The injured Palestinian boy takes the first steps in Jordan

Rami Qattoush’s mother is proud of, while her nine -year -old son tentatively kicks a football ball for the first time since her injury.

It is a great milestone in his recovery, since he traveled to Jordan last month after obtaining Israeli military approval to leave Gaza.

Rami dreams of playing football someday, like Cristiano Ronaldo. But it still has pain and tires quickly, having to sit in a plastic chair, exhausted by the effort.

His banded legs, one of them splints, are very marked and withered.

Every step forward is difficult.

The doctors in Gaza had urged the family to accept that both legs are amputated. But his eight -year -old brother, Abdul Salam, had already lost his lower right leg due to his wounds and his mother, Islam, begged surgeons to save Rami’s extremities.

WARNING: This article contains anguished content

The children had been deeply asleep on the floor of the third floor of the family in Maghazi in downtown Gaza when, says his mother, an Israeli air strike attacked the building next door, raining rubble and shrapnel in children.

Rami’s brother, 12, Mustafa, was killed, his body became pieces.

His heart, drilled with shrapnel, was found only two days later, says Islam. The family gave him a separate burial.

The UN says that it is reported that at least 14,500 children were killed and many more injured in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which began after Hamas armed men attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people.

Gaza’s medical evacuations are critical, saysBecause the health system has been devastated. Only 20 of the 35 hospitals of the territory are partially functional and there is a shortage of medicines and essential equipment.

It is estimated that 30,000 gazanes, such as Rami and Abdul Salam, have stayed with injuries that change the lives that will require years of rehabilitation, According to the World Health Organization.

It has helped to facilitate the evacuation of hundreds of patients since February 1, when Rafah crossed with Egypt reopened for them. But he says that between 12,000 and 14,000 people, including 4,500 children, they must still be taken to receive treatment.

“The war has demanded a horrible cost for the children of Gaza,” said the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) when a high fire agreement was announced in January.

Rami endured several surgical procedures without analgesics, anesthesia or antibiotics, his mother told the BBC. Their wounds were so infected that they dragged with worms. The doctors did not think their legs could be saved.

“Rami had so much pain, I was shouting ‘God, you have taken my brother, now you take me too!'” Islam says.

And then, in January, a rare opportunity emerged: so that Rami and his mother were evacuated to Jordan to receive treatment in a specialized hospital for reconstructive surgery, directed by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the capital of Jordan, Amman.

He is currently treating 13 children from Gaza, but has the ability to collect more dozens.

“It is the only hospital that I know to provide physical and mental rehabilitation for war victims,” ​​says Marc Schakal, manager of the MSF program for Jordan, Syria and Yemen. “It is multidisciplinary attention, not just surgery.”

Rami has a psychologist, surgeon and physiotherapist. It is also being fed, dressed and taught in the small “School of the Future” of MSF, a brilliant building prefabricated on the hospital land. After losing so much education, he is a great apprentice.

But he has also missed his father Mohammed and his brother, Abdul Salam, who needs a prosthetic leg but could not leave Gaza with him.

They are grateful for their treatment, but both he and his mother want to return home as soon as they can.

“Gaza is beautiful,” Rami told me. “In Gaza before the war, we used to receive medical treatment, but then the help stopped.”

With the facilities and the experience at the MSF hospital, it is now making a quick progress.

“He reached a wheelchair,” says his physiotherapist, Zaid Alqaisi, who has formed a strong link with Rami while helping him walk again.

“He is very motivated. He wants to return with his friends and his family. He wants to proud his father.”

He also wants to swim again at the sea in Gaza.

But many more operations are ahead, and Rami and his mother have no idea when they will return home.

Not knowing if they will be allowed to return to Gaza is another huge stress for all Palestinian patients on their trauma, according to psychologist Zainoun Al-Sunna.

Sharing a hospital room with Rami is a five-year-old retreat and traumatized child, Abdul Rahman Al-Madhoun, who also needs leg surgery.

She was in her mother’s arms when she was killed in an air strike in October 2023, along with her brothers. At Gaza Hospital, a nurse who tried to encourage him told him that his mother had become a star.

“Since then, look to heaven at night, looking for stars and talking to them,” says his aunt Sabah. “He doesn’t talk to other people. But I hear it to the stars: ‘Mom I’ve eaten, mom, I’m going to sleep now.'”

The psychological lesions of hospital patients are often harder than physicists.

“Some will never recover,” says the director of the Roshan Kumarasamy hospital, who says that reconstructive surgery will be needed in Gaza patients in the coming years due to an “unimaginably massive spectrum of injuries.”

But Rami is strong and determined. When he breaks in tears thinking about Mustafa, he assures me that he is “good.”

And when he and his mother manage to communicate with his family in Gaza in a video call, Rami is eager to show them how he can now stand on his own feet.

His father encourages him, saying: “Rami, you are a hero.”

And now his family has another reason to celebrate: Rami’s brother, Abdul Salam, and his father has just received permission for Israel to leave Gaza for Jordan as well.

In the coming weeks, it must be equipped with a new leg, which allows both injured children to learn how to walk.