On the evening of October 6, 2023 Ali Lubbad, 33, was daydreaming about his new life in Germany. He had just completed his nursing exams and passed the language tests. Once his paperwork had been processed he would settle there with his wife Aya, his autistic daughter Alma, and his rambunctious son Hossam. There Alma would have other children like her who she could play with and they could afford the best autistic therapy the world had to offer. Ali had made it in life against all the odds that Palestinians face. Then came a genocide.

Now, it is September 2025 and Ali doesn’t daydream much. He’s too busy working as a pediatric nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit of Gaza’s only remaining children’s hospital, Al-Rantisi. He’s soft-spoken and used to comforting tiny infants clinging to life and parents clinging to hope. These days the parents are often dead, while those still living are struggling to stay alive. Unless they take shelter at the hospital, they don’t have time to visit. So the babies depend on medical professionals like Ali, incubators one step away from a power outage and what little medicine the hospital has to offer. With the Occupation’s build-up this summer in preparation for the invasion of Gaza City, casualties have been on the increase and the IDF bombs the children’s hospital or its surrounding area every few weeks. Each new massacre brings more half-dead infants into Ali’s life. We laugh at dead baby jokes, but Ali must watch them die.

On top of all this Ali cares for his pregnant wife, Aya, and their two small children. Alma is now 6 and Hossam is 5. Ali remembers their favorite activities: going to the beach for Alma, going to the park and racing bikes for Hossam. On his days off Ali and his wife would take them to the amusement park where they would jump in a giant bouncy castle and eat ice cream. None of those things are possible anymore. Instead, children play when they can among the tents and rubble that have taken the place of homes and hobbies. Traces of their previous life still live on in Facebook photographs—a pre-school age Alma looks like a sea of peace sitting in Ali’s lap at a beach-side cafe, the Mediterranean waves washing away every trace of pain. Recently, in far off Sweden, Ali’s sister Soha uploaded a video of her 2 year old daughter Celine dancing in a blue dress on her birthday. No bombed out buildings or cratered streets. Ali hearted the video. Per IDF orders, love is only allowed to leave Gaza through fiber optic cables.

The baby is due in October via a C-section Ali and Aya hope the hospital has anesthesia for. In the meantime mother and baby are malnourished like the children, and Ali barely sees them. He works shifts up to eighteen hours long which leave little time for much else besides searching for food and what little sleep he can get between the bomb blasts that periodically puncture the night.

The news is never good in Gaza City, and now it’s getting worse. Everyone, including the patients at the children’s hospital, have been ordered to evacuate south to a new place where they will suffer until they are forced to evacuate once more. Ali and his family have been displaced many times, from their original home in Gaza City to Khan Younis to Rafah and back to Gaza City.

The ethnic cleansing has intensified, and social media is full of proclamations: The operation is expected to begin as a pincer movement, starting from the north and south, and then from the east toward central Gaza, with the aim of forcing the population to move out. The IDF drops leaflets in Arabic emphasizing that they are saving the Palestinians from Hamas by destroying their cities. They use specific language to isolate Palestinians from the rest of the world: No one will feel for you. No one will care about you. You have been left alone to face your inevitable fate. Ali fights back the only way he knows how:

Despite everything, I try to hold on to my humanity. When I was displaced to Khan Younis and Rafah I volunteered at a shelter to provide first aid and nursing care to people, especially as skin diseases and respiratory infections spread. Children came to me with bodies burned from the cold and the elderly came with swollen feet. The lines were endless, even pregnant women who needed checkups had to stand for hours to be seen.

A couple of weeks ago Ali heard screams from his neighbor Muhammad Sharef’s house. He rushed over to find out what was wrong. The IDF had called Muhammad and informed him that they would bomb their house in ten minutes. Ali ran back to his apartment and grabbed his children while his pregnant wife grabbed the emergency bag. They took shelter in a friend’s pharmacy half a kilometer away while explosions rocked the area. After the bombing stopped they walked home. Their building had been spared, but many of their neighbors were now homeless, while those who didn’t flee fast enough were now martyrs. May God be with them, Ali writes on Facebook.

Such is life among refugees, and because they are so used to this, many of them say they will not leave Gaza City. They have nowhere to go and they fear the Occupation will never allow them to come back once they are gone. That’s what the Occupation did to their parents and grandparents in 1948 during the creation of Israel, and it’s what they’ve been doing in the West Bank every year since 1967. It’s just one long, slow wave of ethnic cleansing. To some, death seems the better choice. The IDF knows this, so they start bombing here and there to “encourage” people to leave. Aya wants to stay. She would rather die than give birth in a tent and spend what may be years on the sands of southern Gaza, subjected to scorching summers without AC and rain soaked winters without the ability to stay warm and dry.

