This is the story of the Abu Zaid family and their two-year-old son Kareem, who survived three bombings and was killed in the fourth.
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
Israeli forces have been relentlessly pounding the besieged Strip by air, land, and sea. On January 12, Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations, declared that “there is no safe place in Gaza” and dignified human life is “a near impossibility”.
Surviving an Israeli attack does not guarantee safety. Indeed, some Palestinians have been wounded several times and later killed in Israeli strikes.
This is the case of the Abu Zaid family and their two-year-old son Kareem, who survived three bombings and was killed in the fourth.
Kareem Followed His Mother
“Our neighbors’ house was bombed on the second day of the war, dozens were martyred and injured, and the Abu Zaid family was also hit by the bombing,”
Hajja Um Musab Al Shatli told The Palestine Chronicle.
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“The wife and children of our neighbor, Hamza Abu Zaid, were injured, therefore his family decided to take shelter at his wife Saad’s family’s house,” she added.
“Two weeks later, however, the occupation bombed that building. Hamza’s wife, Saad and her 11-year-old daughter Jana were killed, while her 9-year-old son Omar and her two-year-old son Kareem were injured.”
We reached out to Hamza, and he explained to us how the Israeli occupation destroyed his family.
“Kareem lived alone for three months,” Hamza Abu Zaid told The Palestine Chronicle.
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“My wife and daughter were killed, along with my wife’s father, sister, and brother. My sons Omar and Kareem were injured in the bombing. After receiving treatment, my mother took care of Omar and Kareem,” he added.
Abu Zaid told us that, after evacuating the Nuseirat refugee camp in early January, the children were taken to another house in Deir al-Balah, the city that was classified as a safe place by the Israeli occupation in the central Gaza Strip.
“The occupation bombed that building, and dozens were martyred and injured, including my brother-in-law, Bilal. My mother and children were extracted from under the rubble, injured. We stayed for a period in the hospital for treatment, and this was the third bombing that my family endured,” Abu Zaid continued.
After leaving the hospital, the family decided to flee to another relative’s house, in Nuseirat. A few days later, Israel bombed that building and many were killed and wounded, including two-year-old Kareem.
“My little son Kareem was martyred in the bombing, along with my mother, my sister, my brother Zaid, his family, my brother Sahib and some of his children. My son Omar was seriously injured, and he is now lying in the hospital receiving treatment for major fractures in his body.”
“Omar survived death four times, Kareem survived death three times and was martyred in the fourth,” Abu Zaid said.
“Kareem followed his mother. He was very attached to his mother and couldn’t bear to be separated from her, but he lived about 100 days as an orphan after the martyrdom of his mother and sister”.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Abdallah Aljamal is a Gaza-based journalist. He is a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle in the Gaza Strip.
Never fails. The US are always allied with genocidal maniacs in the name of their freedom and the oppression of the poor who cannot defend themselves