It had made sense to Nour Barda and Heba al-Arqan in November 2023 to try for another baby when a temporary truce had just taken hold in Gaza. Barda's father, who had only sons, kept asking when he might have a granddaughter at last. Back then, the war seemed like it might end. Back then, there was food, even if it was not enough.
By the time al-Arqan found out she was pregnant last year, things in Gaza were much worse. When she gave birth to Shadia this April, there was so little to eat that al-Arqan, 25, had almost no milk to give. Now she holds Shadia at her breast just to calm her down, Barda said, knowing that nothing is likely to come.
It had been like this with Jihad, their son, who was born in 2023, two weeks after the war began. Their increasingly desperate efforts to find food when Jihad was six months old were described in a New York Times article about malnourished children in Gaza in April 2024.
But now she and her husband had two babies to keep alive at a time when Israel had blocked almost all aid from entering Gaza for nearly three months — 80 days of total siege beginning in March. Israel began to ease the blockade in May, but only a thin trickle of supplies has arrived.
The traditional UN-run system for delivering aid has faltered as looters and fighting have cut off safe routes for aid trucks, and a new, Israeli-backed aid distribution system has descended into controversy, chaos and violence. Though the group behind it says it has delivered nearly nine million meals so far, the UN says the assistance falls far short of what is needed for a population of two million people. Security at the new distribution sites is being provided by private American contractors, but the Israeli military is stationing forces nearby, outside the perimeter.
Born 2kg, 28 grams, Shadia was weaker and smaller than her brother and had gained just seven ounces a month later, her parents said. She struggled to suck from the bottle, usually drinking only half of the single bottle of formula that aid groups can offer at a time, they said. al-Arqan has taken to drinking whatever her daughter does not finish, hoping the nutrients will help her produce milk, she said.
"Her birth brought me more anxiety than joy", al-Arqan said. "History is repeating itself, but this time with my little girl."
When al-Arqan managed to get some child nutritional supplements from an aid group in mid-May by waiting in line for six hours, aid workers evaluated Shadia by measuring her arm and concluded that the baby had moderate acute malnutrition, she said.
But after nearly 20 months of war, Shadia's parents have no income or savings left to spend on milk or formula at the market. They survive on one meal a day: either a little lentil soup or rice and beans they get from charity kitchens in northern Gaza, where they have been living in a tent in the street for about six weeks.
Barda, 26, who worked as a baker at a pastry chain before the war and has not been able to find steady work since, cannot find flour in northern Gaza for less than about $23 a kilogram, he said. That puts bread, the base on which practically every meal in Gaza used to be built, out of reach.
"When we had Jihad, we still had some savings", al-Arqan said. "Now we have nothing — no savings, no vegetables in the markets and no affordable flour.” Jihad's name, after an uncle, means "struggle" or "striving".
Jihad is no longer a baby. Now he asks constantly for food.
A few days ago, as he was about to go down for a nap, al-Arqan said she heard him drowsily murmuring: "Mama — dough and bread".
"Every day, we lose more ways to survive", she said. "My son is only asking for the bare minimum — a loaf of bread. We're not asking for proper housing or clothes or even meat. All we want is a loaf of bread to stop the children's crying. Is that too much to ask?"
Shadia is the apple of her grandfather’s eye; he had always wanted a girl in the family. Sometimes he takes her to sleep with him and his wife on their mattress in their tent, he said, whispering words of hope and affection in his granddaughter's ears.
The younger Barda does not see cause for hope. Though he and his wife want more children, as is traditional in Gaza, they know they cannot feed more, he said.
"Our mood is broken", he said. "We go through the same suffering all over again every day."
To the south, in the city of Khan Younis, Hanaa al-Najjar has three children to feed, and little but lentils and dried pasta to feed them with.
The Times interviewed al-Najjar last year for the same article that described Barda and al-Arqan’s struggle to feed their baby. al-Najjar, now 31, had been left to take care of her children on her own after Israeli soldiers detained her husband as the family was evacuating a shelter on the military's orders, she said.
At less than 2 years old, Muhanned al-Najjar weighed half what he was supposed to. He died in late March last year. After she ran out of formula, she was forced to feed her youngest, Muhanned, bread dipped in canned beans. His appetite suffered, and at less than 2 years old, he weighed half of what he was supposed to. He died in March.
New York Times News Service