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Bethlehem, occupied West Bank – Hanan al-Qiq sits next to a hospital bed in Beit Jala hospital, her sad, pale face seconds away from tears at all times, even when she tries to smile in greeting .
Sitting beside the exhausted woman is her husband, Mazen, 56, a Gaza education ministry employee who has left his job to come to the occupied West Bank, where their son Fadi is being treated.
Fifty-year-old Hanan says she carries a heavy burden. While she and Mazen sat by Fadi's bedside praying for his healing, Israel's war on Gaza took their four other children from them.
“What can I say beyond what happened?” said Mazen, who did not want to say more, or perhaps could not.
The couple had seven children.
Four daughters: Iman, 31, who is married and lives in Canada, Malaka, 24, Nooran, 23, and Tala, 15.
Three sons: 33-year-old Faiz, who is married and lives in the United States, 30-year-old Fadi, and 17-year-old Muhammad Awad.
They now have three children: Fadi, Faiz and Iman.
Because when Hanan and Mazen left Gaza to seek medical care for Fadi, Malaka, Nouran, Muhammad Awad and Tala had to stay behind and were killed when Israel bombed the shelter in which they were hiding.
memory of lost people
Hanan scrolls through photos of her children on her phone, talking about them as she does so with a sad familiarity.
“Malka was sweet and generous, always ready to help. Nouran loved everyone, loved life and was loved in return, especially her fiancé in Morocco… They were to get married after Eid al-Adha.
As for Tala, her mother said, “I compared her to the Virgin Mary, very calm and gentle, a real princess. And Muhammad Awad, he worked very hard. He had a note written on his desk reminding himself: 'I want to score 97 per cent in my high school exams so that my father is happy and I can study engineering abroad.'
Their busy, content family life came to a sudden halt last April when Fadi fell five floors while plastering the exterior of a building. He became a quadriplegic.
Mazen initially accompanied Fadi to Haifa for treatment. Since then he has been moved from one hospital to another.
It took several months for Hanan to join them; Till then he was being treated at Reuth Hospital in Tel Aviv. Hanan was supposed to stay with Fadi when Mazen returned to Gaza, but she was worried about Fadi and fearful of dealing with the Israeli hospital system, so she asked him to stay.
Little did she know, she said, that by telling him to stop she would save his life.
the conflict begins
When Israel's conflict on Gaza started in October, the distraught dad and mom had been nonetheless looking for the remedy they wanted for Fadi. He was transferred from Haifa to Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv, the place he underwent some surgical procedures, however was kicked out as a result of he was not in a position to full remedy there.
Hanan spoke to her youngsters as usually as doable, listening to them after they trembled with worry, and listening to their screams each time a projectile fell close by.
“They’d cry on the telephone: 'Mother, we're dying,'” she mentioned.
“I’ll attempt to reassure them by telling them that this shall be over in a couple of days, like earlier wars. 'No hurt or hazard will come to you,' I instructed them,” she mentioned, wiping tears from her eyes.
Per week after the conflict started, Hanan's worry for her youngsters grew and he or she emailed her sisters asking them to deal with them, writing: “The lives of my daughters are in your palms. deal with them.”
Her older sister, who goes by Umm Fadi, despatched a automotive to take the youngsters from Remel in northern Gaza to her house in Tal al-Hawa, southwest of Gaza.
By then, Hanan's appeals to the Palestinian authorities and the group had been working and he or she managed to get the Palestinian Authority to pay for Fadi's remedy and by 20 October admitted him to a hospital in Bethlehem.
The kids stayed at their aunt's home for a couple of month, till Israeli forces attacked the neighborhood they usually fled to Az-Zawayda together with everybody in the home: their aunt, her sons with their wives, their Daughters with their husbands, and all their youngsters.
Fadi underwent surgical procedure at Istishari Hospital in Ramallah on 13 December, earlier than being transferred to Beit Jala Hospital in Bethlehem, the place he’s nonetheless being handled.
All of the whereas, Hanan and Mazen had been sleeping within the hospital wards and consuming regardless of the hospital gave them, till the individuals of Bethlehem turned conscious of their plight.
The couple mentioned a group member gave them a furnished home and instructed them it was theirs all through Fadi's remedy. “We discovered security amongst our personal individuals,” Hanan mentioned.
Whereas Hanan in Bethlehem was involved about his youngsters left behind in Gaza, he was involved about his dad and mom and requested concerning the well being of his brother Fadi each time they spoke.
Hanan's sister and the 29 individuals accompanying her – together with Hanan's youngsters – had been returning to their house in Tal al-Hawa after listening to information of the Israeli military's withdrawal. The kids instructed them over the telephone that the harm they left behind was so intensive that the group was having issue getting again house.
Only a few weeks later, Israeli forces attacked once more, and drove the fleeing household to Jala, then to Ramel and again to Jala, the place they took refuge with 200 others in a faculty constructing. However the group continued transferring from place to position in quest of security, till someday Hanan heard that 16 family members had been killed in an Israeli assault in Jala.
Hanan, apprehensive, grabbed the opposite finish of the telephone. She virtually misplaced her thoughts when the youngsters's telephones had been switched off, however she heard from her niece Sahar that every little thing was okay and finally the surviving household was in a position to go to Tal al-Hawa as soon as once more.
“Think about what it was like,” Hanan mentioned sadly, scrolling by photographs, “when Malka mentioned to me: 'Mother, we shall be martyrs. Don't cry if this occurs. I would like it higher than that. We might change into paralyzed or lose our limbs.”
Then he misplaced contact with them for a number of days, perhaps per week. Hanan misplaced depend as she desperately tried to contact anybody who knew what was taking place. On the final evening of her search, she couldn't sleep, spending the entire evening sending messages to Malka one after one other.
Hanan and Mazen reached out to the ICRC and the Palestine Purple Crescent Society, pleading with them to go to the properties and test on the youngsters. However Hanan didn't notice she had any solutions till she walked into Fadi's hospital room someday and noticed a bunch of docs and workers ready for him.
A lady within the group started to softly ask him questions, however one thing instructed her that there was another excuse for his presence.
“I requested: 'Have you ever discovered something? My youngsters, did one thing occur to them? Had been they martyred?'
“I noticed tears of their eyes, and considered one of them replied, he was carrying a Purple Crescent uniform: 'I’d like to inform you that they weren’t martyred, however it’s God's will.'
Emergency providers lastly reached the house on December 21, 2023, and located that everybody current there had died roughly three days earlier.
“I used to be standing there in the midst of the room pleading with them: 'Okay, inform me, who was martyred? Who continues to be alive? Malka? tutu (lock)? Muhammad?'
“He replied that each one the individuals had been martyred, that they had been discovered underneath the particles.
“I began screaming, simply screaming, till I fell down in the midst of them.”
Earlier than Fadi's accident, Hanan was engaged on getting the household out of Gaza. With nice effort, she obtained passports for the youngsters and was ready for the conflict to cease so they might journey, however now it was all in useless.
“My youngsters… my youngsters! They had been ready for his or her brother Fadi to recuperate and for us to return,” she mentioned, crying.
Now she doesn’t need to return to Gaza in any respect.
“No, I’ve neither individuals nor stones left there. The home has collapsed and my youngsters have been martyred. To whom will I return?
“Everyone seems to be gone and my youngsters (and) my sister, a lot of my family members have been martyred.”