Among the thousands of bombs that rained down on the Gaza Strip during Israel’s war of annihilation, one single bomb was enough to extinguish thousands of dreams at once. In December 2023, the Al-Basma Fertility Clinic in Gaza City—the only medical centre in the Strip for embryo preservation and infertility treatment—was reduced to rubble and smoke after being directly targeted by Israeli warplanes. In an instant, four thousand tiny lives, preserved in nitrogen tubes, awaiting their birth, were destroyed.

Israel has committed another act of genocide

The bombing was not random. The building was separate from the main hospital, yet the planes precisely targeted the metal storage tanks that held Palestinian embryos on their way to life. In a few minutes, those tubes turned to ash, and with them, the dreams of thousands of couples who had spent years on the journey of treatment and the hope of motherhood vanished.

Former chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Palestine Navi Pillay stated that the targeting of the fertility clinic was not an isolated incident, but rather part of a recurring pattern of systematic destruction of Palestinian healthcare infrastructure. She has asserted that the strike was “deliberate and planned to prevent births among Palestinians,” describing it as a full-fledged act of genocide targeting the very existence of humanity in Gaza.

In the place that once held the pulse of life, only the smell of burnt metal and shattered glass, tainted with the remnants of hope, remained. Inside the clinic, charred equipment and twisted pipes lay piled high, while a cloud of white vapour rose above the spilt nitrogen, like tiny souls bidding farewell to the world before they could be born.

The tragedy was not merely a medical loss, but a symbolic collapse of the last thread of human hope in Gaza. Women awaiting their next implantation appointments found themselves facing a cruel void: no clinic, no embryos, no new opportunity for motherhood. The bombing was enough to erase the very idea of ​​a future from their memories, leaving them in perpetual mourning for children who were never born.

Long-lasting impacts

In the displacement camps in the southern Gaza Strip, many women sit clutching medical scans instead of children, talking about unborn babies whose faces they never saw. Some weep not only for the loss of hope of having children, but also for the extinguishing of the dream that gave them the strength to endure and survive amidst the daily death.

Israel’s shells shattered the dreams of thousands of mothers, declaring that the war no longer only kills the living, but also seeks to kill those yet unborn. Even the Palestinian womb, under this prolonged siege, has not been spared from the bombing, and life in its simplest forms has not been exempted from targeting.

Today, the tragedy of the “smile” stands as one of the most horrific images of the war on Gaza, where the hope of motherhood has turned to cold ash in nitrogen tanks, and the laboratories that once created life have become witnesses to a crime targeting the future itself.

In Gaza, mothers no longer grieve only for their martyred sons, but also for unborn children who never had the chance to cry their first tears.

In a war that obliterates homes and memories, a single shell has come to confirm that this war is not content with destroying bodies, but seeks to erase life itself.

Featured image via the Canary

By Alaa Shamali

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