“It is hearts that give birth, not wombs”: Gazan women adopting orphans of genocide

On a bright spring morning, as the scent of traditional Palestinian taboon bread mingled with the dust of rubble, Manal sat on the threshold of what remained of her partially destroyed home in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip. In her arms, she cradled an infant whose features bore no resemblance to hers, yet she held him as though he were a part of her soul.

These intimate moments have fulfilled Manal’s dream of experiencing motherhood. “I got married ten years ago, but my husband and I were never able to have children. Then, the war on Gaza brought us an unexpected gift. On August 6, 2024, we were displaced, staying with a friend in the Nasser neighborhood of Gaza, when a massacre occurred: an entire residential block was bombed by the Israeli occupation. The Civil Defense found no survivors – except one small child, lying in the street,” recounts 28-year-old Manal Ziyad to Raseef22.

“The moment I saw the baby in the arms of the civil defense worker, he looked like a little angel, crying, his face covered in dust. The man asked if I knew his family or any of his relatives. I said I’d try to find someone and asked if he could give the child to me. I took him and held him in my arms. My heart was breaking from the pain, but I had this overwhelming feeling that he would be my son, given to me by fate since I was unable to have children,” she says.

It wasn’t an easy decision. Adopting a child under the harsh conditions of war, Manal says, requires extraordinary courage – and social customs and laws only make adoption even more difficult. “I didn’t just want to care for him. I wanted to give him something irreplaceable – a sense of safety, and a mother and father he could call his own,” Manal affirms.

“My husband found Sundus crying among the rubble after a house near ours was bombed. All of her family members were martyred. Sundus survived by a miracle. All her relatives are outside Gaza, so my husband and I decided to adopt her.”

By April this year, the ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip had left more than 39,000 orphans, including over 17,000 children who have lost both parents, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

With the bombing and displacement still ongoing, neither the Gazan community nor the authorities have been able to find an organized way to shelter these orphans. Some are now in the care of second-degree relatives. Others have been adopted by foreign families. These circumstances have led some women in Gaza – particularly those who are unable to bear children – to embrace motherhood for the first time. Some had even resorted to what is known as “induced lactation and breastfeeding” in order to become, in their words, “legitimate mothers” to these orphans.

Can induced lactation create a real sense of motherhood?

Manal says, “as is well known, in Gaza, we live according to Islamic law. I want this child to be my son legally. A doctor told me about induced lactation – a process that could enable me to breastfeed the child from my own body, making me a legitimate mother to Kinan, which is the name we chose for the baby.”

Manal – or Umm Kinan as she now prefers to be called – says that motherhood is about giving, and being ready to offer your soul to someone who needs it.

Describing how she felt when she breastfed Kinan for the first time, she says: “it felt like the drops of milk were tears of joy. I was trembling, my heart racing. He didn’t feel like a strange child who had barely survived death – he felt like a part of me.”

Regarding induced breastfeeding, obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Suhad Younis tells Raseef22: “it is a medical technique that enables women who have never been pregnant or given birth to breastfeed children they adopt, through medications or devices that stimulate the milk glands to produce milk.”

Younes explains that this method takes time and requires patience. The woman takes hormonal medication and stimulates the breast with a breast pump several times a day for two weeks or more, after which the body begins to respond. She notes, however, that this technique does not work for some women.

“We were displaced, staying with a friend in the Nasser neighborhood of Gaza, when a massacre occurred: an entire residential block was bombed by the Israeli occupation. The Civil Defense found no survivors – except one small child, lying in the street.”

Younes stresses that “women who experience adoption with breastfeeding undergo a profound emotional transformation, as producing milk for the child gives them a true sense of motherhood and helps ease the effects of loss and trauma. As for the children, breastfeeding fosters in them a sense of security and belonging, which improves their psychological and emotional development.”

She points out that Gazan society views induced breastfeeding as a humane and religiously legitimate solution, since through it the infant becomes, in the eyes of Islamic law, the woman’s child, with the same legal lineage and inheritance rights as biological children, according to the sharia that many in the community follow.

“Motherhood is not just a womb”

In the corner of her small room in her house in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, Walaa Samara, 40, holds her one-year-old infant Sundus, humming a lullaby to soothe her to sleep.

Eight months ago, Sundus was an orphaned child crying among the rubble. Today, she is under the care of the woman who became her “mother,” after having been deprived of childbirth for a whole decade.

“My husband found Sundus after a house near ours was bombed. All of her family members were martyred. Sundus survived by a miracle. All her relatives are outside Gaza, so my husband and I decided to adopt her,” Walaa tells Raseef22.

Describing her feelings after successfully induced lactation, she says: “during breastfeeding, I feel that motherhood is a spirit, not just a womb. I had always wished to experience this feeling. I fear for Sundus constantly. Whenever there is a nearby bombing, I rush to her, holding her tightly in my arms. I wish my heart were a small box where I could hide her so that no harm would ever come to her.”

The Ministry of Social Development is currently sheltering 18 infants who survived the war without their families and whose relatives could not be reached. Meanwhile, a large number of children have been taken in by Gazan families who have not yet brought them to the ministry.

Walaa says she has grown deeply attached to Sundus, and that her presence in the home has brought new joy to its once-silent walls. “I feel an overwhelming happiness when I wash her tiny clothes,” she says.

But she faces many challenges in providing Sundus with additional formula, diapers, and the other necessities of a child, amid the absence of aid and the suffocating blockade imposed by Israel on the besieged strip. There are also other challenges related to the legal aspect of adoption, after she contacted the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza, which set forth a list of conditions for her and her husband in order for Sundus to become their daughter according to the law.

Adoption in Gaza comes with conditions

Hala Atallah, head of the fostering and adoption program at the Ministry of Social Development, explains the criteria the ministry sets for couples wishing to adopt. Chief among them is that the couple must not be older than 50, that they be of Palestinian origin, that at least eight years of marriage have passed without having children, and that during this period they must have tried to conceive through IVF or artificial insemination without success.

The ministry also requires that the family be free of any diseases, provide a certificate of good conduct, and have a clean legal record. It further requires the consent of the families of both parents for the couple to take in a non-biological child, and that the adoptive couple be financially capable of supporting the child.

“As for registering the child in official documents, the ministry registers a name agreed upon with the adoptive father, so that it is recorded with the ministry and official authorities that this child is under the care of the family,” Attallah explains.

“I feel an overwhelming happiness when I wash her tiny clothes.”

“After age seven, the family may tell the child how they came to be with the family, gradually and in simple terms, so that they are not shocked by the information later in life or when they discover they have biological parents,” she adds.

She notes that the war has pushed many to adopt. “Every day, I receive dozens of inquiries from citizens about adoption procedures,” she affirms.

Attallah further explains that the ministry is currently sheltering 18 infants who survived the war without their families and whose relatives could not be reached, while a large number of children have been taken in by Gazan families who have not yet brought them to the ministry.

She concludes by stressing that the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza is facing enormous challenges, the most pressing of which are the difficulties of reaching families due to the vast destruction of homes and infrastructure, the collapse of communications, and the bombing of the ministry’s own facilities.