Gaza- In the Gaza Strip, Raghda Al-Sheikh stands, the mother whose children left her at the beginning of the genocidal war on Gaza for France, watching from afar as her world dissipates, piece by piece.
When her husband, Ahmed, and her three children: Ribhi (11 years old), Nour (10 years old), and Hussam El-Din (8 years old), left the Gaza Strip, with the help of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it seemed like a small victory over the Israeli war and extermination machine.
Raghda was happy that they had survived the genocide launched by the Israeli occupation, and she hoped that she would join them quickly, after her travel procedures to France were completed and her family would be reunited.
But what happened was shocking and cruel. Half a year after their arrival in France, the government authorities took their three children from their father, placed them in a nursing home, and cut off their contact with the family.
Later, the French authorities prevented the mother residing in Gaza from communicating remotely visually with her children, and limited it to written messages, without acceptable justification, according to the mother, who is in a state of shock.
Perhaps what hurt this mother the most was that, during her last video conversations with her children about a year ago, she needed an “Arabic-French” translator to talk to them because they quickly began to lose their Arabic culture.
The beginning of the tragedy
Before the war, Raghda was taking care of her children in the family home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza. At the same time, she was studying interior design, preparing to submit her graduation project, and dreaming of implementing many professional projects.
But war leaves no room for small dreams. Within a few days, her home turns into rubble, and the course of her life changes into a series of endless shocks.
When the war began on October 7, 2023, the Gazan woman was visiting her family’s home, before she fled with them towards the Nuseirat camp in the middle of the Strip, while her husband moved with her children to the city of Khan Yunis in the south.
Due to the occupation cutting off communications and the Internet, at that time, Al-Sheikh did not communicate with her husband, and neither of them knew where the other party resided.
Later, in December 2023, her father-in-law, Ribhi Al-Sheikh, was able to travel to Paris, with the help of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, taking with him his children and grandchildren, including the three children, while the mother remained alone in Gaza.
The mother says that when she learned of the travel of her husband and children, she felt happy and sad at the same time, as she reassured them of the danger of death during the genocide war, and at the same time she felt extreme pain and loneliness at their separation.
Snatching children from their father
France seemed to the Sheikh family to be a good option, and the family thought that there they would begin the recovery phase from the effects of the severe war shocks.
But what happened was not taken into account. A few months later, specifically on July 15, 2024, the French authorities, represented by the Child Protection Services Foundation, detained the three young children of the Sheikh family, Ribhi, Nour, and Hussam El-Din, and prohibited them from communicating with their family.
Grandfather Ribhi Al-Sheikh, who lives in France, believes that the family was “wrong when they thought they were safe when they fled genocide” to France.
He says – in a statement he issued – that the removal of the children from their father’s custody came after a report was filed against him stating that his children were being abused, “without any medical or school evidence.”
He added, “Even the court itself did not find any medical or school report proving such allegations. During a session held on March 30, 2026, the children expressed their desire to see their grandfather and uncle. The family lawyer, the social services lawyer, and the children’s lawyer all defended the need to restore the relationship between the father and his children, and the reception center in Morestel stressed that the children must be reconnected with their family.”
In describing the reality of his grandchildren, Rabhi stressed that these children have been separated from their father, their grandparents, their language, their culture, and their mother for nearly two years. “This is not a political issue, but rather a humanitarian issue. We appeal to every person of conscience in France and in the world to support our legal and humanitarian endeavor to return these children to their home.”
Mother: Survival with the taste of loss
Alone, Raghda resides in a center to shelter displaced people in Gaza City, waiting to be allowed to leave the Strip for France to reunite with her husband and children, or to return them to her, as she says.
This mother has no choice but to appeal to “everyone who can help” to extend a helping hand to her, so that her ongoing tragedy can end.
Over the past months, this Gazan has been trying to keep the thread of communication with her children alive, so video calls were her only outlet.
Although she felt extreme pain because she needed a translator to communicate with her children, these video calls gave her the strength to persevere, and she said, “We speak in two different languages, through a translator, as if I am getting to know my children again.”
Prevent video calling
For the mother, the matter was not only related to Arabic as a language, but rather to all the memories and small details it carries between the mother and her children. However, the French authorities, unjustifiably, prevented her – about a year ago – from communicating remotely visually with her children, under the pretext that this affects their psychological state.
Since then, she has only been allowed to send written letters to check on her children, without receiving quick responses from them, as the response may reach her after several weeks and without containing information that reassures her about their conditions.
The mother says that her children, who were “top” in their schools in Gaza, have deteriorated in their academic level, according to what she received, due to the lack of a family to follow their lessons.
She wonders: What do they look like now? Have they grown up? Do they still remember the details of their home in Gaza? Who wakes them up in the morning, and who hugs them when they are afraid?
Clothes and memories
The mother finds solace only in what remains of their clothes and toys that she collected from the rubble of her house. “This doll belongs to Hossam El-Din, and he loved it very much. As for this shirt, it is Rabhi’s, but it is too small for him now.”
What increases her pain is the loss of her home’s furniture and her children’s belongings after it was destroyed, and she is forced to live in tents and shelter centers “unfit for human habitation.” She consoles herself with all this pain by flipping through the pictures of her children that she receives from her distant husband.
The presence of her children in a care home in France is frightening for her, and she expressed her concern about this by saying, “I am very afraid for them, and I fear that they will deprive me of them forever or that they will give them to another family other than our religion and nationality, because after a while they will forget our religion, our customs, and our traditions.”
She continues: “Currently, I do not know anything about them. I do not know who takes care of them, who takes them to school, and who supervises their upbringing, cleanliness, and all their affairs.”
I wish they hadn’t left
The sheikh does not deny that she was happy when she learned of the news of her children leaving the Gaza Strip at the beginning of the war, because she believed that this was in their interest and would protect them from the danger of Israeli annihilation.
But what happened with them later changed her mind completely, and made her wish they had not left, “I wish they had not left.” The mother denies any accusation directed at her husband of practicing violence against her children, stressing that he is “very affectionate” towards his children, and is keen to take care of them and provide the utmost possible to make them happy.
She concluded her speech to Al Jazeera Net, defending him: “I do not believe these accusations. My husband, Ahmed, is very affectionate. He always took them for a walk in the Gaza port, and in parks and amusement parks, and was keen to celebrate their birthdays and buy them clothes and toys.”
