Jana says it’s strong. Is only 12 years old, but it is strong and has to be so that the family does not die hungry, as so many people these days in the Gaza Strip
The bright pink nightgown with an image of Cinderella hangs from Jana’s thin shoulders, which walks through the lunar landscape of northern Gaza, with hills of rubble, dirt and dust around him. Handling to a large bathtub, the 12 -year -old girl has a mission: finding food and water.
Jana Mohammed Khalil Musleh al-Skeifi and her family say she is responsible for arranging provisions for everyone since an Israeli shooter has killed her older brother over a year ago. Parents are weakened by health, so she has to support them.
“I don’t want my father to get tired. That’s why I’m strong. I want to be strong, so that my father doesn’t suffer,” Jana tells CNN while waiting in a row at a water distribution point in the city of Gaza. “My father is elderly and has a heart disease. If he tries to carry the bucket, he will fall.”
Saving to the father the strenuous work, the small girl carried two heavy buckets full of water to the house, with the white fingertips due to the heavy load and the stewed ganga pants due to the scattered precious water.
Finding food and water became difficult after Israel launched his brutal war in Gaza following the October 7 terrorist attack on Hamas and his allies. But the situation has become catastrophic since Israel has imposed a full blockade for all help over 11 weeks ago.
A United Nations report, published earlier this month, states that one in five people in Gaza is starving, as the territory, where 2.1 million people live, approaches a man -made situation.
Israel stated that the blockade, along with a new military campaign, is intended to press Hamas to release the detained hostages at the enclave. But many international organizations have accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon of war.
For months it has been difficult to obtain drinking water because Israel restricts access to water treatment and desalination equipment, claiming that these articles can be used to manufacture weapons.
The Humanitarian Médicos Without Borders said that more than two thirds of the 1,700 water and sanitation articles that tried to deliver in Gaza between January 2024 and early March 2025 were rejected by the Israeli authorities.
“As soon as one can fill a bucket, because there is no suitable line system and, if we wait, we may not receive anything. Sometimes we have to pass with nothing,” says Jana.
“I’m sitting there for hours just waiting for a bucket. It’s a horrible feeling.”
The family admits to CNN that in the past resorted to saltwater to clean and cook.
An “gout in the ocean” of needs
The Israelite Armed Forces announced on Sunday that they would allow a “basic amount of food” to enter Gaza as they launch their new large offensive in the track. The reason, according to the military, is the fact that a “hunger crisis” in Gaza “endangering the operation.”
The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that Israel had taken this measure because their Western allies, including the United States, threatened to remove their support to the country if it allowed Gaza to fall into a hunger situation.
But only five trucks were allowed to enter Monday when humanitarian organizations say 500 per day is needed just to feed the needy. UN Chief help, Tom Fletcher, described the delivery as an “drop in the ocean of what is urgently necessary.”
Hunger is becoming catastrophic. The Ministry of Health of Gaza stated that at least 57 children have died due to the effects of malnutrition since the beginning of the war.
Jana’s baby niece, Janat, was one of them, according to the family.
Everyone was seeing
Although Janat was born small, just 2.6 kg, mother Aya explains to CNN that the girl was growing and getting fat. It became a healthy baby, reaching a weight of about 4 pounds. He learned to smile and was alert.
But things changed when Janat was six weeks old.
On March 2, Israel imposed its full blockade on Gaza, preventing the gaza range from entering the most basic products, including milk powder milk and medicines.
Aya says that when foods were scarce, she began to have difficulty breastfeeding Janat, who began to lose weight. The baby developed chronic diarrhea, was dehydrated and soon it was so bad that it needed medical care.
“At the hospital, they said there was a special medicinal milk that would help her gain weight and stop diarrhea, but we didn’t find it. We looked through the Gaza Strip, hospital, pharmacy the pharmacy. Even the Ministry of Health told us that it was not available,” Aya laments.
A video from CNN de Janat, from mid -April, shows the small wrapped baby and clinging hard by Aya. Your tiny face is just bones under the skin and looks more like a newborn than a four-month-old child. Her lengthy and long fingers are leaving the blanket and she seems to be sleeping. His large brown eyes are the only exhausted body that seems to be able to move, his gaze follows the people who move around.
