A Gaza mother's fight to survive

TWO YEARS OF WAR

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TWO years of war, multiple displacements, and the deaths of her husband and father have reduced Lamis Dib's life in Gaza to a relentless fight for survival.

"It's indescribable," the 31-year-old mother of two said of the war that continues to devastate the Palestinian territory. "Friday, October 6, 2023, the last day before the war, was a beautiful day," she recalled.

Her oldest daughter, Suwar, who was five at the time, had just started kindergarten, and Dib would watch her come home every afternoon from the window of their apartment in Sheikh Radwan, a middle-class neighborhood in the north of Gaza City.

Her son Amin, then three, "was taking up all of my time", said Dib, who would often bring him to the nearby seaside.

Dib had studied to become a social worker, but could not find a job in Gaza's impoverished prewar economy, partly stunted by a strict Israeli blockade since 2007. But she had built "a happy family" with her husband, an accountant who ensured that she "never lacked anything".