The smile that beams across Seba’s face is a paradox.
The 12-year-old girl from a refugee camp in central Gaza smiled as she recalled an Israeli airstrike in January that injured her legs, which later became infected and eventually had to be amputated.
She smiled when she was asked if she knew, at that moment of the air strike, her life had changed.
She replied simply, “Yes.”
She smiled as she described with the help of a translator the lush greenery of Bellevue where she now lives, even if it’s thousands of miles away from her Gaza home. The city had become a “paradise” for her family of four while they stayed with a host family.
But her eyes sparkled and she squirmed bashfully in her oversized wheelchair, as she showed off her new favorite toy she got from a family upon arriving in Seattle — a Barbie with a sparkly pink prosthetic leg.
Seba will soon get a chance to walk again, as she is set to go through a year-long prosthetic treatment from her medical team in Seattle.
Seba was one of 11 children with critical injuries like amputations, severe burns and other traumas recently evacuated from the Gaza Strip — where Israeli strikes have damaged a vast majority of hospitals — to receive specialized medical treatment in the U.S. Seba’s mother requested the family to be identified only by their first name because of safety concerns.
After initially being evacuated into Jordan with the help of the World Health Organization, the 11 children with their family members are the largest group of wounded children to be brought to the U.S. from Gaza for medical treatment since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, said HEAL Palestine, a humanitarian nonprofit leading the evacuation effort.
Seba’s family, which includes her mother Lamiaa, her 14-year-old sister Hiba and her 9-year-old brother Ahmad, was the only one sent to the Seattle area, with a hospital accepting her for treatment on a “charitable basis,” said HEAL Palestine president Steve Sosebee, who requested the facility not be named for the family’s safety.
The family arrived in early August and is expected to leave for Egypt next year once the treatment is completed.
The families brought to the U.S. have faced attacks, including from a right-wing activist with ties to the White House who claimed without evidence that HEAL Palestine was “mass importing” Palestinians into the U.S. The State Department has since suspended approvals of almost all types of visitor visas for Palestinian passport holders, including for medical treatment.
It is unknown if Seba and the other evacuees’ statuses in the U.S. will be affected, Sosebee said. The nonprofit said on X that “this is a medical treatment program, not a refugee resettlement program.”
Nevertheless, in Bellevue, people from all walks of life are “showering (the family) with love,” Lamiaa said through the translator.
She “doesn’t even feel that she’s in a strange place, because people have been around them the whole time, offering them a lot of kindness,” the translator said as Lamiaa beamed.
“Long process”
It was a “long process” to get Seba to Seattle, said Sosebee, who started HEAL Palestine a year and a half ago.
After she was identified for treatment by field workers, Seba waited months to be accepted for evacuation, which required permission from Israeli security forces and the Gaza Health Ministry. She and her family also needed to secure permission from the Jordanian government to enter the country, visas from the U.S. government and coordination with hospitals that would accept her.
HEAL Palestine has coordinated the evacuation of 63 children and 148 individuals from Gaza since the war began, the nonprofit said. It said there are “dozens and dozens” more children like Seba awaiting specialized treatment internationally.
Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world, according to UNICEF. But Seba could not be treated with artificial legs in Gaza, Sosebee said.
More than 94% of Gaza’s hospitals were damaged or destroyed, and only 19 of its 36 hospitals as of May remained operational while supply shortages, a lack of workers, constant danger and a surge of casualties make working conditions “impossible,” the World Health Organization reported. Only 12 of those hospitals provide a variety of health services, while the rest can only provide basic emergency care.
When Seba arrived in the U.S., she was also suffering from malnutrition, Sosebee said.
More than 20,000 children in Gaza have been treated for acute malnutrition between April and July, while 1 in 3 people go days at a time without food, according to the United Nations, which also reported that all children under 5-years-old are at risk of life-threatening malnourishment. As of mid-August, at least 130 children have starved to death since the start of the war while the death toll has passed 64,000 people, at least 18,500 of whom are children.
Grieving loss and cherishing love
As Lamiaa put it, her family’s life “flipped 180 degrees” after Oct. 7, 2023.
Lamiaa used to teach in school. Seba often performed dabke, a folk dance popular among Palestinians.
The family were already refugees in central Gaza before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but they were “relatively safe” and “always happy.” They had “a normal life,” Lamiaa said.
But after Oct. 7, the family faced what Lamiaa called a “daily loss” of homes and friends. Even a 10-minute run from a tent encampment to their previous home for showers and cooking felt risky.
They were “always scared that it’s going to hit them next because all the neighborhoods (were) getting bombed,” Lamiaa said.
Her husband, Seba’s father, was killed in their home in a bombing.
When airplanes fly overhead in Bellevue, the children duck and curl into their mother’s lap, Lamiaa said, thinking the Israel Defense Forces are still coming after them.
Still, Seba looks toward the future, of going back to playing with her friends and walking to school.
Seba might not have to wait long for her prosthetics, Lamiaa said.
Once Seba gets her prosthetics, doctors told her it could take nine months for her to learn to walk.
In the meantime, Seba is enjoying watching television, playing with toys and socializing with other kids.
After Seba receives her treatment, the family will be taken to Egypt where HEAL Palestine will continue to take care of them, helping the family find housing and schools, Sosebee said.
Seba has two older siblings, 18 and 21 years old, whom the family had to leave behind in Gaza because they were too old to be accepted for evacuation, Lamiaa said.
“What we’ve been through is not something anybody can imagine,” Lamiaa said. “But we choose to be patient and accept God’s fate for us. We want to live.”
Lamiaa doesn’t know how she will see them again, but she hopes that they will soon be reunited after they arrive in Egypt. She “wants to make it for her kids,” the single mother of five said.
And Seba “hopes that the war will stop and that things will be rebuilt and that things will be safe again,” she said, with a broad smile on her face.