At the same time, Janat’s mother was also fighting, weakened by the lack of food and drinking water. Like many recent mothers in Gaza, under these conditions, they lost milk, which made her unable to feed her baby. The UN -based hunger report states that nearly 11,000 pregnant women in Gaza are already at risk for hunger and that about 17,000 pregnant and lactating women will need urgent treatment for acute malnutrition in the coming months.
Janat continued to get worse. The mother tells CNN that the baby began to have difficulty maintaining body temperature and doctors said the blood sugar level was dangerously low. Oxygen levels were lowering. The malnutrition caused the bad function of the kidneys and the liver and, as a result, the blood became acidic.
“I asked everyone to save her. I just wanted someone to save her, to give her the milk she needed. But no one could help. Everyone saw,” recalls Janat’s mother.
It now refers to CNN that hospital doctors had recommended Janat’s medical evacuation abroad. The family even managed to obtain the necessary documentation, including a referral and authorization so that Janat could leave.
But the baby died on May 4, before this was possible. At four months of age, he was only 2.8 pounds, little more than his birth weight.
Gaza’s medical evacuations have been extremely rare, and even more so since Israel has restarted military operations after the collapse of ceasefire in March.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said last week that about 12,000 patients in Gaza need to be removed and that only 123 people have left since the block was imposed in March.
As Janat’s photographs were flipping through the day after the baby’s death, Jana was tearful and disturbed. “They told us that she could only be treated if she traveled abroad. We waited, they always said ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday’, we waited until she died,” says Jana.
As if I had died
After 18 months of war, all aspects of Jana’s life are full of difficulties.
There is very little food to eat and water to drink, there is no school to go, there is no safe place to sleep. There is no electricity and the place you call home is a semi-destructed house in the city of Gaza. The walls are burned by fire.
Jana used to live in a house where the water came out of a tap and the light appeared with the touch of a switch. There was food, there was school, there was a dance show during which she and her friends were the center of attention, wearing facts to match and dancing while everyone applauded.
A family video of the event looks like any other made by proud parents of a child who works in public. It’s a little trembled, with zoom in Jana as she jumped back and forth.
Seeing him in the midst of destruction, surrounded by bombarded houses and piles of rubble, the film seems to have come from a different universe.
“I have no one else. I feel like I had died,” describes the 12-year-old girl to CNN, with tears rolling her at the faces. “Emotionally, I’m dead.”
Jana’s big family was decimated by war. He lost a brother, a brother -in -law, a cousin and a niece, and is afraid of losing his mother, who has a thrushing cancer that cannot be treated in Gaza.
According to the Ministry of Health of Gaza, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in the last 18 months, about 4% of the population of the track. This means that in 40 people living in Gaza before the war, one is now dead.
But there is a short time to cry for them when survival requires so much effort.
Hungry children dispute food
On May 12, a day before the last CNN meeting with Jana, he was able to find food to buy: 500 grams of pasta for 50 shekels (about 13 euros).
Like many families in Gaza, they have turned the dough into flour to make bread into an attempt to make it last longer. Gaza has long stopped having flour.
The next day, when a nearby community kitchen is supplied, a large crowd of hungry kids joins within minutes.
They observe all the workers’ movements, eagerly awaiting the moment the food is ready.
It is evident that there is not enough food for everyone, so children vie for the best place, stretching their arms to put their pot as close as possible from the front, desperately trying to draw the attention of those who are distributing the meals. Some are shouting and crying.
Jana is lucky. Two spoons of pasta with watery tomato sauce fall into the bathtub. She looks exhausted and hungry, but happy.
While walking home with a boil bathtub, it doesn’t touch him. Only when they get home, where they wait for the brothers, nieces and hungry nephews.
Only then, sharing the food with them, did Jana allow herself to eat.
Tareq Al Hilou made the report from Gaza, Abeer Salman made the report from Jerusalem and Ivana Kottasová made the report and wrote from London. Eyad Kourdi contributed Aleppo
