Hanaa al-Batniji

A 40-year-old from Gaza City, Hanaa shared how her 17-year-old son, who had celiac disease, died of malnutrition due to lack of adequate food and medical care:

Until the war began in October 2023, I lived with my husband, ‘Alaa, and our three children, Ahmad, 17, ‘Omar, 16, and Anas, 13, in the a-Shuja’iyah neighborhood in eastern Gaza City.

During the previous war, in 2014, we discovered that Ahmad had celiac disease. He was constantly tired and showed symptoms of the disease, such as low albumin, rashes, anemia, iron and vitamin deficiency, hair loss, joint pain, intestinal inflammation, duodenitis, and stomach ulcers. He traveled with his grandfather outside the Gaza Strip for treatment and returned after a month with no symptoms.

Image

After that, Ahmad went on a special diet for people with celiac. He didn’t eat anything that contained gluten, such as wheat, and ate only special flour that the Ard al-Insan Association regularly provided us. I would bake bread and cakes with this special flour. I’d also get him special products for celiac patients that were available in the Gaza Strip and used them to make him whatever he wanted. All the vitamins he needed were available, and thank God, his health was good and he had no complaints.

When the war began in October 2023, we were forced to move to the south of the Strip. We were mostly able to get vegetables and canned food there, and for a short time meat, too, and I used those products to make Ahmad food. Sometimes he felt unwell, so we took him to the hospital and they would give him painkillers, fluids and IV drips, and he would get better.

When the ceasefire began in January 2025, we went back to the north. Ahmad’s condition was stable, but after the crossings closed in early March and the fighting resumed, his health began to deteriorate. We were forced to move again, this time to the a-Rimal neighborhood in western Gaza City. We suffered from a shortage of food products, water that wasn’t fit for drinking and filth everywhere. Almost all we ate was lentils, and we had no way of knowing if they’d come in contact with flour. That was all Ahmad had to eat, too. He gradually got worse and his immune system weakened.

We took him to Friends of the Patient (Asdiqa’ al-Marid) Hospital in a-Rimal neighborhood and told the doctors he’d been suffering from severe diarrhea for several weeks, and that everything he ate came out of his body as it was. The doctors ran tests and saw that he had many symptoms of celiac and that his liver functions were badly damaged. His body couldn’t absorb anything and he was suffering from vitamin deficiencies and malnutrition. I begged them to help him, to give him some kind of treatment, even just an IV drip. They said they had no treatment for him, no medicine, not even an empty bed.

His body swelled from edema and became covered with sores. His hair fell out. He became extremely thin and couldn’t walk. For a long time, he was confined to bed because he couldn’t move, and I would take him to the doctor and to the hospital in a wheelchair. I saw him fading before my eyes, day after day, and there was nothing I could do.

Image

We went to a private doctor, but all he said was that Ahmad needed special nutrition. I told him that if we could get the food Ahmad needed, there would be no problem, but we couldn’t get anything because of the Israeli military blockade on the Strip. There were hardly any products available for sale in the markets, and what little there was, we couldn’t afford.

A few days later, Ahmad lost consciousness. I tried to wake him in the morning and said, “Habibi, Ahmad, wake up,” but he didn’t respond. His father and I took him to a-Shifaa Hospital. In the emergency room, the doctor checked his blood sugar and it was extremely low. He was in severe hypoglycemia and life-threatening danger. The doctor put him on an IV drip with a glucose solution and additional fluids, and admitted him to the hospital.

That day, I went home around 8:00 P.M. and my husband stayed with Ahmad in the hospital. At night, there was only one nurse on duty. She came to check Ahmad’s blood sugar and change the IV bag. During the night, Ahmad regained consciousness for a few moments, told his father he was in pain, and then lost consciousness again. In the early morning hours of Wednesday, 27 August 2025, my husband saw that Ahmad was wheezing and struggling to breathe. He called for help and while the nurse and doctor were checking him, Ahmad died.

The moment they told me Ahmad had passed away was the hardest moment of my life. It was so hard to say goodbye to him. I wept in pain and grief, and so did his father and brothers. We all miss him. That was the fate of my son Ahmad in this life, a fate that could have been prevented if only we had been able to get food for him. Many nights, Ahmad went to bed hungry. He told me that even when he was asleep, he ached with hunger, and I couldn’t do anything for him. That helplessness still tears away at my heart.

My son is a casualty of the war. The blockade on the Gaza Strip killed him. A young boy with his whole life ahead of him, who anywhere else could have lived a long and good life, died of starvation and malnutrition, displacement, filth, and lack of proper medical care.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 1 September 2025