Rana Qarmut

A 22-year-old resident of Jabalya Refugee Camp:

I’m married to ‘Alaa Qarmut, 27, and we have a nine-month-old baby girl. Before the war, ‘Alaa and I lived on al-‘Alawin Street in the town of Jabalya al-Balad, near al-‘Omari Mosque, in a two-story building belonging to his family. Despite the hardship and difficult life in the Gaza Strip, we were happy with what we had and felt safe. My husband worked any job he could find to support us: sometimes construction, sometimes carrying and loading goods, and sometimes filling drinking water containers or doing plastering and tiling work. He never refused any job, no matter how hard, to make sure we had an income and could survive.

That was our life until everything changed on 7 October 2023. That day, our lives turned into a never-ending hell. From the very first days of the war, the bombings shook the ground under our feet, and missiles fell on homes, mosques, streets and schools in our area. We heard explosions everywhere and saw people running away from their destroyed homes, under shelling and gunfire.

About a week later, the military started dropping leaflets ordering us to evacuate the area. We had nowhere to go, so at first we stayed home despite the fear, until the bombing grew worse and we saw death before our eyes.

When the bombing reached everywhere around us, we finally had to run under fire. We left home shaking with fear. We grabbed a few clothes and blankets and headed to a-Najeb School in Jabalya al-Balad, which was turned into a shelter for displaced people.

We stayed there only five days, but they felt like years of terror. The military kept getting closer until it invaded all parts of Jabalya Refugee Camp and reached the school, too. They surrounded us with tanks, gunfire and quadcopters that constantly hovered over our heads, shooting and terrifying women and children.

For two days we had no food and were stuck there, starving and terrified, as if we were really in hell. We didn’t know whether we’d make it out alive or die at any moment. The military arrested some of the men and ordered us women to walk toward western Gaza. That was the start of the deadly displacement journey I’m still living through today.

We moved from place to place across the Gaza Strip. We lived in tents set up between the walls of the Islamic University, and after a few months moved to a-Shati Refugee Camp. After the military withdrew, we went back to a-Najeb School in Jabalya. All those months, we never knew what was going to happen to us. Every day we fled death, from one street to another and from alley to alley, carrying the few blankets and clothes we had left to cover ourselves. We experienced hunger, humiliation, fear, cold and disease, and saw death everywhere around us.

Then came 20 January 2025, the day a ceasefire was declared. We cried with happiness and thought our suffering was finally over. Our joy grew even more when I discovered I was one month pregnant. We felt we were coming alive again. We went back to our home in Jabalya al-Balad after long months of displacement and humiliation. We thanked God when we found the house still standing despite the ruins all around it. We tried to gather the pieces of our lives again, and my husband started again to look for any work to support us, until he found a job distributing drinking water.

But we barely had time to feel safe. On 18 March 2025 the war started again, and with it came the death, hunger, bombing and mass killing. There were air attacks every day. By then I was already three months pregnant and suffering from severe hunger. Because of my poor diet, without nutritious food like eggs and meat, and because we couldn’t get nutritional supplements, I almost lost the pregnancy. We were hungrier than we had ever experienced before.

The situation got even worse when the military again ordered us to leave our home in Jabalya al-Balad, and again invaded the northern and eastern areas. At the beginning of May 2025 we fled to western Gaza City and stayed in a tent in the Ansar area. We went through days of indescribable fear and terror there. Towers were bombed around us, shells fell near the tents, and displacement camps were forcibly emptied before they were bombed and the people there transferred south.

At the beginning of July we had to move again, this time to the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Strip, where we stayed with displaced relatives at a-Da’wah College. It was even worse there: not enough food, no water fit for drinking, no human living conditions. On 17 August 2025 I gave birth to my little girl. We lived there as displaced persons, in constant suffering and endless anxiety about our fate, with no stability. ‘Alaa struggled every day to get us a piece of bread.

We stayed like that until 10 October 2025, when another ceasefire was declared. We were very happy and thanked God, because we believed we would finally be able to go home. But when we got to Jabalya, we found nothing. Everything was completely destroyed. The homes had turned into rubble and the streets had disappeared.

We stood crying among the ruins, not knowing where to go or how we could live. After a lot of suffering, we found a place in a displacement camp called Halawa for people whose homes were destroyed. Here we’re living in a worn, torn tent that barely provides shelter. My husband looked again for any possible work, but couldn’t provide even our most basic needs, especially for our newborn daughter. We suffered from poverty, hunger and lack of food, and could barely find enough baby formula for her. How can a helpless baby grow in such conditions, in which we’re denied the most basic rights and can’t even get her formula and baby food? Even diapers disappeared from the markets.

The war is over only on paper. Our suffering never stopped. Even in Halawa camp we’re not safe from daily gunfire from snipers and military cranes aimed at us.

Apart from the hunger, what’s also killing us is the pests and insects infesting the displacement camps. The tents are full of rats, worms and insects living among the rubble, the sand and the piles of trash. At night, the rats come into the tent and eat whatever they find. They ate the little food and flour we had, and we couldn’t even protect it. We tried setting traps, but their numbers kept growing and they moved between the tents.

I live in real fear for my little girl. I’m afraid the rats will go near her while she sleeps. I can’t fall asleep. I stay awake almost all night watching over her, because of the rats and the diseases they spread. They even gnaw at the tent itself and eat it, while the military refuses to allow in more tents, tarps, and other basic equipment for daily living.

About two weeks ago, I nodded off and was woken by my daughter’s hysterical crying. When I picked her up, I discovered rats had gnawed at her foot while she slept. I was so afraid, I felt my soul leave my body. I started screaming and crying, grabbed her and ran together with my husband between medical service points to find medicine or disinfectants against infection and poisoning. But the military doesn’t even allow medicine and disinfectants into Gaza. I was left crying, with my daughter in my arms, terrified disease would spread through her tiny body while I stood there helpless and unable to save her.

Since that day I’ve lived in constant terror. Not a single night passes without crying and fear. I’m afraid the rats will come back and eat my daughter’s face or body while she sleeps. I’m afraid to fall asleep and panic when anything moves in the tent. My husband is helpless in this cruel reality. He can’t provide us with a home, food or even a new tent to protect us.

Right now there are no solutions and we are suffering from the spread of rats, rodents and disease in the camp. I’m treating my daughter’s injury as best I can, with primitive means, and fighting the diseases all around us that are a danger to her and all of us. We’re living in fear, humiliation and helplessness in a torn tent, between hunger and blockade.

There is more to this war than bombing and shelling. It’s a war of starvation, humiliation and exposing our children’s bodies to predatory rodents and disease. All we can do is pray that my little girl survives the slow death we’re going through.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Muhammad Sabah on 18 May 2026

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