Amal Al-Taweel and Rola Sager gave birth in a Gaza hospital on Oct. 7 — the day Hamas militants streamed across the border in a deadly attack that kicked off the war with Israel
Rockets streaked through the morning sky in Gaza on Oct. 7 as Amal Al-Taweel hurried to the hospital in the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp, already in labor. After a difficult birth, she and her husband, Mustafa, finally got to hold Ali, the child they spent three years trying to have.
Rola Saqer’s water broke that day as she sheltered from Israeli airstrikes in Beit Lahia, a Gaza town near where Hamas militants streamed across the border hours earlier in the attack that kicked off the war. She and her husband, Mohammed Zaqout, had been trying to have a child for five years, and not even the terrifying explosions all around would stop them from going to the hospital to have their baby that night. Saqer gave birth to Masa, a name that means diamond in Arabic.
The families emerged from the hospital to a changed world. On the babies’ second day of life, Israel declared war on Hamas and its fighter jets swooped over the neighborhoods where Ali and Masa were supposed to grow up. In the six months since the children were born, the couples have experienced the trials of early parenthood against the backdrop of a brutal conflict.
The families’ homes were leveled by airstrikes, and they’ve had no reliable shelter and scant access to medical treatment and baby supplies. The infants are hungry, and despite all of the plans the couples made before the war, they fear the lives they had hoped to give their children is gone.
“I was preparing him for another life, a beautiful one, but war changed all of these features,” Amal Al-Taweel told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “We barely live day by day, and we don’t know what will happen. There is no planning.»
Saqer recalled the hope she had before the war.
“This is my only daughter,» she said, rocking Masa gently in a cradle. «I prepared many things and clothes for her. I bought her a closet a week before the war. I was also planning her birthdays and everything. The war came and destroyed everything.”
The Al-Taweel family spent the first days of Ali’s life going between their home and relatives’ houses in search of safety. Nearby buildings kept being struck — first one next to Amal’s sister’s home, and then one next to her parents’ place.
As the family sheltered at home on Oct. 20, Israeli authorities issued an evacuation order warning that a strike was imminent and residents had 10 minutes to leave.
