In a makeshift tent in al-Shati refugee camp, in the north of the Gaza Strip, 33-year-old Enas Abu Daqqa holds her tiny baby daughter Niveen in her arms. A fan hums constantly behind her to break the morning heat.
Enas worries that Niveen’s health might deteriorate at any point. She is only seven months old, and was born during the war with a hole in her heart.
As her mother explains how she struggled to keep her alive amid a collapsing health system in Gaza, Niveen, with her big brown eyes and tiny frame, cries and fidgets.
“The war has been very tough for her,” Enas tells the BBC. “She wasn’t gaining any weight, and she would get sick so easily.”
Niveen’s only chance to survive was to receive urgent care outside Gaza. And in early March, Jordan made that possible.
As a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel held, 29 sick Gazan children, including Niveen, were evacuated to Jordan to receive treatment in the country’s hospitals. Her mother and older sister were brought out with her.
They were the first children evacuated to Jordan after King Abdullah announced plans to treat 2,000 sick Gazan children in hospitals there during a visit to the US the previous month. These evacuations were co-ordinated with the Israeli authorities who do background checks on the parents travelling with their children.
Doctors in Jordan performed successful open-heart surgery on Niveen, and she was slowly beginning to recover.
But about two weeks into the children’s treatment, the ceasefire in Gaza collapsed when Israel resumed its offensive against Hamas, and the war was back on, in full force.
For weeks, Enas followed the news from her daughter’s hospital room in Jordan, worrying about the safety of her husband and other children who were still in Gaza.
And then late at night on 12 May, the Jordanian authorities told Enas they were sending her and her family back to Gaza the following day, as they said Niveen had completed her treatment.
