Born in wartime, the baby had not eaten in more than a day, his father said — no formula, no nothing. His parents had already spent the last of their money on food, sold his mother’s gold jewelry to buy milk and begged water from other evacuees to mix the powdered formula. Now even that was gone.
The baby, Jihad, and his parents, Nour Barda and Heba al-Arqan, were trapped now in a storage closet with five other people at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza last month as Israeli troops attacked. They had some Palestinian thyme and foraged wild greens to eat, but only that, and just enough water to moisten their mouths once in a while, Mr. Barda told a Times reporter. Gunfire jackhammered outside. The Israeli military had surrounded the building and told anyone sheltering inside to stay put.