Guilt, grief and strength: Gaza’s ‘sole survivor’ children face life alone

Guilt, grief and strength: Gaza’s ‘sole survivor’ children face life alone Every morning, 13-year-old Jana al-Motouq wakes up alone. The Palestinian girl prepares her own breakfast, washes her clothes and gets ready for school. Not long ago, those small tasks were done by her mother. She used to wake them up, make breakfast, brush their hair. Now, she does everything by herself. That is because al-Motouq was the sole survivor of her family after an Israeli strike killed them on 17 November 2023 in the Gaza Strip. The attack on a residential building in Jabalia killed her parents, Ahmed and Heba; her twin sister Saja; and her younger brothers, Hossam, eight, and Mohammed, four. Al-Motouq is among thousands of children left without parents, siblings or extended family after Israeli bombardments killed more than 73,000 people over two years. Most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have also been displaced repeatedly, stripped of their homes, schools and the routines that once gave their lives structure. The result is a generation being forced to grow up amid grief, displacement and profound uncertainty. Another 35 members of al-Motouq’s extended family, including uncles and cousins, were also killed in the strike. Al-Motouq survived because she had slept at her grandmother’s house across the street that night after falling ill. When the explosion shook the neighborhood shortly before dawn, she rushed outside. Our house wasn’t there anymore, she recalled. I kept calling for my mum and dad. I sat on the rubble calling them. Nobody answered. For days afterwards, al-Motouq returned to the ruins each morning, searching for traces of the family she had lost. She picked up bloodstained blankets from the debris, hugging and kissing them, before relatives pulled her away from the danger. I wished I had been with them, she told Middle East Eye. I thought, if I had died with them, maybe I could rest. That guilt is common among people like al-Motouq in Gaza, according to Sereen al-Absi, a psychologist who has worked with survivors like her. They always feel that they are guilty: Why did I survive while they are gone? I didn’t protect them, al-Absi, 29, told MEE. Even though logically they know they had nothing to do with what happened, their feelings cannot control the amount of pain they have experienced. Al-Motouq now lives with her maternal grandparents in a tent, after displacement destroyed the life she once knew. Before the war, she and her twin sister were inseparable. We wore the same clothes, she remembered with a faint smile. If one of us wore something different, we’d get upset. She wasn’t just my twin, she was my life partner. According to Riad al-Bitar, undersecretary at the Palestinian Ministry of Social Development in Gaza, the war has left more than 68,000 children and adults as sole survivors of their families, as well as more than 75,000 orphans who have lost one or both parents. The scale of the phenomenon is such that medical personnel in Gaza have adopted the acronym WCNSF, “Wounded Child, No Surviving Family”, to describe patients who arrive at hospitals wounded and alone. Eighteen-year-old Dima Junina, who lives in Gaza City, was one of them. An Israeli bombing on 30 October 2023 caused a building next door to collapse onto their house. Her father, Ahmed, her mother, Noor, and her three younger brothers, Anas, Baraa and six-year-old Mufeed, were all killed. Junina survived because a door shielded her beneath the rubble. For hours, she believed the rest of her family were still alive. I don’t want people treating me differently because I’m an orphan, she said.