CNN
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A bright pink jumper with a photo of Cinderella hangs from Jana’s thin shoulders as she walks through the moonscape of Gaza to the north. Clenching a large tub in her hands, the 12-year-old is on a mission: finding food and water.
Jana Mohammed Khalil Musleh Al-Skeifi and her family say that Israeli snipers killed his brother more than a year ago and are responsible for getting supplies for her. Her parents are in poor health and are now falling on her to feed them.
“I don’t want my dad to get tired, so I’m strong. I want to be strong, so my dad won’t suffer,” Yana told CNN while waiting in line at a water distribution location in Gaza city. “My dad is an elderly person and has heart disease. When he tries to carry a bucket, he collapses.”
Saving hard work to her father, the few girls carried two heavy buckets full of water back home.
After Israel launched a brutal war in Gaza following the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas and its allies, it became difficult to find food and water. However, things have become catastrophic since Israel imposed a complete lockdown on all aid more than 11 weeks ago.
A UN support report issued earlier this month said one in five people in Gaza faces hunger as territory, facing a base of 2.1 million people, near the edge of artificial hunger.
Israel said it aims to pressure Hamas to release hostages held in enclaves, along with the blockade and a new military campaign. However, many international organizations have accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon of war.
Getting clean water has been difficult for months as Israel restricts access to water treatment and desalination devices and claims that these items can be used to manufacture weapons.
The humanitarian organisation, the borderless doctor, said that more than two-thirds of the 1,700 water and sanitation items that were attempted to deliver to Gaza between January 2024 and early March 2025 had been denied by Israeli authorities.
“There’s no proper queuing system so you can barely fill one bucket. If you wait, you might not get anything.
“I’ve been sitting there for hours waiting to fill in one bucket. That’s a terrible feeling.”
The family told CNN that they had relied on using salted water to clean and cook it in the past.
Israeli forces announced on Sunday that they would allow “basic amounts of food” to enter Gaza. According to the military, the reason was the fact that Gaza’s “starcion crisis” “puts operations at risk.”
The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed that Israel had taken a step as Western allies, including the United States, threatened to withdraw their support for the country if Gaza allowed them to descend on starvation.
But only five trucks were allowed on Monday, but the humanitarian organisation said 500 people a day are needed just to feed those who need it the most. UN Aid Chief Tom Fletcher described the delivery as “a fall in the ocean of urgent needs.”
Hunger is becoming devastating. Gaza’s health ministry said at least 57 children have died from the effects of malnutrition since the start of the war.
Yana’s baby nie Janato was one of them, her family says.
Janath was born small and weighed only 2.6 kilograms (5 lb 12 ounces), but her mother Aya told CNN that the baby girl is growing and gaining weight. She became a healthy baby and weighed about 4 kilograms (8 pounds 13 ounces). She learned to smile, she was on guard.
However, things changed when Janat was six weeks old.
On March 2, Israel imposed a complete lockdown on Gaza, preventing even the most basic supplies, including baby formulas and medication, from entering the strip.
Aya said that when food became scarce, she began to struggle with breastfeeding to Janath, who began to lose weight. The baby developed chronic diarrhea, became dehydrated, and soon became very poor and needed to see a doctor.
“(In the hospital) they said there was a special medical milk that would help her gain weight and stop diarrhea, but we couldn’t find it. We searched Gaza, hospitals, pharmacies by pharmacies.
A CNN video for Janath in mid-April shows the little baby wrapped around and Aya holds tightly. Her tiny face is all bones under the skin, and she looks more like a newborn than she was four months old. Her long skinned fingers stick out from the blanket, making her look sleepy. Her big brown eyes are the only part of her tired body that appears to be able to move, and she has her gaze following those moving around around her.
At the same time, Janath’s mother was also struggling, weakening to lack of food and clean water. Like many new mothers in Gaza in these conditions, she lost milk. According to a report by unsupported hunger, roughly 11,000 pregnant women in Gaza are already at risk of hunger, and pregnant women and breastfeeding women will need emergency care for acute malnutrition over the coming months.
Janath continued to get worse. Her mother told CNN that the baby began to struggle to maintain her temperature, and doctors told her blood sugar was dangerously low. Her oxygen levels were dropping. Malnutrition caused the kidneys and liver to malfunction, resulting in acidic blood.
“I begged the whole world to save her. I wanted someone to save her and provide her with the milk she needed. But no one could help. Everyone was watching.”
Janath’s mother told CNN that hospital doctors recommended Janath for medical evacuation abroad. The family even managed to obtain the necessary documents, including referrals and permission for Janat to leave.
But before that could be possible, the baby girl passed away on May 4th. At four months old, she was only 2.8 kilograms (6 lb 3 ounces), barely more than her birth weight.
Medical evacuation from Gaza is even rarer since Israel resumed military operations after the collapse of the ceasefire in March.
The World Health Organization said last week that around 12,000 patients in Gaza needed medical evacuation, and only 123 people have been evacuated since the lockdown was imposed in March.
The day after the baby’s death, flicking through a photo of Janat, Yana was shed tears and upset. “They said they couldn’t treat her unless she traveled abroad. We waited and said ‘Saturday’ and ‘Sunday’.
After 18 months of war, every aspect of Jana’s life is full of difficulties.
She has too little food, too little water to drink, and there is no school to go to school, and there is no safe space to sleep. There is no electricity and the place she calls her home is a half-destroyed home in Gaza City. The walls are burning black from the fire.
Yana lived in a house where water came from the faucet and the light appeared on the flick of the switch. There was food, there was a school, there was a dance performance, during which she and her friends were the centre of attention, dressing in matching outfits and dancing when everyone applauded.
The family video at the event looks similar to others filmed by the proud parents of the child performing in public. It was a little unstable and I zoomed in as Jana flew around.
Seeing it in the destruction surrounded by bombed houses and mountains of rubb, the footage appears to come from another universe.
“No one remains for me. I feel like I’m dead,” the 12-year-old told CNN that tears tumble down her cheek. “Emotionally, I’m dead.”
Yana’s large family was destroyed by war. She is afraid to lose her brother, stepbrother, cousin, nie and her mother, who currently suffers from thyroid cancer that cannot be treated in Gaza.
Over the past 18 months, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, killing about 4% of the strip’s population, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. This means that every 40 people who lived in Gaza before the war, one person dies.
But when survival is very hard, there is little time to grieve them.
On May 12, the day before CNN last met with Jana, she managed to find food to buy: 50 grams of pasta ($15).
Like many families in Gaza, they try to ground pasta in flour to make bread and make it lasts for a long time. Gaza has been out of flour for a long time.
The next day, when a nearby community kitchen picks up supplies, a large number of children will gather within minutes.
They watch every move of the worker and are eagerly waiting for the moment when the food is ready.
It’s clear that it’s not enough for everyone. So the kids are trying to get to the best of places, reaching their arms as close to the front as possible, and trying to get the attention of those who are desperately distributing their meals. Some people scream and cry.
Jana is lucky. Two scoops of pasta with a land of watery tomato sauce in her bathtub. She looks exhausted and hungry, but she is happy.
She doesn’t touch it when she walks home in a tub of steamed food. Until she returns home to where her hungry brother, Nie and ne, are waiting.
Then just share it with them, and Jana allows herself to shove.
