In a corner of Gaza once filled with joy and anticipation, the echo of wedding songs has been silenced by the roar of airstrikes. Sabreen al-Kheiri, a young lawyer days away from her long-postponed wedding, lies in a hospital bed with a shattered spine and one leg amputated — the price of love and hope in a land under siege.

She and her fiancé, Tamer al-Deeb, had waited for a moment of peace to celebrate their union. Their engagement, delayed time and again by the war, was finally set to culminate in a wedding — a rare dream of normality in a place torn apart by relentless bombing. But on the night of 18 March, an Israeli airstrike tore through Sabreen’s family home in Gaza City, turning their plans to ash.

Tamer searched for her through hospitals and rubble, fearing the worst. When he found her at last, unconscious and broken, she was being wheeled into surgery. Doctors told him she had been hurled by the blast, her spine fractured and her leg beyond saving. The celebration they had hoped for became a shared nightmare of loss, trauma, and waiting in dim hospital corridors.

Sabreen now joins thousands of Palestinians wounded not only by violence but by the collapse of a healthcare system pushed past its limits. Her fiancé refuses to leave her side, pleading for international support to help her access treatment abroad — not just for her body, but for a future where she might stand again. In Gaza, love still exists, but it must fight to survive under the weight of war.