Sharaf Odeh: As bombs fall, he studies for his Master’s Degree

There’s famine and bombing in Gaza City, but that hasn’t kept Sharaf Odeh, 26, from studying for his Master’s Degree in Digital Business Administration. 

All of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed or heavily damaged by Israeli bombs, but Odeh is enrolled in several online courses. Solar panels power his computer.

The degree, he believes, will give him a better future. 

More at Haaretz

Mariam Sabbah, 9, injured in an Israeli strike, needs reconstructive surgery in the US but can’t get it because of the Trump travel ban

Mariam Sabbah had been fast asleep, huddled under a blanket with her siblings, when an Israeli missile tore through her home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of 1 March.

The missile narrowly missed the sleeping children but as the terrified nine-year-old ran to her parents, a second one hit. “I saw her coming towards me but suddenly there was another explosion and she vanished into the smoke,” says her mother, Fatma Salman.

The parents searched desperately for their children and found Mariam lying unconscious in a pool of blood; her left arm was ripped off, shards of shrapnel had pierced through her small body, and she was bleeding heavily from her abdomen.

Besides blowing off her arm, the blast left Mariam with severe abdominal and pelvic injuries from shrapnel tearing through her bladder, uterus, and bowel.

“Mariam needs specialised paediatric reconstructive surgery,” says Dr Mohammed Tahir, a British surgeon who treated Mariam while volunteering at al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza. “Her arm amputation is also very high and requires limb lengthening and specialist prosthesis. Without this, it will be very difficult for her to live a normal life.”

Mariam and her family secured the offer of surgical care from a specialist team in Ohio, and the little girl waited two months to be given permission from Cogat to leave Gaza, by which time her condition had deteriorated. She was finally evacuated to Egypt but was then stuck for months waiting for her US travel documents to be processed. 

President Trump has blocked medical evacuation for children on the grounds that their accompanying parents are security risks.

More at The Guardian

Yousef al-Mashharawi, father of three with nowhere to go

Yousef al-Mashharawi is a 32-year-old photographer and film-maker with two daughters and a son sheltering with family in the Nasser district of Gaza City.

He knows the risks of remaining are rising steeply. “The fighter jets and helicopters do not stop firing. Last night was terrifying,” Mashharawi said. “I haven’t exactly ‘decided’ to stay, but the truth is, I have nowhere else to go,” he said. The family was displaced to southern Gaza earlier in the war and he has no wish to go back.

“The army claimed it was a ‘humanitarian zone’, but that was completely false. It was the opposite. There were always strikes happening there, and they are still happening,” he said.

More at The Guardian

Enas, 21, still studying computer engineering, but feels her dreams are slipping away

Enas, a 21-year-old computer systems engineering student from Rafah, had just completed her second year at Al-Azhar University when the war began. Displaced to Al-Mawasi, near Khan Yunis, she’s still studying, but she battles despair. 

"Since our last displacement, my academic situation has been very bad. I don't think I'll register for another semester," she admitted. Before the war, she had pictured herself already working in her field. "I used to study because I loved it. I wanted to graduate, work and even work while studying. Now I'm just barely getting by. I don't have the same goals or hope as before."

Her field depends on reliable internet and long hours on a laptop – luxuries she no longer has. "The internet here is so weak, and the electricity is unstable. Sometimes it cuts during an exam, and I manage to reconnect and finish. Other times, I lose the exam completely."

Her grades have slipped, but the hardest loss is personal. Early in the war, she lost her closest friend and study partner – one of the more than 15,000 schoolchildren killed since the war began, according to UNICEF. 

"I don't like remembering how I felt when she was killed," Enas said. "Even now, whenever I submit an assignment or finish a project, I miss her and wish she were here."

More at Haaretz

Fatima al-Zahra Sahweil, displaced 19 times, refused to move again

Fatima al-Zahra Sahwell, a 40-year-old mother of four children sheltering in Gaza City, says she won’t obey Israeli orders to leave, despite frequent bombings near her.

The designated escape route is jammed, she doesn’t have the money to buy a tent, and she doesn’t believe the areas where Israel wants her to go are safer than where she is. “There is not a single day without bombings and deaths in the south, even in the so-called humanitarian zones that the army declared. So, would I just be running from death to death?”

Sahwell said she has already moved her family 19 times since the war began.

