TRANSCRIPT
In the largely destroyed city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, mother Nabila Hamada is trying her best to keep her newborn son alive.
He was born, along with his twin brother, earlier in the war at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
But when Israeli forces threatened the hospital before raiding it, Nabila and her husband were forced to flee - and in the process had to leave one of the babies behind when medical staff said he was too weak to leave.
She says she can't forget that experience - or the son she left behind.
"My children miss my tenderness. I am unable to leave my little son, the twin that I took with me. I cannot leave him even for a few seconds. I am afraid to leave him and lose him like his brother. My fear in life is that he will be lost to me. I never imagined that I would see these things. Nor could I imagine all that happened to me when I gave birth - that I would lose my child and not know where he is. I want my son, I want him back.”
Repeated displacement compounds trauma: an estimated 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes.
Most live in squalid tent camps and struggle to find food and water.
A now there is a new health crisis unfolding, the Gaza Health Ministry says tests on sewage samples in the Gaza Strip has found traces of the virus that causes polio.
The highly infectious disease affects mainly children under the age of five with devastating impacts - including irreversible paralysis and even death.
It is spread mainly through contact with the faeces of an infected person - or contaminated water or food.
Mass vaccination campaigns since 1988 did drive down the number of global cases of polio by 99 per cent.
Its resurgence adds to the concerns of multiple humanitarian crises in Gaza.
Maryse Guimond is the United Nations Women Special Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
She has recently returned from a week-long trip to Gaza - a journey she has made more than 50 times in her six years in the role.
“What I witnessed defied my worst fears for the women and girls I had been working with for so many years. It was unbearable to witness the daily escalation of violence and destruction of a war on women with no end in sight. Each woman I met with a story of loss. More than 10,000 women had lost their lives. More than 6,000 families had lost their mother. Nearly 1 million women and girls have lost their homes, their loved ones, their life memories. More than half a million women are severely hungry, eating the last and the least in their family, skipping meals and not eating healthy foods for months and months.”
Muhannad Hadi is the UN's deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace process.
He has also recently completed a trip to Gaza where he says UN staff are finding it impossible to prioritise people's needs in Gaza when "everything is a priority".
He says in more than 30 years working in the humanitarian aid sector, he has never been so confronted by hearing the experiences of those on the ground, in the war zone.
"And they carry their dignity, or whatever is left of it, with them. And they just move from one place to another. Gaza is a sad story. There are two million sad stories in Gaza. Seeing Gaza on the news, reading about Gaza is one thing. But going there are listening to the agony of the people is totally another story."
He remembers in particular, the accounts from women on their situation, including the lack of privacy and need for personal safety.
"Day in and day out, some women told me they went for months, several months without taking showers. Going to the bathroom for them. Being with their children - and having a bit of privacy. Some women actually told me that they had to cut their hair. And told me that they had to totally shave their hair because of lack of shampoo, lack of hygiene material. It was one say story after another. And for me because I come from the region (from Jordan) I speak the language, so there was no language barrier."
Meanwhile, international mediators continue to push Israel and Hamas toward a deal that would end the fighting - and free about 120 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli negotiators landed in Cairo earlier this week, but there has been no sign yet of a breakthrough.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says all efforts in the negotiations are still being directed towards the possibility of a two-state solution.
"It's not about a plan B, it's it's still about plan A, which is moving towards the possibility of a two-state solution. And nobody, nobody is blind here to how difficult that's going to be. We believe that it... the first priority has got to be getting a cease fire, getting the cease fire deal in place, getting those hostages back with their families where they belong, getting a six weeks of calm. That's phase one. If we can get the phase, if we get phase one, then negotiations can begin on phase two and phase two, as the president said himself last May, can get us to a permanent cessation of the of the hostilities. If you can get that, then you can begin to really start to lay the groundwork for for post-conflict governance in Gaza."
And Israel’s military has released details on the military conscription orders for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.
From Sunday, the group - which had previously been exempt from military service - will begin to receive calls to serve.
Israel says it is aiming to have 3,000 ultra-Orthodox Jewish men drafted by year’s end.
It comes after a landmark ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court last month found the exemption amounted to unequal treatment of different segments of the population.
And days before his speech to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a surprise visit to southern Gaza.
His visit was announced just hours after Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the visit by Mr Ben-Gvir as a "provocative intrusion".
Addressing soldiers in the Israel Defence Forces, Mr Netanyahu, says he will be relaying his experience of this visit to members of the US Congress.
"I gained strength here from their (the Israel military's) great achievements. I got stronger in my understanding that their powerful action above and below ground is essential for Israel's security, and stronger in the understanding that our control of the Rafah crossing is essential going forward. At the same time, the military pressure the Israel army is exerting here, at Hamas's throat, helps us, along with the firm insistence on our demands to promote the hostage deal."
Meanwhile, a letter signed by 230 staffers working across Democratic and Republican offices has urged members of the US Congress to protest or boycott Mr Netanyahu’s speech.
The letter, organised by the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, says speaking out against Mr Netanyahu’s planned address to Congress is an "issue of morality" and not politics.
