For 15 months, the children of Gaza have been reduced to statistics. The reported number of deaths gives a separate number for children. Malnutrition and starvation were recorded in terms of the number of children affected and killed. Even cold weather is measured by how many babies it has killed in makeshift tents.
But behind these numbers lie the heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children whose childhoods have been cut short. As a nurse working in al-Shifa Medical Complex and then in a makeshift clinic in a displacement camp, I have come across so many painful stories of children suffering in the midst of this horrific war.
Watching so many children suffer made the misery of trying to survive the genocide even more unbearable.
In early November 2023, when I was on shift in the emergency department, several injured people were rushed in after another violent bombing. I went looking for one of them: 10-year-old Tala.
When I examined her, I saw that her arm had already been amputated and she had severe burns all over her body. She cried a lot, asking about her aunt. I didn’t know what to say. I gave her a painkiller to calm her down a bit.
I tried to talk to her and soothe her tears. She told me that she had lost her entire family because of the previous bombing of her house. She was not at home, so she became the only survivor. She was taken in by her aunt and was staying in her house when the missile hit the neighboring building. The explosion and shrapnel injured her.
As the effects of the painkiller wore off, Tala began to cry profusely again from the physical and mental pain of what had happened to her. It was heartbreaking to see this little girl suffer so much. She should have gone to school, played with her friends, hugged her family. And here she was all alone, in unbearable pain and sadness. How will he continue his life?
After each visit to her bed, I cried. She stayed in the hospital for two weeks and was eventually released to her aunt.
Tala was just one of the many children I had seen in the al-Shifa emergency department before us exiled by the Israelites at the end of November. Most of the bombing victims I treated were children. Many had injuries like Tala’s, some much worse than hers. The vast majority of them saw their family members either torn apart, bled to death or seriously injured. Too many of them were left orphans.
When I moved to a refugee camp in the south, the suffering of the children I saw did not become any less. I volunteered at the medical center in the camp, where many of the patients were children.
One day in January 2024, a worried mother came to us with her seven-year-old son named Youssef. She told us that he had been ill for several weeks and that she did not know what was wrong with him. When we examined him, we found that he was suffering from viral hepatitis and that he was in an advanced stage of the disease. He was in a lot of pain, he was vomiting and had diarrhea, he had stomach cramps and a fever.
We couldn’t do much for him. A few days later, Youssef died.
His death did not even become a statistic. He was not killed by an Israeli bomb, so he was not added to the death toll reported that day.
But he was still a victim of this genocidal war. If Gaza’s health system had not been destroyed, it would have been saved.
There are other injuries that children in Gaza suffer from that I, as a medical professional, cannot help, even if I had all the medicine and all the equipment in the world. These are psychological wounds carried by every single child who survived this genocide.
In July, I spoke with 11-year-old Ahmad in an area in Khan Younis where children go to fly kites. I went there to talk to “healthy” kids – the kind I wouldn’t see in a makeshift clinic.
“There is nothing worse than this situation. The situation of the children is like a shoe!” he told me.
His answer surprised me and I laughed.
I asked him: “What hurt you the most in this war?” He answered with eyes heavy with sadness, in one word: loss. He lost his mother.
He said: “The occupier launched a mad rush at us and bombed our entire apartment block.” As for my mother, I did not see her, because that day I was hit in the head by shrapnel near the skull and was taken to intensive care. After three days, when I woke up and called my mother, they told me that Israel had killed her, just like that.”
I controlled myself; I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I’m sure I was weaker than him at this point.
No child deserves this miserable life. No child should suffer from a preventable disease; no child should be burned or maimed by bombs. No child should have to see their parents die.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
