NEW YORK — Omar Abu Kuwaik is far from his home in Gaza. The 4-year-old’s parents and sister were killed in an Israeli airstrike, during which he lost part of his arm.
He’s one of the lucky ones.
Thanks to the efforts of family and strangers, Omar was brought from Gaza to the United States, where he received treatment, including a prosthetic arm. He spent his days in a home run by a medical charity in New York City, accompanied by his aunt.
It was a small measure of grace in a sea of turmoil for him and his aunt, Maha Abu Kuwaik, as they faced an uncertain future. The sadness and despair for those still trapped in Gaza are never far away.
Abu Kuwaik is happy that she could do this for her beloved brother’s son, whom she now considers her fourth child.
But it was a terrible choice. Going with Omar meant leaving her husband and three teenage children behind in a sprawling tent camp in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. With Israel launching attacks in areas where civilians were forced to take shelter, including Rafah, Abu Kuwaik knows she may never see her family again.
“My kids love Omar so much,” she said. “They said to me: ‘We are not children anymore. Go, let Omar get treatment. It’s what’s best for him. It’s his only chance. ”
Omar used to be an outgoing boy, she said, and he is as smart as his late father, who was an engineer. Now he is often withdrawn and bursts into tears easily. He wonders why they don’t have a house like the kids he sees on YouTube.
Ask Omar a question, and he covers his ears with his right hand and the stump of his left arm and says, “I don’t want to talk.”
“Preschool was fun,” he eventually admits, “and I was happy on the first day.” He started school just weeks before the war broke out. But he says he doesn’t want to go to kindergarten anymore because he’s afraid of leaving his aunt’s side.
His flight to New York may have given him a new dream.
“When I grow up, I want to be a pilot,” Omar said, “so I can take people places.”
Omar was the first Palestinian child from Gaza to be cared for by the Global Medical Relief Fund. Staten Island charity founder Elissa Montanti has spent a quarter century providing free medical care to hundreds of children after losing limbs to wars or disasters, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Every child started as a stranger. Each of them joined what she calls her “global family,” and will return to the U.S. for new prosthetic limbs as their bodies grow. Her charity sponsors everything except the medical treatment, which is donated primarily by Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.
When war broke out in Gaza in October, Montanti knew she had to help. “But honestly, I said, ‘How? How will I ever get these children out if they can’t even leave Gaza?’
Montanti had never seen Omar, but she understood that children like him were seriously injured every day.
The deadliest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades began on October 7 when Hamas-led militants breached Israel’s security barrier around Gaza and stormed into Israeli communities. About 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage.
In response, Israel destroyed much of Gaza. In less than five months of war, the Israeli army has created a staggering humanitarian crisis and forced 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes. One assessment suggests that half of the coastal enclave’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed.
The number of deaths in Gaza rose above 30,000 on Thursday, with more than 70,000 injured, the Health Ministry said. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its figures, but says women and children make up about two-thirds of the deaths. Israel blames Hamas for the civilian deaths and says militants operate among the population.
Two weeks after the start of the war, Omar’s family narrowly escaped death. Minutes before it was razed by an Israeli airstrike, they evacuated the Gaza City apartment they had bought a few months earlier. His aunt’s family rushed out of the building next door. This was also bombed.
Homeless, with only the clothes on their backs, the families split up to stay with different relatives. But in wartime, seemingly trivial decisions – such as where to seek shelter – have outsized consequences.
On December 6, two Israeli airstrikes hit the home of Omar’s grandparents in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza. The explosion ripped the skin off his face, revealing raw layers of pink peppered with deep cuts. His left arm could not be saved below the elbow. His parents, 6-year-old sister, grandparents, two aunts and a cousin were killed.
Omar was trapped under the rubble as rescuers dug their hands through the blackened concrete. Finally they reached his little body, still warm, bleeding but somehow alive, and brought him to safety. He was the only survivor.
As the weeks passed, Omar lay on a bed in the hospital hallway, his arm wrapped in bandages — even as his child’s mind somehow thought it might grow back. Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system could provide only rudimentary care for burns to his leg and torso.
“Our view was that anywhere is better for him than Gaza,” said Adib Chouiki, vice president of Rahma Worldwide, a US-based charity, who heard about Omar from the group’s humanitarian team in Gaza.
Israel and Egypt have severely restricted the movement of people from Gaza, allowing only a few hundred people a day to leave the country, mainly those with foreign citizenship. Some Palestinians have managed to get out using private brokers. The World Health Organization says 2,293 patients – 1,498 wounded and 795 sick – have left Gaza for medical treatment, along with 1,625 companions. Yet there are still around 8,000 patients on a waiting list to go abroad, according to the UN refugee agency.
Chouiki began making contacts in the Palestinian, Israeli and Egyptian governments. He obtained new passports for Omar and Abu Kuwaik, and an Israeli security clearance for the aunt to accompany her cousin from Gaza to Egypt.
Abu Kuwaik took a leap of faith. The permission to leave Gaza came while Montanti was still working to get U.S. government approval for Omar to fly to New York.
“He cried and cried and begged me to take him back to my children,” Abu Kuwaik said. “We finally put him in the ambulance and drove towards the border.”
After waiting nervously while their papers were examined, they were loaded into an Egyptian ambulance and transported across the Sinai desert.
Once safely in an Egyptian military hospital, Omar and his aunt waited for weeks until U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave them the green light to fly to New York on January 17.
Omar’s wounds heal, but he remains deeply traumatized. At Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, he underwent a skin graft for the severe burn on his leg. A constellation of gray shrapnel scars remains scattered across his face, looking almost like freckles.
Eager to get his new prosthetic arm, he approached it on Wednesday as he lay on a table, smiling mischievously as he reached out to touch it. “My arm is nice.”
“The kids feel whole,” Montanti said. “Psychologically it means so much.”
Shriners is currently treating two other children from Gaza, including a U.S. citizen who was trapped there when the war began. There are plans to bring another child from Gaza, a two-year-old boy whose leg was amputated above the knee. He is accompanied by his mother and leaves family behind for the sake of her child.
Omar and his aunt boarded a plane back to Cairo the day after the boy received his arm. They were accompanied by a member of her extended family who has a home in Egypt, where they will stay while they try to secure more permanent housing.
“I hardly sleep,” said Abu Kuwaik. “I think of Omar and I think of my children, and the conditions in which they live there in the tents.”
Food is scarce. Israel’s near-total blockade of Gaza has forced more than half a million Palestinians into famine and increased fears of an impending famine. And the flimsy tent they share with 40 other people offers little protection from rain and wind, she said. When one person gets sick, the disease spreads like wildfire.
The war has repeatedly knocked out mobile phone and internet services in Gaza, but Abu Kuwaik keeps in touch “when there is a network.” Her family often has to walk to the Kuwaiti hospital, a hub for journalists, to get a signal.
After their return to Egypt, the future of Omar and his aunt is unclear; they may be stuck in exile.
However, for Abu Kuwaik there is no home for Omar to return to.
“I can’t imagine… going back to Gaza,” she said. “What would his life be? Where is his future?