The Gaza mothers separated from their newborns by war

JERUSALEM: Hanane Bayouk, a resident of Gaza, gave birth to triplets in Jerusalem before to the conflict. As their first birthday draws near, the triplets have only seen their mother once, and she worries that she will “die without them.”
The 26-year-old’s Israeli travel visa expired on August 24, 2023, so she was forced to return to the Palestinian area by herself after giving birth to Najoua, Nour, and Najmeh.
After seven years of grueling IVF treatments, Bayouk was granted permission to leave Gaza and give birth in the newly annexed Al-Maqased Hospital in East Jerusalem.
After her permission “expired and the hospital told me to leave,” she drove back to Gaza after seeing her kids in their incubators for “barely an hour and a half.”

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Before the Israel-Hamas war broke out last October, Bayouk’s girls had spent several weeks in incubators, which were scarce in Gazan hospitals. She was scheduled to return in early October.
On October 5, two days after applying for a fresh exit permit, Hamas commandos stormed through the Erez port, Gaza’s sole point of entry into Israel.
Once inside Israel, the terrorists launched an extraordinary onslaught that claimed 1,198 lives, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli statistics.
The Health Ministry of Gaza reports that 40,265 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s retaliatory military action; however, it does not provide information on the number of civilian and terrorist casualties. The majority of those slain, according to the UN rights office, were women or children.

Similar to Bayouk, Heba Idriss was encircled by conflict and was unable to get back to Jerusalem to see her only child, Saida, who had been born at the Maqased two months previously.
The 27-year-old had intended to return with her infant to her husband Saleh at their Shujaiya, northern Gaza Strip, home.
Rather, Israeli airstrikes and evacuation orders have forced the pair to relocate nine times, and her husband Saleh has only ever seen images of Saida.
“My daughter needs to be seen.” She sobbed, “I suffer so much from being apart from her.”
Hanane Bayouk, too, was forcibly removed from her house and is currently residing in a camp for displaced people in the south, where she shares a tent with seven of her in-laws.

“It makes me insane.” On one of the rare occasions when she was able to connect through Gaza’s unreliable phone network, she said, “It took me so long to get pregnant, and now I’m crying all the time.”
“I have never kissed my daughters, so sometimes I think I’d like them to go back to Gaza before I die, but then I catch myself and tell myself they should be safe far from the war,” she added.
Director of the newborn intensive care unit of the Maqased, Hatem Khammach, notes that there would not have been enough room to house Nour, Najmeh, and Najoua for such a lengthy period of time in a normal situation.

Even those with permits find it difficult to get specialized care in Jerusalem as checkpoints are closing more frequently.
“Our department, which can accommodate 30 people at a time, had seven or eight Gaza babies in it before the war,” Khammach remarked.
Nothing has arrived since October because “many sick people from the West Bank can’t reach us.”
However, the medical staff at the hospital stays busy. For example, one of them calls Bayouk to allow her to talk on the phone with her three kids.
“Hubby is unable of doing it. I follow through, and each time we hang up, I weep. I worry that my girls won’t know me when they grow up,” said Bayouk.