The Electronic Intifada 18 July 2025
Reem al-Bali survived four days under the rubble after an Israeli attack.
They call her the “miracle of Beit Lahiya.”
On 27 March, the Israeli military bombed an already damaged house in Beit Lahiya, an area in the very north of the Gaza Strip, killing 12.
Four days later, Reem al-Bali, 16, staggered out of the ruins, calling out for her only sister and her parents.
It was an unlikely escape. Emergency services – unable to come to any quick rescue – had written her off for dead after an extensive search.
According to reports on the bombing, relatives and friends had already offered their condolences.
She was the only survivor. She had lost her father, Husam, her mother, Asma, and her toddler sister, Siba, just 1.
Nine members of another family there were also killed.
They call her survival a miracle. But it was a tragedy nonetheless.
Ceasefire relief
Reem and her family had sought shelter in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip during the first days of Israel’s genocide, in the house of a friend of Reem’s father.
They left behind their home in the north, and, like everyone else in Gaza, they suffered from the lack of food, electricity and constant fear of Israel’s violence.
And when a ceasefire was announced in January, they, like so many others, went home.
“As soon as the ceasefire was announced, we decided to return to our destroyed home. We were happy to be back and to start rebuilding it,” Reem said.
Reem communicated with The Electronic Intifada over WhatsApp, and the quotes here came in a series of WhatsApp voice and text messages over several weeks.
She couldn’t have known that the few days she spent with her family during the ceasefire would turn out to be their last moments together.
“Life in our destroyed home was difficult but better than displacement. I spent the time playing with my sister, and helping my mother cook and clean.”
She also drew a lot, she said and has always loved painting, according to her aunt, Rania Ghabin, 35. Rania said that as the first granddaughter in her mother’s family and “a very quiet and shy girl,” Reem was always a favorite.
She has three brothers – Muhammad, 15, Mahmoud, 18, and Ahmad, 19, who had all been sent to an uncle’s house in Deir al-Balah before the bombing – and was crazy about her younger sister, Siba, whom she often treated like her own child.
“The closest gift to my heart from my mom and the most beautiful moment of displacement was when my mother gave birth to my sister Siba,” Reem said.
Genocide restarted
After Israel ended the short ceasefire and resumed its indiscriminate bombardments in March, many decided to again vacate the north in search of elusive safety elsewhere.
But Reem’s father had refused.
“Our house has already been bombed,” he would tell relatives, according to Rania. “What else could happen?”
He thought that the Israeli military wouldn’t notice there were residents in the house or think of bombing an already half-destroyed house.
Rania had no such certainty.
“We decided to leave Beit Lahiya three days before the bombing. We kept urging them to leave because the area was no longer safe.”
Their uncle Wisam, 45, insisted that at least they send the children to him until the rest of the family could come to Deir al-Balah. The three boys were duly sent south.
Reem, however, insisted on staying with Siba.
After persistent attempts they finally convinced Reem’s father to evacuate. But it was already afternoon, and they decided to leave the following morning.
“I called my sister around 1 pm,” said Rania. “I could hear heavy bombardment in the background, but my sister reassured me. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said before we ended the call.”
Search for survivors
That day, as the airstrikes and shelling intensified, family members contacted Reem and her parents regularly to check on them.
But then communications were cut off. Scared that they had been targeted, her aunt called Gaza’s civil defence to go check on them.
“The area was so dangerous that no one could go there at the time.”
With emergency services unable to reach the area, Reem’s uncle (and Rania’s brother) Jamil Ghabin, 34, decided to look for survivors despite the risk. He and five others set out together, only to discover when they got there that two homes had been struck, including Reem’s.
There was no quick rescue. When they got there, according to the account Jamil told Rania, an Israeli missile struck the area, killing three of their party.
Jamil also said he found Reeem’s father Husam outside their home and conjectured that he had been injured but alive, and was then killed outside the building.
Their attempt at rescue, however, was disrupted by gunfire from a quadcopter, according to Jamil’s account, and the rescue party had to withdraw.
Eventually, the emergency services turned up.
They ascertained that 12 people had been killed in the initial missile strike. They assumed that the same fate had befallen Reem.
Painful memory
“I’m trying not to remember,” Reem told The Electronic Intifada when asked about how she survived four days.
“I don’t remember anything, nor did I hear anything. I was drinking water and going back to sleep.”
“Suddenly, I heard the Eid takbirs,” Reem said, referring to the prayers at the end of Ramadan. She started looking for her family.
“I shouted and screamed. I heard no answers. I got closer. I saw my sister’s clothes and burst into tears. I saw our house completely destroyed and I realized that my family had been murdered.”
She went to her aunt’s vacant and damaged house next door, where she washed up, before fatigue and pain overwhelmed her. When she regained consciousness, she walked more than 3 kilometers into Gaza City to reach her father’s destroyed lawyer’s office.
It was there she was recognized. According to those who found her, Reem’s eyes were bleeding, and her gaze betrayed a state of shock, Rania later told The Electronic Intifada.
Reem still hadn’t realized that she was alive, let alone that she had survived alone.
Reem was immediately taken to hospital for treatment, where doctors took a CT scan and found she had a fractured skull, a deep gash, an injury to her ear, bruises all over her body, an injury in her eye and some burns to her face.
Reem and her three brothers now live in Deir al-Balah with Wisam, who is trying to help her process her grief by letting her draw anime, after advice from a psychologist who visited her several times.
She is physically recovering, according to her Rania, and is studying again online.
But she misses her family, and especially Siba.
“I miss her voice. I miss my family. I wish they would visit in my dreams.”
Hanin A. Elholy is a researcher, writer and translator based in Gaza.