More at The Guardian

Sarah al-Barsh, 10, two arms amputated above the elbow, father killed

"My father and I were walking home," says 10-year-old Sara al-Barsh. “Suddenly the house we were passing by was bombed. I fainted for about 15 minutes, then I woke up. When I woke up, I couldn't find my hands. I started screaming, 'Dad, Dad' – but he didn't respond."

Sara’s father was killed. She was taken to hospitals where her arms had to be amputated above the elbow. She hasn't had any rehab, so she has been doing it herself as best she can in her new home – a tent in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. She has been painting with her feet.

"Before the injury, I lived a normal life, like any other child with two hands," she says. "I used to eat, drink, play and comb my hair – now I can't do anything on my own."

Her mother, Amani al-Barsh, hopes she can get out of Gaza and be fitted with prosthetic arms. "She used to dream of becoming a doctor or an engineer,” says her mother. “Today, after the amputations, she insists on being a pediatrician to help children.” 

More at Haaretz

Alma, 12: “"The war is hard and long, but we try to live.”

Alma, 12 years old, loves to write. With school closed, she creates her own homework, writing about life in the family's half-destroyed home in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. "The war is hard and long, but we try to live," she says.

Alma is one of the Gaza residents interviewed by the Israeli liberal Zionist newspaper Haaretz for a report published July 21.

"I've been helping my mother at home – fetching water, lighting a fire,” she told them. “I've also been helping her with my brother Wissam, who's 4. I've been singing him lullabies before he goes to sleep. I've been telling him stories from what I remember from school."

Life in her damaged home is better than in the tents the family lived in when they had to flee to other parts of Gaza. "Life in the tent is hard because of the sand, the mosquitoes, the flies.

"At night it's hard to sleep because you hear people in other tents. Also, all of us were in one tent. In the winter the rain leaks in, so my parents and I took turns holding the tarps so that water wouldn't leak in."

Her life now is a far cry from the one she had before the war. "I miss my friends. I'd like to meet with them like we used to; I want to know that they're all right," Alma says.

She misses her friends, who are scattered through Gaza. She tries to keep up using her mother’s phone. One friend lost her father and mother. Another friend was wounded. 

She’s scared of the Israeli bombs, but tries not to show it. "I've been talking to my sister, who's two years younger than me, about what we wish we could eat. She wants chocolate cake, while I'd like waffles with maple syrup and vanilla ice cream.”

More at Haaretz

Ibrahim, 48, father of four: “My children have no future.”

"I go through some very hard moments as a father," Ibrahim says about his children. "One that left a mark on me was when I was hugging them during shelling, not knowing if we would come out alive. I've been facing a daily dilemma: whether to send one of the children to get water while I'm trying to get food." 

"I'm an educated man, and what's most painful is that I now know for sure that my children have no future," Ibrahim says. 

Ibrahim is one of the Gaza residents profiled by Haaretz on July 21. They conducted all their interviews by phone and video call. 

More at Haaretz

Mohammed al-Darbi, 11: “We’re eating sand instead of bread.”

Elevn-year-old Mohammed al-Darbi is one of the children struggling to survive in Gaza that the Israeli newspaper Haaretz spotlighted in a report published. Haaretz said he appeared in a video recorded around July 1 on al-Rashid Street in Gaza City. 

Al-Darbi appears near an aid delivery center. "There is no flour in Gaza City," he says. "Every day they tell us that there are aid trucks; we go there and come back with nothing.

"There is no food, have pity on us. We're eating sand instead of bread."

Haaretz said Al-Darbi is one of the countless children crowding around when the aid center is opened. 

More at Haaretz

Khaled and her son Ahmed: had to burn schoolbooks to light a cooking fire

The first time Khaled and her family were displaced, her son Ahmed asked whether he should take his schoolbooks with him. “I said there was no need because we'd be back in a few days," Khulud says, almost choking. "But he insisted on taking them and his schoolbag. He said: 'I want to go on reading.'" 

Last winter the family was forced to burn the books; it was the only way to start a fire to cook food. "There were no twigs; we used torn clothes, but that wasn't enough," Khulud says. "I remember taking Ahmed's Arabic-language schoolbook and explaining to him that we had no choice. He cried and so did I."

The story of Khaled, 37, and Ahmed, 11, is told in an article published by Haaretz, an Israeli liberal Zionist newspaper, on July 21. 

