In Gaza, Mother’s Day arrived with silence and mourning, not celebration. As families across the Arab world honoured mothers on 21 March, many Palestinian women marked the day burying their children—another cruel chapter in Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Among them is Umm Omar Abu Sharqiya, a mother from Khan Younis whose only child, five-year-old Omar, was killed in an Israeli airstrike while playing near a tent in Al-Mawasi—an area designated a “safe zone.” “He kissed me and said, ‘I love you, Mama,’” she recalled. “That was the last time I saw him alive.”
Omar’s birth came after seven years of fertility treatment. “He was our whole world,” she said. “God gave him to us, and now I’ve had to bury him myself.” Through tears, she pleaded, “Don’t bury him yet—it’s cold. Let me warm him.” Her grief echoed the pain of countless mothers: “He never slept unless he was in my arms.”
Omar’s death came just weeks after a partial ceasefire announced in January. It’s the second year in a row that Palestinians face Mother’s Day under bombardment. Since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Red Crescent reports an average of 37 mothers killed daily in Gaza.
Meanwhile, 25 Palestinian women remain imprisoned in Israeli jails under harsh conditions—14 of them mothers, many denied any contact with their children.
For Umm Omar, and thousands like her, motherhood has been turned into mourning. In Gaza, there were no flowers this Mother’s Day—only graves, silence, and the lasting scars of genocide.
Source : Safa News