So Ali finds an apartment for his family, and that is enough to coax his wife into leaving. Though he needs help paying the rent and travel expenses, there are Americans I know who will raise money for him. Rents have skyrocketed to $1,500 a month and taxis cost $600 to move a family and their belongings a few kilometers to Deir al-Balah, their new home. Ali’s pregnant wife suffers from hypertension and anemia and is in no condition to walk among the rubble and dust in the sweltering heat.

Ali’s father, Najeb, was martyred a year ago at age 65. After his house was destroyed at the beginning of the war and his relatives began to be killed, he stopped eating and died within a month. Ali’s mother, Safia, is 63 and still alive. She survived breast cancer many years ago and refuses to die. Ali helps take care of her, while the whole family works together to find a place to pitch a tent that will cost $1,000. Then Ali has to make multiple trips to the tent to dig sewage and water lines with his brothers-in-law in the hot and humid conditions. Nothing is easy. Like Aya’s pregnancy, life in Gaza is complicated, and working hard today may be the difference between being glad you are alive tomorrow and wishing you would die.

Back at the hospital Ali helps infants and young children cope with the horror. A rare paralytic disease called Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) has broken out among the children of Gaza this summer. It tricks the body’s immune system to attack its own peripheral nerves which make it hard to walk or even breathe. One young girl named Lara has GBS and won’t let any of the nurses except Ali insert an intravenous line into her. Her father’s name is also Ali. He was blown apart one day by someone who believes in war and thinks bombing people is a good idea. So Lara thinks of Ali as her new father, and that makes her life bearable.

Ali plays a similar role in his own family. When they evacuated Gaza the first time, Ali had to get a then 3 year old Hossam motivated for the journey by telling him that it was his chance to see real tanks along the way. They left the next morning. Human bodies littered the landscape. “Don’t be afraid,” Ali told him. When they reached the line of no return a tank turned its cannon on their family. Ali raised his hands. “I was sure we were all going to die,” he told me. A small voice spoke to him from above: “Baba, do I have to raise my hands?” It was Hossam, who was sitting on his shoulders. Ali started to cry.

Breath if you need a break. Or take a walk. Genocide is never easy.

Lately, the IDF has been using robot bombs to terrorize the people. They fill old American armored personnel carriers with hundreds of pounds of explosives. Then drive them remotely through neighborhoods until the vehicles stop and explode. In late August one exploded seven hundred meters from Ali’s apartment. That’s almost half a mile away. Even so, debris fell all around his building. In the end most of the nine hundred thousand civilians in Gaza City will flee. The thousands who remain behind will most likely die.

This is now the worst time of Ali’s life. He had thought the worst part of his life was over: in early to mid-summer when famine hit his family hard. You can feel his pain in the updates he posted on his GoFundMe:

June 15, 2025

Indescribable Suffering

For the fifth day in a row, I’ve been going out daily in search of a bag of flour for my family without success. Every night, I walk more than nine kilometers on foot, hoping to return with something to feed my children. But sadly, I haven’t been able to bring anything home. I’m exhausted, drained, and all I can think about is: “What will I feed them tomorrow?”

The tragedy doesn’t end there… In the past two days, I’ve lost three of my cousins:
The first was killed at an humanitarian aid distribution point in central Gaza. The second was killed in northern Gaza while also waiting for humanitarian aid. Tragically, his head was separated from his body due to the intensity of the bombing. The third was run over by an aid truck. Now, I am facing the same fate.

A 25 kg bag of flour is enough to feed my family for a month. Its price on the market is now $600. If you can help, even with a small contribution, it can bring hope and food to my children. Please consider donating or sharing. Every act of kindness matters. You are our last hope after God.

July was a month of horrible waiting. From Ali’s Facebook:

July 19, 2025

Hunger in Gaza is very real, so real, it’s terrifying. It may soon become deadly. We are just days away from people dying in groups, collapsing in the streets and homes from starvation. No one in Gaza is talking about the war anymore, everyone is talking about hunger.

July 25, 2025

At the hospital, people see me in clean scrubs, with a mask, a stethoscope, and an ID that says “Nurse.” But no ID says anything about the hunger in my stomach, the weakness in my body, or the heaviness in my heart.

July 28, 2025

Do you know how heavy it feels to tuck your children into bed, not knowing if the night will be kind to them? You whisper “goodnight” with a voice that shakes, hoping it won’t be the last time they hear it. You watch their chest rise and fall, memorizing the rhythm—just in case. Every sound outside jolts your heart, even silence seems louder than a scream. In a place where safety is a dream, even the smallest acts of care feel like a desperate prayer.