More at Haaretz

Abdallah Abu Samra, 1948 refugee, is homeless again

Abdallah Abu Samra was 10 years old when his family was forced out of the Palestinian village of Iraq Suwaydan where they farmed 100 acres. The village was about 15 miles north of what is now the Gaza Strip. Eventually, the family reunited in Gaza and lived in a beautiful five-story building. 

But when the bombs started falling and the walls started shaking as Israeli retaliated for the October 7 Hamas attack, the family, now with about 20 members, had to evacuate again. Some died in attacks. Many raised enough money through GoFundMe drives to pay the $5,000 it cost to cross into Egypt. 

Samra is still in Gaza, scraping by with money sent by his relatives in Egypt, and hoping someday that if he can’t ever return to the family farm that is now in Israel, at least maybe he will pitch a tent next to the ruins of his northern Gaza home. 

More at The New York Times

Shamm Qudeih, 2, a starving child recovering in Italy

Two-year-old Shamm Qudeih looked like she was near death from starvation when Associated Press freelance journalist Mariam Dagga photographed her at Nasser Hospital on August 9. She was skin and bones, wincing as her mother held her.

A few days later, Shamm was evacuated to Italy. In a photo published September 6, she looks like she’s recovering, although still very thin. Samma suffers from a genetic metabolic illness that interferes with her body’s ability to absorb nutrients. She needed a high-carbohydrate diet, which she is getting in the Italian hospital.

Shamm weighed nine pounds when she arrived in Italy. Now she weighs 12 pounds, still only half of the median weight for a child her age. 

Samma’s 10-year-old sister, Judi, and her mother, Islam, were evacuated to Italy with Shamm. Judi also arrived severely undernourished and now is gaining weight. Her father is still in Gaza.

Meanwhile Dagga, the photographer, was killed by an Israeli tank at Nasser Hospital on August 25 along with four other journalists.

More at Associated Press

Yazin, 12, one of 20,000 Gaza orphans

Yazin, 12, and his sister, Yazmin, 8, used to live in a house. But that changed after the Israeli attacks on Gaza that followed the October 7 Hamas attack. 

“We were sitting after the evening prayer. My sister and I were playing on the phone. Suddenly the lights went out. I felt the house lift up. and then fall back down on us,” Yazin said.

“I saw the roof had collapsed. it was one cm above my headI pulled my sister out. We started to yell, ‘Shout if you are alive!’ But no one answered.

Both of his parents and his brother were killed.

Now he lives in a tent near the sea with his grandfather, aunt, and two cousins. But his grandfather has terminal cancer, so Yazin feels it’s up to him to take care of the family.

Channel 4, a British public broadcasting service, posted a short documentary about Yazmin 10 months ago. Food was scarce, but there wasn’t yet a famine. 

Yazin’s sister, Yazmin, was going to school two hours a day. Yazin was spending his days getting water and food and dealing with other family duties. But in the evening, he found half an hour to fly a kite. “I feel the freedom. I want to fly instead of the kite,” he said.

Noor, 9, child of deaf parents

A United Nations News report September 5 described the plight of people with disabilities in Gaza. They include the deaf parents of a nine-year-old girl named Noor. Noor’s parents must rely on their child to survive Israeli tank shelling and other attacks. She has learned new signing vocabulary for the language of war, including tanks, armed quadcopters, shrapnel and aircraft. 

The report also cites the example of Abdulrahman Al-Gharbawi, a 27-year-old graphic designer with cerebral palsy and a lower limb disability. His family has been displaced nine times. Each time, his mother carries his wheelchair while his father and brother carry him.

More at UN News

Hani Mahmoud, Al Jazeera correspondent

Hani Mahmoud is an English language correspondent for Al Jazeera in Gaza. 

In a recently posted episode of the podcast series The Take, Mahmoud talks about what it’s like covering the war on the ground with bombs falling and electricity repeatedly cut. 

At the end of the day, he says, although there’s danger on the roads, he takes the risk to go home to his family. 

“It’s worth it so I can see my mom, I can see my dad, I can be with my family,” he says. “You never know, it might be the last time. That’s always on our head. Every step you’re taking, it might be the last one. We’ve seen examples just in the past 30 minutes, a journalist who just finished field work was killed right after that.”

