A father and daughter in the Palestinian village of Villa Maria are being forced to sell their baby to buy food, medicine and clothing for their families.

“We are forced to take a loan to buy our baby, and it is better for us to die,” one of the women told Al Jazeera.

“If we sell our baby we will go hungry and die, and we don’t want to die, because it is worse for us,” she said.

“My husband is not here, but he is working in Bethlehem [the West Bank city of Bethlehem] for the Palestinian Authority, so he needs to get a job, and I am afraid of what is going to happen if we don`t.”

She said her husband has been working as a security guard for the Israeli army since 2014, but now earns about $200 a month.

“It is not enough,” she added.

The women and their six children are all members of the Bedouin tribe of Jumhassa.

The families of those who die in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have been forced to live in tents and on the streets, despite the presence of international NGOs that monitor their conditions and try to help them.

“I have never seen anything like this before,” said Alisa Sotloff, the director of the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) Middle East and North Africa office.

“It is a situation where women and children are forced, in violation of international law, to work without pay for long periods, and at great personal risk, in a place where they are not safe from harm.”

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has killed nearly two million Palestinians, and forced thousands to flee the country.

The UN has recorded more than 10,000 deaths since 1967, and more than 2.6 million people have been displaced.