On a cramped bathroom floor in a UNRWA school in North Gaza crouches 29-year-old midwife Najla Salim.
She is facing the greatest paradox a midwife can face — delivering her own baby. She has no medical supplies, just a bottle of water and some cloths.
Her sister tries her best to help her, and as the sound of her labour cries heightens, she soon finds herself surrounded by other displaced women who are taking shelter in the school.
“I held onto the bathroom door with all my strength and pushed,” Najla tells The New Arab.
“My sister and displaced women whose names I did not know helped me. When my baby cried, everyone there cried with me. I felt I wasn’t just giving birth to my child, but that the whole school witnessed a new life being born.”
The bombs may have stopped falling, but giving birth in Gaza is still a dangerous task.
Gaza’s healthcare system is far from recovered, and the Strip’s remaining midwives are overstretched, trying to deliver babies and save lives with limited resources.
The search for a functioning and safe hospital to give birth in continues to be impossible. The majority of Gaza’s maternity wards were destroyed during the two-year war and remain out of service.
Many hospitals are operating only partially amid a severe shortage of doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, and medical supplies.
Women in Gaza continue to give birth in inhumane and unsanitary conditions, without medical supervision or antenatal care. There are approximately 55,000 pregnant women in Gaza, all in urgent need of care, and around 5,000 women each month give birth under harsh conditions.
Hospitals out of reach
The New Arab spoke to a number of midwives and ordinary women in Gaza who shared their experiences giving birth without medical supervision.
They also complained about the lack of clothes for newborns and the exorbitant prices of milk and diapers, which were harsher than the war itself.
Some said they could not find a midwife or health educator to visit them or monitor their and their newborns’ condition after giving birth, despite living in shelters overcrowded with women and children.
“The biggest challenges continue to be the lack of basic tools and medical supplies,” says 32-year-old midwife Yasmine Ahmed from North Gaza.
“We struggle to find gloves, gauze, sterile scissors and beds. Sometimes we work on the floor or on blankets. Also, the lack of electricity and water makes work almost impossible,” she tells The New Arab.
“Women give birth under immense psychological stress; some have lost their husbands or homes, and there are no follow-up programs or organised support for them after childbirth.”
Under these conditions, pregnant Palestinian women in Gaza find themselves in a position where they have no choice but to give birth alone. One of these women was Yasmine herself.
For the past eight years, she has worked as a midwife at the Al Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City. She is accustomed to assisting dozens of deliveries daily, some complicated, others straightforward, always ending with a smile and congratulations to the mother.
Before the war, her life was organised; she would work her shift at the maternity ward before returning home to care for her husband and young children.
Yasmine was in her seventh month of pregnancy when one night, she felt the familiar feeling of labour pains; her baby was arriving two months early. Her husband tried to find an ambulance, but to no avail. The hospital was besieged, and the roads were blocked.
“I asked my children to lay a mattress on the floor. There were no tools. I delivered myself, cut the umbilical cord and held my baby while I was bleeding,” Yasmine recalls.
“I was trembling with cold and fear, but in that moment, I felt reborn with him.”
Since the latest ceasefire came into effect on 10 October 2025, Yasmine says the situation for pregnant women has not changed.
“Access to hospitals remains a challenge due to a lack of transportation and because most roads are destroyed,” she explains.
“There are virtually no obstetrics services in the north, and most births take place in the south, placing huge pressure on the few remaining hospitals. Many women are still giving birth at home or in shelters on their own.”
Alone in labour
Yasmine is not the only midwife The New Arab spoke to who has found themselves in a position of delivering their own baby.
Last December, Zeitoun-based local midwife and mother-of-four Meryem Khalil in Gaza City gave birth at home alone, while bombs rained down around her house.
Besieged within the four walls of her home while her husband was out searching for bread, Meryem found herself having to instruct her teenage daughter on what to do.
“I asked her to boil water on the small stove and bring any clean cloth,” Meryem tells The New Arab.
“I taught her step by step how to hold the baby and how to cut the umbilical cord. I didn’t want her to see me weak; I wanted to teach her courage.”
When the baby arrived, its cries drowned out the sounds of explosions, and mother and daughter cried together. Meryem recalls, “It was not just a birth, it was a battle we survived together.”
Najla, Yasmine and Meryem are not just midwives; they are guardians of life.
Yasmine was a symbol of trust at Shifa Hospital; her voice was never absent in the delivery room. Meryem was a “trusted hand” for women giving birth in Zeitoun who felt reassured by her presence. And Najla dreamed of continuing her studies and setting up a small centre to train young midwives.
But the war turned their dreams into nightmares, forcing them to deliver their babies under conditions unworthy of life.
Despite this, they are among the luckier ones to have given birth alone; as midwives, they had the knowledge, expertise and years of experience to know how a labour progresses and how to deliver a baby. For ordinary Palestinian women, the experience of labouring alone is a lot more terrifying.
Twenty-seven-year-old Amina Abu Diya from Al-Shati Camp in North Gaza knew nothing about childbirth except from her first experience in a hospital two years prior. After she was displaced from her home, she found herself in a destroyed building with her elderly mother and young son when her labour started.
“I screamed in pain, and there was no one to help me,” Amina recalls.
“My mother placed me on a wet blanket. I pushed with all my strength until my baby emerged. We cut the umbilical cord with a knife and washed it with water. I was afraid I would die or that my baby would die, but when I heard his cry, I felt that God had given me new life.”
Daily battles for survival
International law guarantees women in conflict the right to healthcare, but in Gaza, this right is violated daily.
Reports from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirm that targeting medical facilities and obstructing access for pregnant women is a direct violation of international law.
The UNFPA, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, previously called Gaza a “maternal and child health catastrophe.”
While the world continues to monitor Gaza’s third fragile ceasefire, new life in Gaza is born with the simplest means and the utmost courage.
The stories of Yasmine, Meryem, Najla, and Amina are not exceptions — they are daily headlines of silent suffering. In a place where death has become routine, the cry of a newborn remains the most radical, defiant and hopeful event.
“We need time and real international support to rebuild Gaza’s maternity care system,” says Yasmine.
“Without this, childbirth in Gaza will remain a daily battle for survival.”
Despite all this suffering, childbirth in Gaza remains a symbolic act of resistance. Women prove that life is stronger than death, and each child born here is a declaration of defiance to the world.
“Every birth in Gaza is a new birth certificate for the homeland,” says Palestinian feminist activist Aliya Abu Maryam.
Haya Ahmed is a doctor and freelance writer from Gaza