FILE-A nurse cares for prematurely born Palestinian babies in a hospital in Rafah, Gaza strip. AP
In a hospital bed, 37-year-old Suad Issa struggles to catch her breath after undergoing what she describes as a forced miscarriage in her fourth month of pregnancy, following severe fetal malformations. Her body bears the toll of months spent under Israeli bombardment and forced displacement.
Speaking to the Felesteen (Palestine) newspaper, Issa recounts how she was forcibly displaced from Jabalia at the start of the Israeli war in October 2023. She describes enduring repeated bombardment in areas where she believes weapons containing toxic gases and white phosphorus were used, alongside systematic starvation, malnutrition, and the constant stripping away of shelter and safety.
Her story is echoed in the experience of Manal al-Sarsawi, a mid-thirties Gazan who suffered two miscarriages during the war, one while forcibly displaced in the south of the strip, and another after returning to Gaza City in October of last year.
With visible pain in her voice, al-Sarsawi told Felesteen that her first miscarriage occurred in the fifth month of pregnancy at a time when she was unable to obtain thyroid medication that had disappeared from Gaza’s markets for two years under the Israeli blockade. She was living in a tent devoid of even the most basic necessities of life.
As for her second loss, she says she cannot identify a single cause, but links it to the cumulative effects of inhaling smoke from bombardments, extreme fear and psychological distress, severe food shortages, repeated displacement, long-distance walking without transportation, and widespread environmental pollution.
Together, the stories of Suad and Manal reflect the suffering of hundreds of women in Gaza. According to data cited by Felesteen based on recent figures from the Ministry of Health, an estimated 500–600 miscarriages occur each month in 2026, in addition to around 6,000 cases recorded in 2025, under the weight of the ongoing Israeli genocidal war and blockade conditions that have created a devastating environment for pregnancy and childbirth.
In April alone, 921 miscarriages were recorded.
In parallel, births in Gaza have sharply declined; from 6,076 births in November to just 2,004 in April 2026, a drop of around 67 percent, an indicator of an unprecedented reproductive depletion and a rapidly accelerating demographic collapse since the genocide's outbreak.
Annual figures further underscore the trend, as births fell from around 57,000 in 2022 to 54,000 in 2023, and then to 38,000 in 2024, roughly 38 percent of pre-war levels.
The report also documented 385 cases of congenital malformations among fetuses, attributing the rise to the combined effects of war, starvation, displacement into tents, and contamination of drinking water sources.
Zaher al-Wahidi, director of the Health Information Center at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, said the figures reflect what he describes as “the demographic genocide pursued by the Israeli occupation.
He argues that alongside the direct killing of Palestinians, there is also what he calls “reproductive genocide”, a systematic assault on the conditions necessary for Palestinian families to survive, grow, and bring new life into the world.
Al-Wahidi stresses that conditions have not improved since the ceasefire agreement announced in October 2025, noting that humanitarian and medical aid have not meaningfully entered the strip and that health and nutrition conditions remain catastrophic for women enduring hunger and deprivation.
Two reports published this year by Physicians for Human Rights in collaboration with the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School argue that what is unfolding in Gaza can be described as a policy of “reproductive violence” aimed at obstructing Palestinian reproduction in a manner that may meet the threshold of genocide under international law.
Despite the ceasefire agreement in October 2025, the genocide continues to unfold across Gaza, claiming even the lives of those who never had the chance to see the light of day.
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