Israel's war on Gaza has created a generation of orphans

Israel’s year-long war on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians and injured over 100,000, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

With nearly 50% of Gaza’s population under 18, children have borne the brunt of this devastating military campaign, which has destroyed entire swathes of the coastal enclave and displaced most of the population, often multiple times.

The latest figures show that nearly 17,000 children have been killed, with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) saying that Gaza’s children have endured “unimaginable horrors”.

A report published by British aid group Save the Children in July found that up to 21,000 children are estimated to be missing in Gaza, and some 4,000 are likely trapped beneath the rubble of their homes, schools, and hospitals.

At least 17,000 children are thought to have been orphaned as a result of Israeli attacks, according to UNICEF, equivalent to one per cent of the total number of those displaced in Gaza.

Ten-month-old Osama Al-Qrinawi’s story is just one of thousands. On 11 December 2023, Mohammed and Ilham Al-Qrinawi were overjoyed at the birth of their son after 16 years of marriage.

Ten days later, Mohammed was killed in an Israeli attack on the family home in Gaza City, which also killed his father, grandparents, and uncle.

Osama was trapped under the rubble with his mother for hours before being rescued, his aunt Om Mohammed al-Qrinawi told The New Arab.

Seeking a safe refuge, Osama’s mother Ilham moved to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza to stay at the Khadija School, which housed displaced Palestinians and had a medical centre.

In March this year, the school was targeted by Israel’s military, killing her and dozens of other internally displaced Gazans.

"This poor baby lost his right to grow up among his parents and live with his own family […] No one can imagine the pain that I feel every time I look at him,” Om Mohammed al-Qrinawi told TNA.

Even before Israel’s current war, there was a staggeringly high number of orphaned children in Gaza - 33,000 - from five previous military offensives since 2008.

Before this war, the Gaza Strip had four orphanages. All have now been turned into shelters for the displaced.

While some temporary facilities have been set up to take care of families who have lost breadwinners, they are not nearly enough to deal with the needs of thousands of new orphans.

Children who have lost parents have also effectively become the head of households, responsible for caring for younger siblings.

Mohammed al-Yazgi, 13, lost his mother when Israel bombed their house in the al-Jalaa area of Gaza City last November. "My mum is still under the rubble with her entire family," Mohammed told TNA.

His father took him and his six siblings to Shifa hospital in December 2023 for their safety before leaving to try to locate his wife’s body under the rubble of their home.

Mohammed and his siblings were then displaced along with thousands of others after Israel took control of the hospital and ordered it to be evacuated.

In the ensuing chaos, they were separated from his father, who they haven’t seen since. Mohammed is now a parent to his other siblings, with his one-year-old sister Toleen calling him ‘dad’.

"When she called me dad, I cried a lot and asked myself how many years have I grown up? When did I become a father to my siblings?" he told TNA.

Mohammed currently lives with his siblings in a tent established in the al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis city in the south of Gaza. He often wakes up panicked in the middle of the night from the sound of repeated explosions from Israeli airstrikes.

"I was a child, and I needed my parents to take care of me […] Now, I am struggling to keep my siblings afloat by obtaining food for them from charitable institutions," he said.

"It is hard to keep my siblings calm while I myself cannot do the same," he added, saying that they have been displaced multiple times due to ongoing Israeli attacks.

"We are left alone in this war without having any chance to live in peace," he said, tears in his eyes. "We don't know if we will even survive.”

Reuniting children who have lost their parents with other relatives has become a virtually impossible task for humanitarian groups, especially in light of repeated displacement and the permanent lack of security.

Before the war, in addition to four orphanages, there were also multiple relief organisations who provided shelter, care, education, food, and clothing for orphaned children, with a monthly allowance providing for their needs.

Those services have all but ceased to exist after a year of war.

According to the National System for Child Protection and Alternative Care (SOS) program, the capacity of the main care institutions in the Gaza Strip is around 2,800 orphaned children each.

Most of these facilities were already severely damaged in Israel’s 2021 war on Gaza, which lasted 11 days.

Despite this, displaced residents have sought them out as safe destinations for shelter amid the current conflict, making it harder to provide services to the orphaned children who live there.

Ghada Hirzallah, the Director of the SOS Children's Villages in Gaza, told TNA that the real crisis for newly orphaned children is the lack of services that would improve their conditions, especially since they need special care and support to overcome the shock of war and grief.

With most having lost their official documents when their homes were bombed, it is also extremely complicated to facilitate their exit from Gaza as refugees.

"The psychological and social well-being of children in Gaza has reached worryingly low levels, leaving all children in need of psychological treatment and not orphans only," she said.

Sally Ibrahim is a Palestinian reporter with The New Arab based in the Gaza Strip