Surviving Against All Odds: A Gaza Mother's Fight for Her Children Amid War and Loss

Palestinian women mourn outside Deir al-Balah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital

For Lamis Dib, a 31-year-old mother of two in Gaza, the past two years have transformed her existence into an unrelenting struggle for survival amid war, multiple forced relocations, and the devastating loss of both her husband and father.

"It's indescribable," she explains when speaking about the ongoing conflict that continues to ravage the Palestinian territory.

Dib vividly remembers the day before everything changed. "Friday, October 6, 2023, the last day before the war, was a beautiful day," she recounts.

Her five-year-old daughter Suwar had just begun kindergarten, and Dib would watch her return home each afternoon from their apartment window in Sheikh Radwan, a middle-class neighborhood in northern Gaza City.

Her three-year-old son Amin "was taking up all of my time," says Dib, who frequently took him to enjoy the nearby Mediterranean shoreline.

Though trained as a social worker, Dib couldn't secure employment in Gaza's struggling pre-war economy, which had been partially crippled by Israel's strict blockade implemented since 2007.

Nevertheless, she had established "a happy family" with her accountant husband who ensured she "never lacked anything."

Their neighborhood was among the first targeted by Israeli airstrikes following Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

That attack resulted in 1,219 deaths on the Israeli side, predominantly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel's military response has since killed at least 66,225 Palestinians in Gaza, also mostly civilians, based on figures from the Hamas-run health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.

The devastation throughout Gaza is immense, with entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble and millions of tons of debris covering areas where families once lived.

Infrastructure including buildings, hospitals, schools, water and sanitation systems have been severely damaged in Israeli attacks, creating catastrophic humanitarian conditions for Gaza's more than two million residents.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans now crowd into shelters, improvised camps, and open spaces, lacking even basic necessities.

When strikes hit Dib's area, she and her family escaped to a nearby district—the first of many displacements—before eventually leaving northern Gaza for Khan Yunis in the south.

"One of the most difficult days of our lives," Dib describes their arduous journey along damaged roads and through military checkpoints.

She and her children have been displaced 11 times as fighting between Israel and Hamas continues unabated.

"Each move was a race against death, under air strikes. It was as if I was on autopilot, I carried my kids, held them against me, and ran without looking back, without knowing where we were going," she reveals.

During their temporary relocation to southern Rafah, shortages and overcrowding became normal.

"For six months, in Rafah, 30 of us would sleep in a single room with no toilets. It was hard to express what we felt: confinement, nonstop air strikes, hunger, thirst, lack of hygiene and a total absence of privacy," she explains.

By August 2024, the family was living in central Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp when tragedy struck again.

"On a Friday at 6:00 pm, my husband and my father were on the rooftop with five young people from the family, when we heard the sound of a missile and saw smoke," she recounts.

"I ran towards the rooftop, and the scene was unimaginable; they were all dead."

"My husband's body seemed intact, I thought he was alive. I tried to wake him up, but he had been struck in the head. And then I found my father's body... his hand had been blown off."

Since that devastating day, Dib has had to care for her children alone during Gaza's most challenging period.

She relocated to a tent in Al-Zawayda, a camp where thousands of displaced Palestinians endure the same harsh conditions, living under tarps that flutter in the wind, offer little protection from summer heat, and leak during winter rainfall.

"Everything is difficult," she says from inside her shelter.

While her friends can turn to fathers or husbands for assistance, Dib must navigate the endless financial hardships alone.

In May 2025, Israel eased a total blockade on supplies imposed in March, but the humanitarian aid slowly entering since then remains insufficient according to the UN—a claim Israel disputes.

"Our children were robbed of education, food, and a normal life," she laments as Suwar and Amin study on her lap.

Sometimes they look at photos of their father and relatives killed during the war stored on Dib's phone.

"We'll return to our home," she says. "We will rebuild it, but we just want a little bit of peace."

Like their mother, Suwar and Amin primarily focus on survival, tasked with filling the family's water containers at a temporary station near their tent.

For these children, the war's psychological impact may outlast the physical destruction.

UNICEF, the UN's agency for children, estimated in 2024 that every child in Gaza needed psychological support.