In the dim, battered basement of a once-upscale neighborhood in Gaza City, Noor Abu Hassira sits with her three young daughters, listening to the relentless thrum of drones and the thunder of airstrikes. The war has been raging for nearly two years, and for families like the Abu Hassiras, survival has become a daily battle against hunger, danger, and despair. “It feels like we’re just waiting to die, I don’t really care that much anymore,” Abu Hassira texted, capturing the exhaustion that has overtaken so many in Gaza (CTV News).
On September 24, 2025, Abu Hassira and her girls—Jouri, Maria, and Maha—found themselves among the hundreds of thousands still trapped in Gaza City. Once a vibrant home to a million residents, the city is now a shell, its population decimated and its infrastructure in ruins. The family’s ordeal began in December 2023, when an Israeli airstrike destroyed their apartment building, pinning Abu Hassira under a collapsed concrete pillar and shattering her shoulders, back, and legs. She slipped into a coma, her daughters buried in the rubble but miraculously surviving—though Maria suffered a fractured skull (AP, CTV News).
Abu Hassira awoke at Shifa Hospital, where Israeli troops would later raid, accusing Hamas of using the facility for cover. Supplies were scarce, and the hospital was overwhelmed with casualties. Her husband, Raed—a journalist suspected by Israel of links to Hamas but not a member, according to Abu Hassira—cared for her and Maria until, in March 2024, Israeli forces raided the hospital again and took him away. He has not been heard from since. “Maha was just over a year old when they took her father away,” Abu Hassira said. “She’s never once said the word ‘daddy.’” (AP)
Since then, the family has been on the move, forced to relocate within Gaza City 11 times to avoid the violence. “The hardest part is living at other people’s homes ... especially with small children, and everything is expensive. I had no clothes or belongings, so I had to use theirs,” Abu Hassira recounted (AP). Even the most basic needs—clean water, food, a place to sleep—have become luxuries. Bread is often all they have to eat, and Jouri, the eldest, became so malnourished that a neighbor had to take her to a special program for treatment.
The broader humanitarian crisis in Gaza is staggering. On September 21, 2025, at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, doctors recorded the deaths of 13 children in just 24 hours: 10 fetuses who died in the womb and three premature babies who succumbed to cold and darkness, victims of power cuts and a lack of incubators (Al Jazeera). Six of these cases had come from northern Gaza, their mothers weakened by malnutrition and traumatized by the journey south—a journey made nearly impossible by continuous Israeli shelling and forced displacement.
Hospitals in Gaza are now little more than empty shells, stripped of medicine, equipment, and electricity. Delivery rooms, once sites of hope, have become places of farewell. UNICEF recently warned that one in three children in Gaza suffers from severe malnutrition, and thousands of infants have been left without their mothers’ milk due to hunger and exhaustion (UNICEF). Miscarriage rates have soared, with dozens of cases reported daily. “Hospitals, already overwhelmed, are on the brink of collapse. This is threatening the lives of every pregnant woman and every newborn baby,” stated World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on September 18, 2025 (WHO).
For Abu Hassira and her daughters, leaving Gaza City is not an option. The cost of a truck ride south is around $900, and a tent in a displacement camp would cost another $1,100—money they simply do not have. Even if they could afford to leave, the so-called humanitarian zones in the south are overcrowded, unsafe, and plagued by lawlessness. “I’m afraid to live in a tent with my daughters. I’m afraid we will drown in the winter. I’m afraid of insects. How will we get water?” she wonders (AP).
The war’s impact is felt most keenly by women and children. Since October 2023, over 65,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry—most of them women and children. The ministry’s figures, though issued by the Hamas-run government, are considered reliable by UN agencies and independent experts (AP). After a brief ceasefire in January 2025, hopes for peace were dashed when fighting resumed in March, accompanied by a total blockade that sent food prices skyrocketing—a kilogram of sugar now costs around $180, and flour $60. Starvation has become a weapon, with international experts in August 2025 concluding that Gaza is experiencing Israeli-imposed famine conditions (AP, Al Jazeera).
Amid the devastation, the world’s response has been muted. “What is recorded daily in Gaza’s hospitals is no longer just numbers, but recurring chapters of an escalating humanitarian tragedy,” reported Al Jazeera. The silence from the international community is deafening, even as children are buried before they are born and mothers leave delivery rooms not with babies, but with grief. Birth certificates are replaced by death certificates for fetuses who never drew breath.
Israel maintains that its offensive is aimed at destroying Hamas and freeing hostages taken during the October 2023 attack that ignited the war. The military claims to be taking steps to mitigate harm to civilians, but the reality on the ground tells a different story. For families like the Abu Hassiras, the choice is between staying put and risking death, or fleeing into the unknown with no guarantee of safety or shelter. “I wish my daughters and I would die together before we are forced to leave,” Abu Hassira confided. “We are exhausted.” (AP)
In the end, the tragedy in Gaza is not just about numbers or even the daily headlines. It is about the loss of hope, the erasure of futures before they begin, and the enduring scars left on those who survive. As Noor Abu Hassira and her daughters sit in the darkness, waiting out the latest barrage, their story is a stark reminder of the human cost of war—and the urgent need for the world to pay attention.