By Akshaj Gaur and Natalie Weger
University of Maryland student Dalya Adwan planned to bring gifts to each of her cousins on her next trip to Gaza.
Adwan, who was born in Gaza, has a list on her phone with each of her cousins’ names and their dedicated presents, which range from rollerblades to sketchbooks. But since last October, Israel’s war in Gaza has devastated her family.
At least 12 of Adwan’s family members, including some of her cousins, have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, she said.
“You hear about one death of somebody you care about, and then the next day, or the next month, you hear about somebody else that you care about,” Adwan, a human-computer interaction graduate student, said. “We haven’t been able to even begin mourning because we just keep losing family members.”
Israel’s military forces have killed more than 43,800 Palestinians in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the Associated Press reported Monday. Israel declared war on Hamas the next day, according to the Associated Press.
The rising death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza have left many university community members grieving.
Fouad Ayoub, whose mother is Palestinian, said many of his family members live under a “heightened sense of fear,” as they deal with tragedy. The violence has disrupted his uncle’s business in East Jerusalem, the senior aerospace engineering and computer science major said.
The impact of Israel’s offensive in Gaza goes beyond the high death toll, Ayoub said. People’s suffering in Gaza should not be minimized to a number, he said.
[Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist commends student protests at UMD event supporting Gaza]
Hassan Edwan, Adwan’s brother and a machine learning graduate student, said he stopped going to class after he learned some of his cousins in Gaza were killed in an airstrike. The continued violence has taken a toll on his family in the United States, he said.
“You could see on their faces,” Edwan said. “Their eyes were sunken and looked [like] they were sobbing for weeks.”
Edwan and Adwan said living far from their family has made it difficult to cope with the loss.
Most of the siblings’ family lives in Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip. Adwan said she cherishes her memories of visiting the beach and spending time with her family in Gaza.
In recent months, Rafah has become a symbol of the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Last spring, Rafah sheltered about 1.4 million Palestinians who had been displaced by the war, according to the Associated Press. In May, Israel’s military forces invaded Rafah, and about 50,000 civilians were in the city as of July, the Associated Press reported.
More than 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, about 90 percent of the region’s population, have been displaced since Hamas’ 2023 attack. Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 people hostage during the attack, according to the Associated Press.
The Associated Press reported in October that about 66 percent of Gaza’s structures, including more than 215,000 housing units, have sustained damage as a result of Israel’s ensuing offensive.
Many houses owned by Edwan and Adwan’s family members, including both of their parents’ homes, have been destroyed by the barrage of Israeli airstrikes, Edwan said. Most of his family members have resorted to living in tents, he added.
When Adwan last visited Gaza in 2018, she’d walk by the construction site of the house her grandparents were building after their children had grown up.
“[My grandparents] were really happy about it, because they finally had enough money to build their house,” Adwan recalled. “Sometimes when we were walking outside, they’d just be like, ‘look, it’s in progress.’”
Her grandparents finished building their home about two years ago, but multiple bombings have since destroyed it, Adwan said. The destruction in Gaza has made her feel hopeless, she said.
“My family back home is struggling. They can’t get an education. They barely have food to eat,” Adwan said. “It’s just heartbreaking.”
[Hundreds of UMD community members gather to honor people killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023]
Nutrition and food science professor Nadine Sahyoun, a Palestinian American, said she has felt a range of emotions, from helplessness to anger in the past year. The scale of the damage across Gaza, especially in schools, has been upsetting, Sahyoun added.
More than 94 percent of schools in Gaza have been damaged since Israel declared war last October, according to an October 2024 report from the Global Education Cluster, a group of aid organizations led by UNICEF and Save the Children.
“I’ve always been an activist and working towards human rights for Palestinians,” she said. “But this last year has been tremendously devastating.”
Sahyoun’s family left Haifa, a city in present-day Israel, as refugees in 1948 during the Nakba — “catastrophe” in Arabic. The Nakba describes the mass displacement of about 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War after Israel was established, according to the Associated Press.
In the past year, this university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter has hosted protests and vigils to mourn Palestinians killed by Israel.
Students at this university are “the leaders of the future,” which is why Sayoun feels especially proud they are expressing their anger at the conditions Palestinians face. Their advocacy makes Sayoun feel hopeful for Palestinians’ future.
Sophomore computer science major Dalia Bader, who has family living in Gaza, said many of her relatives must continue to relocate because of Israel’s sustained bombing of the region. Her family members, who are living in tents, struggle to find basic necessities like food and clean water, she said.
“The scarcity of resources is unreal,” Bader said. “Every day is a fight for survival.”
Bader has tried to stay in contact with her aunt and cousins, but the unstable internet connection in Gaza has made communication difficult. Bader said she lives in a constant state of anxiety and grief.
Keeping up with her classes and daily life has been “emotionally exhausting,” Bader said. Not only are members of her family living through “unimaginable conditions,” she said, but some of them have been killed.
“Don’t let this be just another tragedy that will fade away,” Bader said. “We must stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza and all those affected by this ongoing injustice.”
