The Akeila Brothers' Desperate Wish
The four Akeila brothers: Mohammed, Mahmoud, Ahmed and Abdullah are looking forward to seeing their parents again. They believe it will happen as soon as they can return to Gaza City, where they grew up before war flattened their lives.
The elder brother Ahmed, 13, and the younger brother Abdullah, 9, are two of the four orphans in the Akeila family. Abdullah prays every afternoon in the hope of seeing his parents again. Photo: New York Times
“Mom and Dad will be waiting for us there,” the children said in unison to their aunt Samar, who was looking after them. But all four of them were also tearful after saying that, because they had been told long ago that their parents had died in an airstrike.
Except for the eldest, Ahmed, 13, none of the four brothers have seen images of their parents' bodies. Every evening during sunset prayers, Abdullah, 9, says he can still hear his mother's voice.
The children's aunt, Samar al-Jaja, 31, who lives in a tent with the children in the Gaza city of Khan Younis, is at a loss for what to do to comfort them in their plight. "When the children see other parents holding their children and talking to them," she said, "they feel so sad!"
The war in Gaza is ripping children from their parents and parents from their children, disrupting the natural order of things, the basic unit of life in the strip. It is leaving so many orphans in disarray that no aid agency or group can count them.
Medical staff in Gaza say children are left to fend for themselves in hospital corridors after arriving bloodied and alone – “wounded children with no surviving families”, as some hospitals describe them in records. Neonatal wards house the babies who have gone unclaimed.
In Khan Younis, a volunteer-run camp has sprung up to shelter more than 1,000 children who have lost one or both parents, including Akeila’s family. There is a section in the camp for “sole survivors,” children who have lost their entire families. The camp is full. But there is still a long waiting list for children to be placed there.
The unfortunate girl and the noble heart of the nurse
Among the premature babies who arrived at the Emirati Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Rafah last November was a 3-week-old girl whose family is unknown.
According to Amal Abu Khatleh, a midwife at the hospital, the baby’s records said he was found next to a mosque in Gaza City after an airstrike that killed dozens of people. Staff called him “Majhoul,” which means “unknown” in Arabic.
A girl whose parents were killed in an airstrike is cared for by her aunt in a hospital. Photo: New York Times
Frustrated by the name’s blandness, Abu Khatleh, the midwife, decided to give the girl a more fitting name: Malak, or “angel.” She called journalists in northern Gaza to find out which families had lost loved ones in an airstrike near where Malak was found, then asked patients with that last name about a missing girl. But everyone shook their heads.
In January, concerned about Malak’s development, Abu Khatleh took her home. As in other Muslim societies, religious restrictions make legal adoption impossible in Gaza, although people can adopt and sponsor orphans. Still, Abu Khatleh’s family, friends and colleagues rallied around her, donating clothes, formula and diapers.
Abu Khatleh said that unless Malak's parents were found, she would keep her, regardless of legal hurdles. "I feel Malak is my real daughter," she said. "I love her. My friends even say she looks a lot like me."
And tens of thousands of orphans in Gaza
But not all children were as lucky as Malak. Between the bombings, the constant movement from tent to tent, from apartment to hospital, from shelter to shelter, no one can say how many children lost contact with their parents, and how many lost them forever.
Using statistical methods derived from analysis of other wars, UN experts estimate that at least 19,000 Gaza children are now living apart from their parents, relying on relatives, other caregivers or even on their own to survive.
Bombs have separated tens of thousands of children in Gaza from their parents, forcing many to go to hospitals alone in panic and pain. Photo: New York Times
But the real figure is probably higher than 19,000. “Other wars do not involve so much bombing and so much displacement, in such a small and crowded place, and with a population that includes such a high proportion of children,” said Jonathan Crickx, spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Tens of thousands of people have died in nearly a year of fighting in Gaza: many of them children, many of them parents. As many as 41% of families surveyed by Mr Crickx’s agency in Gaza in April were caring for children who were not their own.
Deborah Harrington, a British obstetrician volunteering in Gaza, said several children had been orphaned after their injured mothers died during labor. She witnessed two such births last December.
In Gaza, children are separated from their parents when Israeli forces arrest them, or after an airstrike, children are forced to run to hospitals alone in the chaos. Doctors say they have treated many newly orphaned children, many of whom have lost limbs.
“There is no one there to hold their hands, no one there to comfort them during painful surgeries,” said Dr. Irfan Galaria, a plastic surgeon from Virginia who volunteered at a hospital in Gaza in February.
Palestinian children attend a summer camp for orphans last month in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: GI
Aid workers are trying to find parents, if they are still alive, or relatives of the children. But government systems that could help have collapsed. Communications and information systems are no longer functioning properly. Evacuation orders have torn apart family trees, sending “fragments” in all directions.
And the children themselves have not yielded many clues. According to SOS Children’s Villages, an aid group that runs orphanages in Gaza, some of the young children were so traumatized that they were mute and unable to say their names, making the search nearly impossible.
In most cases, aid workers have to place orphaned children with other families. Humanitarian organizations will provide some meals and cash to families that take in orphans.
“Where will the future of these poor children go when they no longer have the people who love them the most and the war does not know when it will end?”, Mr. Jonathan Crickx - UNICEF spokesman sadly said.
Nguyen Khanh
Source: https://www.congluan.vn/lenh-denh-so-phan-hang-nghin-tre-mo-coi-o-gaza-post309378.html
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