After 35 years of defending Palestinian children's rights, we are not able to overcome operational challenges resulting from Israel's targeted criminalization of Palestinian human rights organizations.
With exhausted steps and eyes filled with tears, Hanaa al-Mabhuh moves between the hall displaying photographs of bodies and the morgue at al-Shifa Hospital in a grim search for any trace of her missing son. The 56-year-old mother wipes away tears with the back of her hand and stares at the decomposed faces on the screen, torn between the desire to find out what happened to her youngest child, while at the same time fearing he might be among the dead handed over by Israel under a US-brokered ceasefire deal.
The reopening of Rafah, the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, has rekindled the hope (or at least raised a previously unthinkable question) of returning to the Strip for the approximately 100,000 Palestinians who managed to escape almost two years ago from the constant air strikes, forced displacement, and hardships of the Israeli offensive. Almost all of them did so within the first seven months of the war, until Israeli troops seized Rafah in May 2024 and Gazans lost their only exit route.