More at YouTube

Nurse Bilal Abo-Saada and psychologist Amira Al-Farra, Doctors Without Borders staff, try to cope with constant displacements

Doctors Without Borders has posted a short video of reports from Bilal Abo-Saada, a nurse and Amira Al-Farra, a psychologist, about their repeated displacements during the war. 

Al-Farra tells about one time when a person started running down the street in the middle of the night screaming, “Evacuate!” He had just received a phone call from the Israeli army saying they were about to start bombing and everyone must get out of the area immediately. But it was not clear where to go.

Abo-Saada says he has evacuated 11 times during the war. He has an old father who has trouble moving. Now, they are homeless.

Al-Farra thinks, for her, it’s almost eight evacuations. When you leave your home, she says, you leave many memories behind.

AboSaada is trying to save his memories despite so many displacements. “I have a hard drive,” he says, and he takes it out to show it. “It contains all my data, all my documents, all the memories with my friends, with the places we miss at the moment, they are on it. When I am alone, I open these videos and go back to my past and remember how I used to live. It keeps me going in life. It gives me positive energy.”

More at Doctors Without Borders and YouTube

Jihad Mansour, ambulance officer, and Kamal Ahmad, ambulance driver

The British Red Cross has posted a two-minute video from the Palestine Red Crescent Society about two of their ambulance crew members, ambulance officer Jihad Mansour and driver Kamal Ahmad. The two men describe frantic efforts to save lives, losing friends and co-workers, and not knowing what is happening to their own families while they work.

More at British Red Cross or YouTube

Basel Kafinah 28, former falafel maker, trying to feed his family

Basel Kafinah, 28, ran a falafel stand at the a-Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza before the war. But had to stop because he couldn’t get cooking oil or gas and his ingredients became too expensive. 

Instead, he started selling cleaning supplies. Sometimes he buys and sells small quantities of food. 

When prices kept rising out, he finally decided to go to a distribution center four kilometers away. But there were thousands of people there, and Israeli soldiers shot at them. He came home empty handed. The same thing happened on his second attempt. But there’s no alternative so he keeps trying. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn’t. 

“We’re constantly shot at, and there are thugs and thieves everywhere,” he said. “There’s danger all around us. If I get hurt, there will be no one to help me – especially at the aid distribution centers, which are crowded and have no ambulances nearby. 

“Every time I leave for a distribution center, I see on my family’s faces how scared they are, as if it’s the last time they’ll ever see me. Going to an aid center feels like walking to my death. When I come home, it feels like God has given me my life back.”

Kafinah told his story to a researcher for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, on July 1.

More at B’Tselem

Hadi ‘Abed Rabu, 40, shot trying to get food

Hadi Abed Rabu, a 40-year-old husband and father of two, spoke with researchers from B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, on July 20 and August 5. He described his attempts to get food for his wife and two young daughters. One of his trips was to a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution site in the southern part of the Gaza strip. Another was to a crossing in the north.

On both trips, Rabu says Israeli troops shot at the crowds, killing many people around him. He also describes people fighting over food. On his trip to the northern crossing, Rabu was shot in the leg. 

More at B’Tselem

Reem, 13, daughter of Abu Walid, an example of the exploding number of malnourished children

Abu Walid was walking back home with his 13-year-old daughter Reem after visiting his brother's house when she began to complain of fatigue. Step after step, her voice grew weaker until she suddenly collapsed on the road, unconscious for hours.

Terrified, the father of six carried her to the nearest hospital. Doctors ran tests, and the results came back clear: Reem had no illness. Instead, Abu Walid was told what he had feared but never imagined would touch his daughter so soon: She was suffering from malnutrition.

Reem and her brother Karim now struggle with constant fatigue and weakness, their growth stunted by a lack of proper food.

Their story is told in a recent article in Haaretz, a liberal Israeli newspaper. “Doctors say cases of malnutrition have surged in recent months, with more and more children arriving dehydrated, underweight and too weak to carry out daily activities, like fetching water, bringing food from charity kitchens and NGOs, or even playing with other kids,” the article says.

The article says such cases are now common, and hospitals, with not enough doctors and medicine, can’t cope. "Every day, we are forced to choose who receives treatment and who must wait," one pharmacist who volunteers in Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah told Haaretz. "This is not medicine. This is survival."

More at Haaretz