"To raise a son, not from her own body, for thirty years—nobody accepts this easily."

"Her name is Rita. It comes from a poem by a well-known poet of Palestine."

"The last thing I heard was the voice of my children playing, then everything went black"

"I cannot forget a minute of that day."

"All day I am thinking: your son, your son. You need to do something for your son."

"I’ve closed my social media. From Gaza it’s all bad news.”

"My whole life people have said to me: ‘You are too kind, too sensitive.’”

"We had one chance to leave Gaza, early in the war. At that time our lives had grown very difficult.”

"When I entered Gaza the Israeli military had a rule: I was only allowed to bring in three kilos of food.”