But people listened, and Ali got a rush of donations at the end of the month. He posted this update on his fundraiser:

August 2, 2025

Dear friends,
I struggle to find the words to express how deeply grateful I am for your support. Because of your donations, I was able to feed my children, provide care and treatment for my pregnant wife, and pay the rent for our apartment this month, the shelter that is keeping our family safe and dignified. Each and every donation, no matter the amount, has made a real difference in our lives. You didn’t just help us survive; you gave us hope that we are not alone in this nightmare.

That last line encapsulates the ongoing drama that every refugee family in Gaza faces. They are all trying to raise enough money to buy food or a tent or medicine, whatever they need to stay alive. All summer long families plead for donations. Some never make it and end up as numbers on an ever growing list of civilian casualties. For others the money they raise gives them hope, gives them the will to live. Without it they would be poorer, sicker, hungrier and hotter. And thus more likely to die.

Ali’s desperate to share his story, so the world will know what is happening in Gaza. A friend of his helped edit Ali’s account of survival from October 7th, 2023 to July 2025, “A Pediatric Nurse From Gaza Shares His Story,” and posted it on Facebook in August. They added a subtitle: For Ali Lubbad, a Brave Father of Gaza. And that, in a heartbeat, is a miracle. All these people love Ali. They want to help him. Their compassion rains down on Gaza, seemingly bathing its inhabitants with their love. But many of the raindrops evaporate before they hit the ground. Ali:

The most heartbreaking moment of all was the night Alma went missing. We were in the camp after a long day of standing in lines, searching for food and water. The atmosphere was full of screaming, crying, chaos—and a fear that never left us. In a single moment, we lost track of her. I looked at Aya and asked, “Where’s Alma?” —and everything went silent. Aya started shouting her name, and I ran between the tents, searching, calling, running, screaming, begging anyone who might’ve seen her.

Two whole hours of hell. Every minute felt like a year. Bombs exploding everywhere. I could hear mothers screaming, smell the smoke in the air, and I was searching for my daughter who didn’t even know how to ask for help. My mind spiraled with all the worst possibilities… Alma, who doesn’t trust strangers, who’s terrified of loud noises—how would she react? Did she cry? Did she hide? Did she get lost between the endless, identical tents? Aya was collapsing. Her mother was crying. And I was losing my mind.

Then suddenly, a boy came running toward us and said, “There’s a girl sitting near the bread distribution point—she looks like she’s lost.” I sprinted like a madman. And when I saw her… she was sitting in the sand, barefoot, her eyes vacant, her face covered in dust. I grabbed her and held her tight, crying as I told her, “Baba’s here, Baba’s with you.” But she didn’t respond. It was as if she had disappeared from existence for a while, like something inside her broke. And at that moment, I was broken too.

At Al-Rantisi, joy and tragedy fill the hospital like they always have. On September 9th one of Ali’s colleagues, Reem Shakshak, gave birth to a baby girl. On September 14th another colleague was killed. On September 16th an air strike took out the roof and its electrical and communications systems as well as a water tank, but no one died. By September 21st they had evacuated most of the children to Al-Shifa Hospital, another medical center in the middle of a war zone. Only four or five children including two infants remained in the ICU with a handful of nurses. Ali tried to go back to work but was stopped when the IDF’s infamous quadcopters shot at him. Were the children too sick to move? Did the Israelis stop letting ambulances through? Ali doesn’t know. They might be dead by the time you read this.

So Ali gathered his wife and children together to take a taxi to their new home. If the driver was telling the truth, Ali let me know. Sometimes they lie, sometimes they die. Taxis are targets too. That’s why they charge so much. Ali’s family was evacuated the next day. Their driver had told the truth. The driver for two other families never showed up. Was the driver a liar or was he dead? Ali took an elderly couple with him and picked up a woman who they found walking down the street. Unfortunately, upon their arrival, Ali received news of his uncle Muhammad’s death and had to go to his funeral. During this war Muhammad had lost his son and his daughter. Two days ago he was displaced from his home to a tent in central Gaza. He couldn’t bear it and died of a broken heart, just like Ali’s father.

Before they left, the people of the neighborhood had to do something nice for those who would rather die than leave their homes, or were too sick to travel, or couldn’t afford a taxi, or who had been simply lied to. The man with the solar panels left them, so the people could use them to pump water from the well. The families who had food left some for those who remained, knowing that they may never receive food again. Finally, they left the keys to their homes—a gesture to let them know that they were welcome to seek shelter there if they had nowhere else to go. And in that way the people, like Ali, retained their humanity.

The post The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza City as Seen Through the Eyes of a Pediatric Nurse first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.