These Palestinian mothers in Gaza gave birth Oct. 7. Their babies have known only war

NUSEIRAT, Gaza Strip (AP) — Rockets streaked through the morning sky in Gaza on Oct. 7 as Amal Al-Taweel hurried to the hospital in the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp, already in labor. After a difficult birth, she and her husband, Mustafa, finally got to hold Ali, the child they spent three years trying to have.

Rola Saqer’s water broke that day as she sheltered from Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahia, a Gaza town near where Hamas militants streamed across the border hours earlier in the attack that kicked off the war. She and her husband, Mohammed Zaqout, had been trying to have a child for five years, and not even the terrifying explosions all around would stop them from going to the hospital to have their baby that night. Saqer gave birth to Masa, a name that means diamond in Arabic.

The families emerged from the hospitals to a changed world. On the babies' second day of life, Israel declared war on Hamas and its fighter jets swooped over the neighborhoods where Ali and Masa were supposed to grow up. In the six months since the children were born, the couples have experienced the trials of early parenthood against the backdrop of a brutal conflict.

The families' homes were leveled by airstrikes, and they've had no reliable shelter and scant access to medical treatment and baby supplies. The infants are hungry, and despite all of the plans the couples made before the war, they fear the lives they had hoped to give their children is gone.