of us.”

“My mom was my closest pal, and my siblings liked one another past phrases. Our house was stuffed with nice surprises and heat,” she added.

“Even through the battle, we used to take a seat collectively, maintain household gatherings, and assist each other endure a lot of what we had been going by way of.”

The comprehensible grief that has overtaken Batoul leaves no room for needs for a brand new yr or discuss of a close to future, no less than for now.

One query, nonetheless, weighs closely on her: why was her peaceable household focused, particularly throughout a ceasefire?

“The place is the ceasefire they discuss? It’s only a lie,” she mentioned.

“My household and I survived bombardment, two years of battle. An condo subsequent to our house in japanese Nuseirat was hit, and we fled collectively to right here. We lived by way of starvation, meals shortages, and worry collectively. Then we thought we had survived, that the battle was over.”

“However sadly, they’re gone, and so they left me alone.”

Batoul holds onto one want from the depths of her coronary heart: to affix her household as quickly as attainable.

On the similar time, she carries an inside resignation that maybe it’s her destiny to reside this manner, like so many others in Gaza who’ve misplaced their households.

“If life is written for me, I’ll attempt to fulfil my mom’s dream that I be excellent in my subject and beneficiant to others,” mentioned Batoul, a second-year college scholar finding out multimedia, who’s presently dwelling along with her uncle and his household.

“Life with out household,” she mentioned, “resides with an amputated coronary heart, in darkness for the remainder of your life, and there are such a lot of like that now in Gaza.”