After the miracle of their pregnancy through artificial insemination, Gazan women mourn their martyred children | News

“Their birth was a miracle in itself. Their mothers did not conceive them until after many years of artificial insemination. Now they are crying for them after they were killed in the aggression on Gaza. But perhaps they are in a better situation than others whose treatment was stopped because of the war and who did not give birth to a child to mourn them,” with these words the Israeli newspaper Haaretz opened an investigation into the tragedy of dozens of mothers in the Gaza Strip.

Amal had to undergo surgery and artificial insemination that finally allowed her to get pregnant for the first and last time. After about 5 years, which is almost the number of years that her child Khaled spent on this earth, an Israeli bomb destroyed the family home on October 17, sending Amal into a deep depression, a depression that overflows every time she remembers the struggle she went through to become a mother.

“Death is a right, but it is easier for me than living without Khaled. It was the best event in my life,” the bereaved mother told the Israeli newspaper.

Gazans have known all kinds of loss, but the tragedy of those who underwent artificial insemination is unique, in a society based on extended families and where children make ordinary days happy, Haaretz says.

Rania Abu Anza, for example, became pregnant with Wissam and Naim after 10 years of treatment, but they only lived for 5 months, before they were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah.

Others have lost their only hope of motherhood, as war has cut off their complex treatment, blockades have halted the flow of medical supplies, and bombings have destroyed thousands of frozen embryos.

4 thousand fetuses

On the first day of the war alone, October 7, about 50 Gazan women were in the middle of hormone injections in preparation for fetal removal at the Basma Center for Fertility and IVF, while 10 others were just days away from receiving their embryos, according to Bahaa Al-Aini, the center’s director and one of Gaza’s pioneers of IVF.

Al-Aini told Haaretz that the clinic had 4,000 frozen embryos, half of which belonged to couples who were unable to undergo additional treatments.

At the beginning of the war, Al-Aini's main concern was providing liquid nitrogen, the lack of which made it difficult to maintain the embryo tanks at a temperature of 180 degrees below zero. But the following month, this problem became secondary after a shell fell on the center's laboratory, destroying the tanks and with it the only hope for many couples to have a child.

“Couples invest a lot of money and emotions to realize the dream of fatherhood. The attack has destroyed their dreams,” adds Al-Aini, who studied in Britain and in 1997 founded the first IVF clinic in Gaza.

The raids and fighting destroyed infrastructure and sophisticated equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what worries Al-Aini are his patients. At the beginning of the war, 250 patients had become pregnant through artificial insemination, and they now need follow-up treatment, especially since the pregnancy of many of them was considered very dangerous, or it was estimated that their condition would be difficult.

Most of them had to make do after the war broke out due to Israeli attacks and evacuation orders that caused most hospitals to close, and the remaining hospitals could no longer cope with the pressure.

According to the United Nations, thousands of women in Gaza do not receive prenatal care, and those who give birth remain without medical assistance, which means high maternal and neonatal deaths.

Amal’s son, for example, who was born in 2015, would not have survived without this care. He was born two months prematurely. His twin brother Adam died after three days, while Khaled was transferred to a specialized unit in occupied Jerusalem, and due to problems with his immune system, he had to continue specialized treatment until he was four.

His mother, Amal, did not return to her daily life in their home in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, west of Gaza City, until his health improved.

ordinary things

She says she misses the ordinary things that used to fill her with joy, like organizing his school supplies, taking him to swimming lessons, or horse-riding lessons at a neighborhood club, where her son became attached to a horse named Shams.

Then came the aggression and the club was destroyed, and the horse was also killed.

After the aggression began following the October 7 attack, Amal's family took refuge in her father's house further south in Rafah, which Israel had declared safe, but 10 days after the family's arrival, Khaled would be killed along with his grandfather, uncle, aunt, cousins ​​and 11 other relatives.

“I was praying and he was next to me when the raid destroyed the nearby house and caused great damage to our home,” Amal told Haaretz.

Amal was taken to the hospital injured, but when she looked for her son among the victims, she did not find him.

“Suddenly I realized that he might still be under the rubble of the house. I ran like a madman back to the ruins of the house and called out my dear son’s name. I hoped that he would emerge unharmed from under the rubble.”

Despite her injuries, she refused to leave. Rescue teams worked tirelessly throughout the night to remove the rubble, but their equipment was not enough. Khaled did not emerge from the rubble.

“I prayed fervently to God to hold him one last time and see him before he was buried.”

The father will not be able to return to bury his only son either, as he was in Türkiye at the time of the raid.

Over one eye, Amal bears a small scar as a reminder of that fateful night when she lost the son she fought so hard to bring into this world.

“I will carry this scar for the rest of my life as a reminder of the injustice that was done to me,” Amal says.