‘No place is safe in Gaza’: A child from Gaza, in her own words

It may be difficult to hear these words from the mouth of a 13-year-old girl, but Meera deserves to be heard: “After the war started, I was deprived of my rights; no school, no friends, no drawing, no swimming… no life, only suffering and pain.”

Far too often, since Israel’s genocide escalated in October last year, we see headlines filled with statements from complicit Western politicians about “Israel’s right to self-defence”, or quotes about hoax ceasefire negotiations from the lead perpetrators of the genocide such as Netanyahu or Biden. And far too seldom do we hear from the most vulnerable victims of this horror: the children of Gaza.

Meera Waleed Abu Sultan is the daughter of Waleed, an English teacher before the genocide, and Tahreer, the owner of a beauty salon that was destroyed by the Israeli occupation regime in May this year. The family — Waleed, Tahreer, Meera and her three younger brothers — lived in Jabalia camp in North Gaza before October 2023, but are now displaced and living in a makeshift tent in Deir Al-Balah city in South Gaza. After weeks of struggling to find a time when the family can access the internet with a sufficiently stable connection, we end up talking via WhatsApp voice notes, as their internet is not strong enough for our planned video call.

Bracing myself for heart-rending responses, I started by asking Meera how her education has been affected by this war, and she replied that she has not attended school since October 2023. In September — the same month in which Al Jazeera revealed that over 85 per cent of Gaza’s school buildings have been destroyed by the occupation forces — Meera started to learn again in a tent. A report by Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights said that Israel is committing “scholasticide”, while another report from UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) said that the Gaza war will set back children’s education by up to five years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatised Palestinian youth.

A below (L) and after(R) image of 13-year-old Meera Waleed Abu Sultan in Gaza 2024 [Liam Orr]

13-year-old Meera Waleed Abu Sultan in Gaza 2024 [Liam Orr]

13-year-old Meera Waleed Abu Sultan in Gaza 2024 [Liam Orr]

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I am interested in finding out about Meera’s life before the war. Like most of Gaza’s population, her family first came to the Palestinian coastal enclave as refugees. Her father Waleed’s family, originally from Qubaiba village in the middle of historic Palestine, fled to Gaza after escaping the Nakba massacres in 1948. Her mother Tahreer’s family’s roots lie in the village of Hamama on the Palestinian coast. Both of these villages have been occupied by Israel since 1948.

“Before the war, I had a beautiful life,” Meera told me, even with this painful history.

“I would wake up and go to school to learn, and meet my friends and my teacher. I used to do my favourite things like drawing, swimming and reading stories.”

Simple aspects of a child’s life that most of us in the West take for granted have become yearned-for dreams and increasingly distant memories for the young victims of this genocide. And what of Meera’s day-to-day life now? She cannot hide her indignation when she described it to me.

“Every day, my brothers and I stand in a line for a long time, under the sun’s heat, to get water. Then we carry the gallon containers to our tent. During the war, we lack clean water and food. To cook food, we suffer a lot. My brother and my father search for roots and cactus and collect them for my mum, because there is no gas. This is a little part of our daily suffering and hardship during the war.”

Indeed, Israel has blocked most humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza since the start of the war, with little more than five per cent of the required number of aid trucks entering in the first 10 days of October 2024 compared with pre-7 October 2023 numbers.

“During the war, every day, I try to draw, but I don’t have materials,” continued Meera. “I try to read stories, but they aren’t available. I read the Holy Qur’an in the tent. I try to be normal, but our conditions are not normal and this is very bad for us, so we feel abnormal, all the time.”

One might argue that describing the conditions in Gaza as “not normal” is a profound understatement.

The family, like many others in the territory, have been forced to document their plight on Instagram, in the desperate hope that the outside world — so far unable or unwilling to stop the carnage being inflicted by the Israeli occupation forces — will sit up and take notice, and help them to escape their abject conditions.

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Meera then described the time when they had to evacuate their home in Jabalia Camp, an area currently being subjected to the genocidal “General’s Plan”, uttering words that no child should ever have to.

“When we were first evacuated from our home in the north, under fire and shelling, many people were killed in the streets around us. This was horrifying and terrifying.”

What helped her get through that moment?

“The support of my family and praying to Allah to protect us from the shelling. Indeed, no place is safe in Gaza…” Her voice cracks. “…nothing — and no place — makes me feel safe. The only thing [that would make me happy] is stop the war on Gaza, and [let me] go back to my house.”

I wonder, living through these horrors, is there anything — even a memory — that helps Meera to feel calm or safer?

“I always remember last year when I participated in UNRWA’s Summer Fun Week, and also participated in the closing ceremony and sang a song called A million dreams,” she explained, before singing me a small part.

“Cos every night I lie in bed, the brightest colours fill my head, a million dreams are keeping me awake.” 

It is unclear if, when, the dust finally settles after this genocide, Meera will be able to join activities like this with UNRWA again. The Israeli regime’s parliament has just approved bills to stop the agency from operating in Israel — the UNRWA HQ is in occupied Jerusalem — news which the Palestinian envoy to the UN described as a “new level” in Israel’s war with the UN and an integral part of an all-out assault on the Palestinian people.

What does Meera dream of, apart from stopping the war? I ask. The first part of her reply echoes the dream of many young Palestinians.

“My dream is to be a doctor, to help people who are suffering from wounds and injuries,” she replied without hesitation.

It is poignant that a child from the most dangerous place in the world for children has such a selfless ambition. She has other plans too.

‘I also want to be an artist. A famous artist. Because I love drawing.”

I get the feeling that Meera has a million more dreams. You can read the Waleed family’s story and donate to their GoFundMe account here.

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