Guilt, grief and strength: Gaza’s ‘sole survivor’ children face life alone
A Palestinian girl sits outside one of the tents for displaced people in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on 6 October 2025
Huda Skaik reports in Middle East Eye on 22 August 2026:
Every morning, 13-year-old Jana al-Motouq wakes up alone. The Palestinian girl prepares her own breakfast, washes her clothes and gets ready for school.
Not long ago, those small tasks were done by her mother. “She used to wake us up, make breakfast, brush our hair,” al-Motouq said. “Now I do everything by myself.” That is because al-Motouq was the sole survivor of her family after an Israeli strike killed them on 17 November 2023 in the Gaza Strip.
The attack on a residential building in Jabalia killed her parents, Ahmed and Heba; her twin sister Saja; and her younger brothers, Hossam, eight, and Mohammed, four.
She is among thousands of children left without parents, siblings or extended family after Israeli bombardment killed more than 73,000 people over two years.
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I wished I had been with them,” she told Middle East Eye. “I thought, if I had died with them, maybe I could rest.” ‘That guilt is common among people like al-Motouq in Gaza, according to Sereen al-Absi, a psychologist who has worked with survivors like her.
“They always feel that they are guilty: Why did I survive while they are gone? I didn’t protect them,” al-Absi, 29, told MEE. “Even though logically they know they had nothing to do with what happened, their feelings cannot control the amount of pain they have experienced.”