Gaza City – With what remains of her wounded forearms, Nebal al-Hessi scrolls on her phone to follow news updates on the reopening of the Rafah land crossing from her family’s tent in an-Nazla, Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.Nebal’s hands were amputated in an Israeli artillery attack on the home where she had taken shelter with her husband and her daughter in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, on October 7, 2024.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listMore than a year later, the 25-year-old mother is one of thousands of wounded people placing their hopes on the reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as they seek access to adequate medical treatment outside the besieged Palestinian territory.“It’s been a year and five months since I got injured … Every day, I think about tomorrow, that I might travel, but I don’t know,” Nebal tells Al Jazeera in a quiet voice.Recalling the attack, Nebal says she was sitting on her bed holding her baby daughter Rita, trying to communicate with her family in northern Gaza, when the shell hit suddenly.“I was trying to catch an internet signal to call my family … my daughter was in my lap… suddenly the shell hit. Then there was dust; I don’t remember anything else,” Nebal says.“It was the shell fragments that amputated my hands,” she recounts.‘Life is completely paralys …
