The Electronic Intifada 4 January 2025
Yahya al-Batran holds the lifeless body of his infant son, Jumaa, who died from hypothermia on 29 December.
APA imagesAdnan al-Qassas, 24, is grieving his baby daughter Aisha.
On the morning of 20 December, al-Qassas and his wife, Rana, woke to unimaginable horror.
“I woke up in a panic to the screams of my wife. Our little girl lay motionless, her face and lips blue. She looked like a piece of ice.”
Al-Qassas, who was displaced from the Sheikh Nasser area in eastern Khan Younis and now lives in a battered tent just a few meters from the seashore in al-Mawasi, rushed his daughter to Nasser Medical Complex only to learn that she had died hours earlier due to the severe cold.
Aisha is one of six babies to have died of hypothermia in Gaza since mid-December.
Winter in Gaza is proving deadly and will only get more so. Some two million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of Israel’s genocidal violence over the past 15 months. The vast majority have been forced into tents or self-built shelters without heat, electricity or fuel available for generators.
In al-Qassas’ case, the tent is “made of worn-out fabric, and [feels] almost like a refrigerator.”
A few weeks ago, when the rains came, his tent flooded, he told The Electronic Intifada.
“We don’t have enough mattresses or blankets,” al-Qassas said. “My four children share two mattresses and two blankets. There are no clothes to warm them. Even if clothes were available [in the market], I have no money to buy them.”
Three blankets
Children, particularly infants, bear the brunt of the suffering in winter. They are ill-equipped for the cold and generate less body heat than older children or adults.
With famine stalking Gaza and no protection from the elements, children are already physically weakened – leaving them less able to fight off hypothermia.
Sila al-Fasih succumbed to the cold on Christmas Day. She was just two weeks old.
Her family, originally from Gaza City, lives in a dilapidated tent with no nylon over it to give protection from the rain on the shores of al-Mawasi beach in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
At night, Sila’s mother, Nariman al-Fasih, 35, said that the family only has three blankets to protect the five of them – in addition to Sila, there is Nihad, 2, and Rayan, 4 – from the freezing cold.
It wasn’t enough for Sila. al-Fasih woke at 4am to breastfeed, only to find her baby daughter unresponsive; her skin a deadly pallor of blue.
“Her body was cold and completely still. I turned on the phone light to check on her, I noticed that her skin color had turned blue, and there was bleeding from her mouth and nose. I placed my ear on her chest but I couldn’t hear any heartbeat, and there was no sign of breathing.”
She and her husband, Mahmoud, took the baby to Nasser hospital, but it was too late.
“Doctors informed us that Sila had passed away after her heart stopped due to the extreme cold.”
The family had borrowed clothes for their children from their neighbors, al-Fasih said, but Christmas Day was particularly frigid and it simply wasn’t enough.
“I am still in shock,” Sila’s mother said. “I can’t bear the memory of her frozen from the cold.”
Twins
Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, head of pediatrics at Nasser hospital, said his department has been receiving more than five cases per day of children suffering from hypothermia.
“Most of these cases are treated and [the patients are] saved,” he told The Electronic Intifada. “But some arrive at very late stages in extremely critical condition, and they could lose their lives at any moment.”
In almost all cases, the infants are no older than a month, the doctor said, and all were previously in good health.
“Infants cannot endure low temperatures for several reasons, including their low fat percentage and limited physical activity compared to adults.”
Jumaa al-Batran, was just 20 days old when he died due to the severe cold.
His father, Yahya al-Batran, 39, said his wife, Noura, had found Jumaa and his twin brother Ali both frozen on the morning of 29 December. They rushed both infants to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
“Jumaa was stiff, like a piece of wood, while Ali was breathing slowly and appeared to be extremely exhausted.”
The family of eight all live in a tent on the beach. They don’t have adequate clothes or enough blankets to fend off the cold. The tent blew away from heavy winds a day before Jumaa died.
Al-Batran said he had managed to put the tent back up, but didn’t have the money to repair the parts that had been torn.
“We can’t even warm ourselves. We can’t warm our children.”
On 30 December, a day after Jumaa died, Ali died too.
The longer Israel’s genocide carries on, Dr. al-Farra said, and the longer people are denied basic necessities like adequate shelter, food and warm clothes, the more infants will die.
Meanwhile, people are taking what precautions they can. Adel al-Qassas now wakes up three times a night to check on his children and make sure they are still alive.
He is still in shock over Aisha, who was just 21 days old when she died.
“What crime did my little girl commit to die like this from the cold?”
In Gaza, he added, there is only a constant battle with death.
“Those who manage to survive the bombings only find themselves facing the cold.”
Taghreed Ali is a journalist based in Gaza.
