“Life before the war in Gaza was very simple ... [There were] schools. We were happy with what we had, it was a home for us,” says Ibtissam Zinati. “Gaza for us is our home. We love it so much, it means a lot to us. I didn’t expect that we would be leaving Gaza.”
The 39-year-old mother has been in Lebanon with three of her children since September. She speaks from a wheelchair, with a social worker saying she has completed one surgery, with another due. “Her knee is completely gone. There is a lot of infection, very bad bacteria,” the social worker says.
With Zinati is Layan (10), whose abdomen was hit by shrapnel in an Israeli air strike, and Leen (5), who has had one finger amputated and needs surgery on another. Hamza (15) got away physically uninjured.
On October 23rd, 2023, the family were in Zinati’s parents’ three-floor home when there was a direct Israeli strike on it. “My parents were there, brothers, sisters, all the kids as we had been displaced from our houses. Almost all of us were killed: my mother, father, brother and his wife, three sisters and all their kids,” she says. One of her own children died and another was injured so badly she did not survive long.
In Gaza a November report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found that children aged between five and nine accounted for the largest number of dead in Israel’s military onslaught, followed by 10-14 year olds and then babies and children aged 0 to four. The total death toll since October 2023 stands above 45,600, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health. An estimated 25,000 people are thought to have “life-changing” injuries needing long-term rehabilitation, according to the World Health Organisation – equating to more than one in every 100 Gazans.
Zinati’s experience underlines the struggles of so many who have been badly injured. She had her first intervention soon after the air strike, to apply an external fixator to her leg, but she then waited months to leave Gaza, where there were no specialised surgeons for a further operation she needed. “The doctors in Gaza, their role is to save lives, but they don’t know how to intervene further,” she says.
From the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza, she applied for a referral to be moved to the Israeli-occupied West Bank “several times”, but it was not granted. Then, Israeli forces laid siege to the hospital, Zinati recalls. “Doctors and medical staff ran away. I didn’t see [Israeli forces] but they were circling it and throwing bombs. In the room beside me, 20 patients were killed.” At the time, medics and Gaza’s health ministry said, at least 12 people were killed and others critically injured after a shell struck the hospital’s second floor. “We stayed under Israeli siege [for] four days and everyone who went to the first floor was shot until the Red Cross came,” Zinati says.
Zinati’s badly injured 16-year-old daughter Bayan “was very, very scared and her health situation really worsened then. After they moved her to the next hospital she died, her situation had been critical. There was shrapnel across her body including in her head, abdomen and legs; she lost speech, sight and movement.” Zinati recalls doctors saying there was nothing more they could do.
The new hospital they were taken to – the European Hospital in southern Gaza – was “overloaded”, Zinati says. Her case was not considered critical, so “I stayed in a room for two months, only seeing one or two surgeons passing by, they didn’t have capacity”.
Zinati says she eventually received permission to go to Egypt and a referral to the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund, which has been transporting injured Gazans to Lebanon for treatment. Currently, there are two other Gazan families in Beirut with them.
Zinati has another son who remains in Gaza – the Israelis did not give him permission to leave, a social worker says, as he is not a minor. Zinati is extremely worried about him and everyone else she has left behind.
In Gaza, Zinati says, “all of them, they’re injured and they can’t go out now because [the] Rafah [crossing] has closed. There are a lot of amputations for kids and for adults, for everyone, they can’t get the attention they need. There’s no house or family without injuries.”
Children must be taken care of and it’s very challenging, especially for kids in Gaza, to receive medical attention
— Eid Afana
Five-year-old Adam Afana was the first child to arrive in Beirut for treatment with the Ghassan Sittah Children’s Fund, at the end of May.
He was accompanied by his uncle, Eid Afana; Adam’s father and sister were killed.
Eid’s wife and children are still in Egypt, a separation he finds challenging. Adam is attending school in Lebanon and has another surgery left – the treatment was delayed because of Israel’s war with Hizbullah, which had a devastating effect on civilians across Lebanon.
“We just came out of a war zone and came into a war zone ... The child was scared and the treatment was affected,” says Eid. He urges greater understanding of the fact that “children must be taken care of and it’s very challenging, especially for kids in Gaza, to receive medical attention”.
When there is a ceasefire, Eid would like the family to return to Gaza. “When [the] Rafah [crossing] opens for people and there [is] some stability, and the [displaced] southern people go to the north, we want to go.”
But, in the meantime, he says, “I just wish the international community can look into this with empathy. What’s happening is a genocide, they’re demolishing everything ... They’re saying Gazan people are terrorists.”
In November the International Criminal Court issued warrants for Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, charges Israeli officials dismissed as “anti-Semitic”. A warrant was also issued for Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in an air strike last July. Whether Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza is also being assessed at the International Court of Justice.
My kids had dreams, ambitions ... and now everything is gone
— Ibtissam Zinati
Given the horrors her people are going through, Zinati says she finds it impossible to imagine any future. “All Gazan people don’t think of the future, every few years is war.” But it is clear that her children’s lives have been devastated. “My kids had dreams, ambitions ... and now everything is gone.”
Instead of future plans, Zinati says, “I only have wishes. I wish for peace, for a ceasefire, for a free Gaza and Palestine. That this occupation will go away because people are tired, exhausted and they can’t take it any more. I want to go back to Gaza to my normal life. I hope that one day I can go back to Gaza and visit my parents’ graves.”
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here
