A bereaved father in Gaza tries to will his son back from the dead

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The boy was dead, limp and bloodied on the floor of a morgue, the latest casualty in Gaza. But his father could not let go.

“He’s sleeping. He’ll wake up now. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s fine,” Yusuf Zawara said Saturday. “I’m just cleaning his face. He’s sleepy. He didn’t sleep all night because of the bombing.”

There was dust in the bereaved father’s hair and blood on his clothes. As he knelt over his son in Shifa Hospital, deep in denial, the process of death moved on.

The hospital said 15-year-old Mohammad and his 13-year-old cousin were killed by an Israeli strike as they searched for firewood. Now is Gaza’s winter, and there has been no central electricity in the territory since the first days of the war. Most people shelter from the cold in tents or bombed-out buildings.

A relative said the two boys were killed in the area that Israel’s military has said is safe for Palestinians, about 500 meters (yards) from the Yellow Line that separates Israeli-controlled areas in eastern Gaza from the rest of the strip.

“They were targeted directly, not through any fault of their own,” Arafat al-Zawara told The Associated Press.

Israel’s military denied that those killed were children. It said it had targeted several militants who it claimed crossed the territory’s “ yellow line ” and planted explosives, threatening troops.

In the hospital, Zawara patted his dead son’s face, wiped bloody traces with a fingertip and rocked the head back and forth.

“Get up!” he said.

He scolded. “They hit you with a missile. You couldn’t escape? Run. People, run! Why didn’t you run away?”

It was too much. He finally bent over his son, cheek to cheek.

Then he addressed the boy’s cousin. He reached for the 13-year-old and shook him.

“Sulaiman, get up so we can get some wings and grill them!” the man said. “Get up, get up, get up, my nephew! Come on, get up, why are you dying?!”

Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 480 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10 in the war, which was sparked by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The ministry is part of the Hamas-led government and maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

The ministry also says at least nine children have died of severe cold in the past weeks in Gaza as temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) at night and storms blow in from the Mediterranean.

While Israel disputes the ministry’s figures, it has not provided its own.