‘My leg went to heaven before me’: Israeli war extinguishes Gaza childhoods

After more than two years of a genocidal war, wounded and traumatised Palestinian children stare at an uncertain future.

Jabalia, Gaza – Omar Halawa got up from his chair, like any 13-year-old child would. But he had forgotten a devastating detail about himself: he only had one leg.

“He fell off the chair,” his mother Yasmin Halawa told Al Jazeera. “It is very sad for us all, seeing him like that.”

Omar lost his right leg three months ago. On October 1, 2025, as Israel intensified its ground invasion of Gaza amid ceasefire talks with Hamas, Omar was on the street with his 11-year-old sister Layan, cousin Moath Halawa, 13, and friend Mohammed Al Siksik, also 13, to get water from a tanker that had come near their camp in north Gaza’s Jabalia area.

“It was impossible to pay 6000 shekels for a vehicle to get us to the south, so we had decided to stay in the north,” recalled Yasmin, adding that the family had been displaced more than 15 times during the Israeli genocidal war that began in October 2023.