They Went to Get Flour With Their Mother in Gaza. “She Came Back in a White Shroud.”

Twelve-year-old Ahmed Zidan’s adolescence has been defined by genocide and starvation. Israeli forces had already bombed his family’s home in Gaza, killed his older brother, and displaced his family a second time when, one month ago, they shot Ahmed’s mother while she was seeking sustenance for her seven living children.

“Israel killed my mother,” Ahmed told The Intercept. “We were waiting at the U.S. aid distribution point in Rafah.”

Ahmed’s mother was one of the more than 400 Palestinian people who have been gunned down by Israeli forces in a particularly brutal new phase of the country’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza. After the Israeli military, powered by U.S. bombs, destroyed Gaza’s food supplies and choked daily life to a halt, the government cut off the flow of crucial aid to the people it was starving. The move has forced hungry Palestinians to a limited set of Israeli and U.S.-run aid distribution points. These places have become the sites of dozens of daily murders.

“For six days before my mother was killed on June 3, she, my sister Mirvat, and I would walk to the U.S. aid distribution point in Rafah every evening, leaving our tent at 7:00 p.m. and waiting until dawn for food,” Ahmed told The Intercept. “The Israeli army surrounded us with drones, F-16s, tanks, and snipers.”

“I will never forget the moment I saw my mother shot by Israeli bullets, right in front of me.”

The family made the 2-kilometer journey nightly on empty stomachs. They were “terrified,” Ahmed said, “by the constant shelling and gunfire. We saw martyrs fall while waiting for food. Hundreds were wounded. We were all civilians — there were no fighters with us.”

Ahmed’s older sister Mirvat, 20, told The Intercept that the daily march was just one of many grueling journeys the family was forced to make. “The Israeli army bombed our home in Khan Yunis,” she said, “wiping away every memory we had in that warm, familiar place.”

Israeli forces killed her 23-year-old brother, Nabil, in January of last year, Mirvat said, “during our first grueling displacement journey to Rafah.”

“Nabil was the backbone of our family — our only provider,” she added. “He was studying law and working at a company. He didn’t earn much, but at least he could bring us food. He had dreams of becoming a successful lawyer one day, but Israel killed him — along with his dreams.”

Nabil’s death devastated the family, Mirvat said. “But when Israel killed my mom, it shattered our family. I will never forget the moment I saw my mother shot by Israeli bullets, right in front of me.”

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On that day, Ahmed waited with his sister and his mother for nearly 11 hours at the aid distribution site, suffering through a barrage of tear gas, sound bombs, and gunfire from Israeli forces. They were willing to stick it out for the chance to get some food. It never came.

“Suddenly, gunfire erupted,” Ahmed said. “My mother told us to lower our heads, thinking she could shield us. She said, ‘I’ll at least bring back a kilo of flour.’”

The next thing he remembered was the sound of his sister screaming.

“I turned around and saw my mother lying on the ground — shot in the head by Israeli forces,” Ahmed said. “My sister and I threw ourselves over her body. If we had stood up, we would have been killed too. They were firing directly at us. We lay there for over an hour.”

As the brother and sister fled, they were separated, by Mirvat’s estimate, for 30 terrifying minutes. 

“I heard more gunfire, and someone said a child had been killed,” she said. “I panicked, thinking it was Ahmed. I ran around, crying, searching for him.”

Once reunited, they were unable to find their mother’s body and realized they would have to leave her behind. “Even the Red Cross couldn’t reach her,” Ahmed recalled. Eventually, they recognized their mother in an unidentified body brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

Like many Palestinian young women, Mirvat and her 22-year-old sister, Nesma, had to take on maternal responsibilities for the family when their mother died. They have five younger siblings, including Ahmed, ranging in ages from 5 to 15 years old.

“My little brother and sister still deny she’s gone,” Ahmed said. “They keep saying she went to get us flour and will come back soon.”

Ahmed said that the only physical evidence of his mother he has left are the shoes she wore on the day of her death and the scarf she used to keep warm. But he remembers her kind touch and the way she used to tuck him and his siblings into bed at night.

“My little brother and sister keep saying she went to get us flour and will come back soon.”

Adding to the pain of losing their mother, Ahmed said, is the fact that the family remains hungry.

“We haven’t eaten bread in two months,” he told The Intercept. “My mother said she’d bring us flour, but she came back in a white shroud.”

Ahmed knows that his family’s experience is not unique. 

“All of Gaza is starving,” he said.

On June 17, Ahmed and Mirvat’s father went out to get flour from a U.S. aid distribution point east of Khan Yunis. He walked 6 kilometers, Mirvat recalled, expecting aid trucks to arrive from the Kerem Shalom crossing in the southern Gaza Strip.

“He waited there for five hours,” she said, “but no aid trucks ever arrived.”

As he waited, Israeli forces opened fire on the crowd of starving civilians.

“Shrapnel hit his hand,” Mirvat said, wounding him. But she was ultimately grateful for the outcome. “Thank God it wasn’t his head. Had it been, he would’ve been killed too.”

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