Israel-Hamas war: Gazans bear witness in video to a year of life during the conflict

Days after Israel’s war in Gaza broke out last October, two Palestinians began filming their daily lives for the BBC World Service. Aseel fled to the south of the territory for safety, Khalid chose to stay in the north. Between them, they documented the explosions, multiple evacuations, deaths and trauma experienced by children caught up in the conflict.

On the living room floor of a bombed house in northern Gaza, six-year-old Hamoud and four-year-old Halloum play rescuers. They pull a small doll between them and insert tiny imaginary stitches into its cloth body.

“She is injured,” explains Hamoud. “A lot of rubble fell on him.”

It’s a scene he and his siblings have seen unfold countless times over the past year in Gaza, where nearly one in three people killed in the war that began in October 2023 was a child, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The ongoing Israeli war was launched after around 1,200 people were killed in Hamas attacks on October 7.

Khalid, the children’s father, anxiously watches their games from afar.

“These are not games that children should play,” says Khalid. “When I see them like that, my heart breaks.”

As hospitals in northern Gaza stopped functioning in December, a few months after the start of the war, Khalid went against Israeli orders to evacuate to the south and decided to stay in his neighborhood of Jabalia , in northern Gaza, to provide medical services to his community.

Khalid is not a doctor, but he trained as a physical therapist and worked as a distributor for a medical supply company.

“Everyone in my neighborhood knows that I am a physiotherapist and not a doctor. But given the difficult situation, I told them that I could change the bandages and sew up the wounds, especially those of the children. If I leave, the people I care for may lose their lives because there is no hospital or clinic.”

With basic surgical skills and a stock of medicines – some of which had expired – he opened a clinic in his home, where he focused on treating children. His children began to imitate what they saw.

“Ambulance, take him to the ambulance!” shouts Hamoud, as he plays “paramedics” with his sister, one of the new games they developed during the war. Khalid hears his son trying to guess the type of injury. Was it an injury caused by a missile, shrapnel, or the result of a building collapse?

“Hamoud is more familiar with the sound of bombs than with that of his toys. And little Halloum had to endure so much for her age,” Khalid said. “I fear the long-term psychological effects of this war on them.”

According to the International Rescue Committee, the impact of displacement, trauma and lack of schooling will likely affect Gaza’s children throughout their lives.

Stranded in the north, Khalid’s children suffered not only psychological trauma, but also unprecedented levels of hunger. In June, the United Nations estimated that 96% of Gaza’s population faced “acute food insecurity.”

As Hamoud waves a makeshift flag on the roof, desperately beckoning a humanitarian plane to drop off his packages near their house, a terrifying detonation shakes the ground. An Israeli plane has just dropped a bomb on a nearby building, a plume of smoke rising a few blocks away.

“I don’t like planes that drop bombs,” says Hamoud, annoyed. “I want them to drop food for us instead.” »

In southern Gaza, Aseel, a 24-year-old mother, considers how to feed her newborn daughter Hayat.

“There is no food in the market for me to eat properly and breastfeed him, so I have to give him formula,” says Aseel.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) warned this month that 17,000 pregnant women in Gaza were now on the brink of starvation.

“Formula, diapers, everything babies need became incredibly expensive during the war,” says Aseel’s husband Ibrahim. He adds that it is difficult to find them.

This is not how Aseel had imagined his first months with his little girl.

Aseel, her husband and their 14-month-old daughter Rose had to leave their home and head south in the first weeks of the war, following Israeli evacuation orders. The United Nations estimates that nine out of ten Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced at least once since the war began in October 2023.

Eight months pregnant, Aseel had to walk several kilometers south using a safe route. “We didn’t have enough water and I suffered from anemia. There were bodies all over the floor. All I could think about was my daughter Rose and the baby growing inside me.”

Aseel and her husband made a pact, she says, “if anything happened to him, I would continue the journey alone and take care of our daughter Rose and the baby. And if I passed out from exhaustion, he knew he had to move on with our daughter and leave me behind.”

Once they reached the relative safety of Deir al-Balah in the south, a new problem presented itself: There were virtually no functioning hospitals where she could give birth. Al Awda Hospital in Nuseirat was the only nearby facility able to accommodate births.

Aseel’s daughter, Hayat, was born there on December 13. Its name, the Arabic word for “life,” was chosen to recall the full and happy lives they hope to return to once the war ends.

“It’s like she brought me back to life, in the midst of all this destruction. She reminds me that life can go on even in the most difficult circumstances.”

Ibrahim, a photographer, had to abandon his wife, his daughter Rose and his newborn baby to work in the field, putting his life at risk to provide for their needs. After an incident in which he found himself caught in the crossfire and narrowly escaped, he said: “I’m doing all this just to provide them with the basics of life, diapers, formula and clothes “.

“I feel like the weight of all of Gaza is on my shoulders, I’m very worried about my daughters and I feel like I won’t be able to provide for my newborn.

In May, Ibrahim and Aseel were reunited in Deir al-Balah and took their children by car.

“Hayat has not known a single day without war,” explains Ibrahim. “She was born in the middle of these scenes of destruction, in the noise of bombings and news.

Six-month-old Hayat is perched on her mother’s lap in the front seat. The car passes through rows and rows of demolished buildings, on roads buried under layers of sand and rubble.

“Despite everything,” said Ibrahim, “she keeps smiling.”