Gaza boy in Dubai still haunted by war

Two years have passed but the horrors of war in Gaza still haunt eight-year-old Palestinian boy, Yahya.

- Angel Tesorero

A woman and child peek through a gap between curtains erected for privacy outside a tent at a camp for people displaced by war in northern Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on October 7, 2025.

(AFP)

There were times he would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and running anxiously to his mother after hearing the sound of planes landing and taking off from the nearby airport.

“Even the sound of a whirring metallic electric fan can sometimes bring my young son to tears as it sounded like attack drones,” Yahya’s mother told Khaleej Times. “'Are we being followed by Israeli fighter planes?’, my son would ask me.”

Yahya, his six siblings, and mother (a Filipina married to a Palestinian) have been living in the UAE, following a circuitous and dangerous route to safety. Their home in Gaza was among the first to be razed to the ground by Israeli forces in mid-October 2023.

Escaping heavy bombardment, they left their house with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, plus mismatched slippers, and a bag containing their passports.

They were first evacuated by the Philippine government back in November 2023, then lived for a couple of months at a shelter house with other Palestinian refugees in a suburb near Manila, before they arrived in Dubai in January 2024.

“Yes, my children are now safe, but the horrors of war still haunt them,” Yahya’s mother told Khaleej Times back then, and yet, 21 months later, Yahya — at his young age — is still struggling to find peace.