Israel is waging a reproductive genocide against Palestinian mothers in Gaza
A Palestinian mother mourns her baby daughter, Rahaf Abu Jazar, who died from cold exposure in a tent camp for displaced people, during her funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on 11 December 2025
Amira Nimerawi writes in Middle East Eye on 3 January 2026:
The first time the man who is now my husband told me he loved me, I was on my way to al-Arroub Refugee Camp in the occupied West Bank to tend to people Israeli forces had just attacked.
He had sent me a voice note, and amid the chaos inside the ambulance, I kept replaying it, trying to hear whether he had really said “I love you” at the end. The siren was blaring as my colleagues urgently debated which roads were still open and whether we could reach the camp. I was so focused on that small, tender moment that I did not register the danger until it hit my nostrils. The burning was instant, searing my throat and eyes. We had been tear-gassed.
We opened the ambulance doors expecting panic, but instead found women standing calmly, eyes streaming from the fumes. No screams. No chaos. Just quiet resignation. This was not new to them. This was routine. That moment taught me something I have not since forgotten: in Palestine, even the smallest, most intimate moments can never simply exist on their own. They take place within the occupier’s violence, a constant presence.
I realised how easily the abnormal becomes normalised; how even I, inside an ambulance heading towards an attack, had briefly zoned out into the softness of ordinary life. It was not until the gas hit my lungs that I understood again what Palestinian women know too well: the everyday is never only everyday under occupation.
Obstructed care
I have been visiting the West Bank regularly since 2003. One early incident during the Second Intifada has stayed with me: an ambulance was denied entry. At the time, all major roads were closed. A group of us – women, children and elderly people – were stranded outside Bethlehem, waiting for any transport that might take us towards Hebron.
From where we stood, we watched an ambulance attempt to pass a checkpoint with a woman in urgent need of care. Soldiers refused. The ambulance pulled over to ask us whether any roads were still open, then drove on, hoping to reach a hospital elsewhere. Moments later, a military jeep swerved towards us, and soldiers ordered everyone present to disperse on foot into unmarked terrain.
That was the moment I understood how deeply healthcare in Palestine is subject to military power, and how quickly ordinary life can become perilous.
Since 2018, through my work with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society’s mobile clinics, I have travelled to villages where reproductive care depends not on medical need but on checkpoints and unpredictable military closures.
I have been harassed at checkpoints simply for trying to deliver healthcare. I have seen female colleagues subjected to aggressive, degrading body searches.
In communities such as Khan al-Ahmar, I have witnessed women assaulted during demolitions, their hijabs ripped from their heads. I have watched young Palestinian women abandon their studies or work because daily travel through military zones became too dangerous.
And then there is the violence inflicted not on women’s bodies, but on their children. In my first weeks living in Bethlehem in 2018, the Dheisheh Refugee Camp was raided. A 13-year-old boy was shot dead in his bed. The next morning, I watched his mother lead the funeral procession through the town – her grief palpable, her strength unimaginable. The way she walked, and the image of her carrying her son’s tiny body surrounded by neighbours, is seared into my memory. The bullet did not pierce her body, but it shattered her life.
Violence against children
In Gaza, this violence has reached an unimaginable scale. Dr Alaa al-Najjar, a physician, saw nine of her 10 children killed in a targeted attack on her home. She survived. They did not.
It is not only through bombings that Palestinian mothers endure violence. The assault on their children takes many forms, at any moment – during school runs, in prisons, at checkpoints, during night raids, while their babies should be asleep in their beds.
UN estimates and Israeli military data indicate that between 38,000 and 55,000 Palestinian children have been detained under military law since 1967. Before October 2023, around 170 children were in detention. Since then, more than 1,300 have been arbitrarily arrested, and at least 440 remain illegally imprisoned today. Their absence devastates families in ways statistics can never capture.