Bethlehem, occupied West Bank – Hanan al-Kiq sits next to his bed in Beit Jala hospital, a sad, pale face that always threatens to burst into tears within seconds, no matter how hard he tries to smile and say hello.
Sitting next to the exhausted woman is her husband Mazen, 56, an employee of the Gaza Ministry of Education. After quitting her job, she came to the occupied West Bank, where her son Fadi is receiving treatment.
Hanan, 50, says it's a huge burden on him. She said she and Mazen were vigil at Mr. Fadi's bedside, praying for his healing, when Israel's war on Gaza took their other four children from them.
“What can I say beyond what happened?'' Mazen said he may not have wanted or been able to say more.
The couple had seven children.
Four daughters: Iman (31 years old), Malaka (24 years old), Nuran (23 years old), and Tara (15 years old), who are married and live in Canada.
Three sons: Faiz (33 years old, married and living in the United States), Fadi (30 years old), and Muhammad Awad (17 years old).
Currently, they have three children: Fadi, Fayez and Iman.
When Hanan and Mazen left Gaza for Fadi's treatment, Malacca, Nuran, Mohammad Awad, and Tara had to stay behind because they were killed when Israel bombed the shelter where they were hiding.
memorial for those lost
Hanan scrolls through photos of her children on her phone, and does so with a sad intimacy as she talks about them.
“Malaka was kind and generous and always willing to help. Nouran loved everyone, loved life and was loved in return, especially by her fiancé in Morocco… They・We were planning to get married after the Feast of Sacrifice.
Of Tara, her mother said, “I likened her to the Virgin Mary, a real princess, very gentle and soft. And Muhammad Awad, he worked very hard. It was placed next to my desk: “I want to get a 97% on my high school exam to please my father and be able to study engineering overseas.''
Their lively and contented family life came to a screeching halt last April when Fadi fell from the fifth floor while plastering the building's exterior. He became a quadriplegic.
Mazen initially accompanied Fadi to Haifa for treatment. After that, he moved from hospital to hospital.
Many months passed before Hanan was able to join them. By that time, treatment was being carried out at Tel Aviv's Reut Hospital. Hanan had planned to stay with Fadi while Mazen returned to Gaza, but she asked him to stay because she was worried about Fadi and feared dealing with the Israeli hospital system.
Little did she know that asking him to stay would save his life, she said.
war begins
When Israel's war on Gaza began in October, Fadi's distraught parents were still trying to find the treatment he needed. He was transferred from Haifa to Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv, where he underwent several surgeries, but the surgeries were abandoned because he could not afford to complete his treatment there.
Hannan spoke to the children as often as she could, listened to their terrified voices on the phone and heard their cries every time a projectile landed nearby.
“They cried on the phone and said, 'Mommy, we're going to die,'” she says.
“I tried to reassure them that, like in previous wars, it would be over in a few days. 'No harm or danger will befall you,' I told them,” she said. I said, rubbing the tears from my eyes.
A week after the war began, Hanan's fear for her children grew and she emailed her sisters asking them to take care of them, writing: take care of them. “
Her sister, who gave her name as Umm Fadi, drove the children from Lemal in northern Gaza to her home in Tal al-Hawa in the southwest.
By then, Hanan's appeals to Palestinian officials and the local community had been successful, and by October 20th, he had managed to get the Palestinian Authority to pay for Fadi's treatment and to admit him to a hospital in Bethlehem by October 20. .
The children stayed with their aunt for almost a month until the Israeli army attacked their neighborhood, and then they fled to As-Zawaida with the aunt, their sons and wives, their daughters and their husbands, and the aunt. All their children.
On December 13, Fadi underwent surgery at Istishari Hospital in Ramallah, and was then transferred to Beit Jala Hospital in Bethlehem, where he is currently undergoing treatment.
Until the people of Bethlehem learned of their plight, Hanan and Mazen had been sleeping in the hospital ward and eating whatever the hospital gave them.
The couple said they were given a furnished house by local residents and told that the house was theirs during Fadi's treatment. “We have found safety for our people,” Hannan said.
Hanan from Bethlehem was worried about her children left behind in Gaza, but she also worried about her parents, asking about her brother Fadi's health every time they spoke.
Hanan's sister and the 29 people with her, including her children, were returning to their home in Tal al-Hawa when they heard that Israeli forces had withdrawn. The damage they left behind was so extensive that the group struggled to find their way back home, children said by phone.
Just a few weeks later, Israeli forces attacked again, and the family fled to Jalaa, then to Lemal, then back to Jalaa, and finally took refuge in a school building with 200 others. However, as the group continued to move from place to place in search of safety, one day Hanan heard that 16 of his relatives had been killed in an Israeli attack on Jarrah.
Hanan remained on the other end of the line, worried and disgusted. She almost lost her mind when her children's cell phones went off, but her niece Sahar told her that everything was fine and that the surviving family was finally reunited in Tal Al-Hawa. I heard that you were able to leave for .
“Imagine what it was like,” Hanan said, sadly scrolling through the photos, “to have Malaka say, 'Mom, we're going to be martyred.' Please don't cry. It's better than being paralyzed or losing a limb.”
Then she lost contact with them for a few days, maybe a week. Hanan lost count as she desperately tried to contact anyone who might know what was going on. On the last night of her search, she couldn't sleep and all night she kept sending messages to Maraka.
Hanan and Mazen contacted the ICRC and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, begging them to go to the house and check on the children. But Hanan didn't realize they had an answer until one day she walked into Fadi's hospital room and saw her group of doctors and staff waiting for her.
One of the women in the group began asking questions gently, but something told her there was another reason for their presence.
“I asked, 'Did you get anything? My children, did something happen to them? Were they martyred?'
“I saw tears in their eyes, and one of them, wearing a Red Crescent uniform, answered: 'I wanted to say that they were not martyred. But this is God's will.'
When emergency services finally arrived at the house on December 21, 2023, they discovered that everyone there had been murdered approximately three days earlier.
“I stood in the middle of the room and begged them: 'Okay, tell me, who was martyred?' Who's still alive? Malacca? Tutu? [Tala]?Muhammad? ”
“She replied that they had all been martyred and were found under the rubble.
“I kept screaming and screaming until I collapsed in their midst.”
Hanan had been campaigning to expel Fadi's family from Gaza even before Fadi's accident. She struggled to get passports for her children and waited for the war to end so they could travel, but now it was all for nothing.
“My children… my children! They were waiting for my brother Fadi to recover and for us to come back,” she said in tears.
Now she doesn't want to return to Gaza.
“No, there are no people or stones left. The houses have been destroyed and the children have been martyred. To whom will we return them?
“Nobody is gone, and my children too. [and] My sister and many of my relatives were martyred. ”