Hadeel Sbakhi and Abdelrahman Abu Taqyia, Palestinian couple documenting their lives on Instagram

Hadeel Sbakhi and Abdelrahman Abu Taqyia met as university students. They married and started a business today, but their equipment was destroyed in an Israeli attack. Now they are trying to show with their Instagram posts that Gaza is not all tragedy. They struggle to eat and survive, but they also have happiness in their lives. Their Instagram handle has 112,000 followers. They also post on YouTube.

Source: PBS NewsHour

Mahmoud Ajjour, 9-year-old boy

Mahmoud Ajjour and his family were fleeing Israeli shelling in Gaza City in March, 2024, when he was hit. He was evacuated to Qatar but lost both of his arms. New York Times photographer Samar Abu Elouf’s photo of him won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year.

Source: [World Press Photo of the Year]

Yaqeen Sbeita, five months old, and her parents

Yaqeen Sbeita, born five months ago in the midst of the Gaza war, was killed with her parents, Ali Aoun and Saja Ammar Sbeita, when Israel attacked her apartment near the Carrefour Mall in Gaza City.

According to Yaqeen’s grandmother, Saja was nursing her baby girl when the family was killed.

The Israeli military did not respond to an NBC request for comment on why the apartment was targeted. NBC News reported the attack on July 9.

Source: NBC News

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Abdullah, a boy waiting for water

Abdullah was killed in an Israeli air attack that struck children and adults waiting with their jerrycans at a water distribution site in central Gaza on Sunday morning, July 13.

The Israeli Army said the strike was intended to kill an Islamic Jihad terrorist but "as a result of a technical error with the munition,” it fell on the line of people waiting for water dozens of meters away. The strike killed six children and four adults, and injured 16 others.

Source: BBC

Reem Zeidan, wife and mother

Reem Zeiden was shot through the forehead in front of her 20-year-old daughter and her 12-year-old son as she walked toward an aid distribution site before dawn on July 1, hoping to get food to feed her family. She had been rehearsing with her children where they should meet in case shooting caused panic and chaos among the crowds of hungry Gazans approaching the distribution site. Her last words, according to her son: “‘If we get separated, where will we meet again?’”

“We went there out of desperation. Hunger is what forced my mother to go. She had been going every day for a full week, walking six hours to get there and coming back with nothing,” said her daughter, Mirvat. 

Two days before Reem was killed, Israeli troops opened fire on the crowds approaching the aid distribution site. “I told my mother it was a sign from God not to go again and that convinced her,” Mirvat said. “But she would quickly change her mind when my little sister Razan, who is only five years old, cried to her that she was hungry.”

Source: The Guardian

Anas Baba, NPR producer

Anas Baba is a native of the Gaza strip. He spends his days interviewing his fellow residents about their lives and their losses. 

He told the Washington Post that NPR has encouraged him to take time off but he wants to work every day. “If you give me a day off, you leave me just with my brain, and then I think about all the horror and misery,” he said. “So, no stops.”

Baba himself is starving. He has lost a third of his body weight. “Hunger is a little bit of an addiction,” he reports. “Once it's controlling your own mind, you cannot think straight. Once you feel that your stomach, your brain, your body, are craving something, you will not be afraid of anything. You will do anything to get food.” 

On Monday evening, June 23, Baba joined crowds walking toward a distribution site sponsored by the US and Israel and later reported on his trip for NPR. He encountered an Israeli tank firing at the crowd, killing and wounding many. The Gazas had approached because of a rumor that the distribution site was open – it wasn’t. Later, after the site did open, Baba saw a mother who had managed to get some food. She had her child beside her and a knives in both hands, screaming at people not to touch her son or the food.

Source: Washington Post

Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, cardiologist

Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, director of Gaza’s Indonesian hospital and one of only two heart specialists in the territory, died July 2 when the apartment where he and his extended family were living was struck by an Israeli missile. 

His wife, sister, daughter, and son-in-law were also killed. A surviving daughter said the missile precisely targeted the room where Dr. al-Sultan was living. 

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement, “the IDF struck a key terrorist from the Hamas terrorist organization in the area of Gaza City. The claim that as a result of the strike uninvolved civilians were harmed is being reviewed. The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals.”

Source: The Guardian

The Abu Jarad family

When Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire last January, hundreds of thousands of Gazans trudged back to the homes in the northern areas that they had abandoned under orders of the Israeli army. Many found their homes demolished. But Ne’man Abu Jarad, his wife Majida, and their children were lucky. 

The grove of orange, olive and palm trees that once stood in front of the house was bulldozed away. The flowers on their roof and in their garden were gone. But the house still stood, damaged, but habitable. 

One flowering vine in front of the house had miraculously survived.  Ne’man immediately set about examining and arranging its tendrils.

After 477 days — fleeing the length of the Gaza Strip, hiding from bombardment, living in tents, scrounging for food and water, losing their possessions — they were home.

Source: AP News