BEIRUT: Five-year-old Adam Afana dreamt of being a police officer “to keep people safe,” his uncle said, before losing his father, his siblings and cousins, and nearly all of his left arm in an Israeli strike seven months ago on Gaza.
Now, Adam is the first Palestinian child wounded in Israel’s war in Gaza to land in Lebanon, where he has been receiving care since Monday at the American University of Beirut’s Medical Center with help from the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund.
In a sunlit room in the hospital, Adam plays with superhero action figures and watches videos on an iPad. He laughs, pokes fun at his uncle and the nurses, but only has stilted answers when asked about his journey to safety in Beirut.
“He remembers how he was wounded, his sister and his father — how they were all together. And he starts crying — it’s difficult for him psychologically,” said his uncle Eid Afana, 29, his caregiver in Beirut.
Getting him to Lebanon was no easy task: Adam spent more than six weeks in Gaza after he was wounded, sheltering from bombing and undergoing one emergency surgery on his arm without anaesthesia.
In early December, his uncle managed to enter Gaza City for just two days from Egypt to bring Adam and his mother out via the Rafah crossing. “It was my city and I couldn’t even recognize it. The European hospital was full of people being treated on the floor... The floor was a lake of blood, just body parts. It was a disaster,” said Afana.
They were lucky: Israel’s attack this month on Rafah has cut off the main crossing into Egypt, constricting aid and stopping what had been a trickle of people leaving for medical help.
The family spent nearly six months in Egypt, but Adam’s arm needed specialized care. Thus began the campaign to get him to Lebanon, a country with a precarious sectarian balance and complex history with Palestinian refugees, with severe restrictions on which can enter.
AUB President Fadlo Khoury told reporters earlier this week the university had “extensive discussions” with Lebanese authorities to allow Adam entry — and that they hoped he would be the first of more Palestinian children to benefit from the hospital’s expertise in treating war trauma.
Dania Dandashli from the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund told Reuters the organization hoped to treat a total of 50 war-wounded Palestinian children in Lebanon over the next year.
Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 36,000 people, including thousands of children, and wounded more than 81,000, health authorities in Gaza say.
The war was triggered by an attack by Hamas militants on Israeli that killed 1200, with more than 250 hostages taken, by Israeli tallies.

Jerusalem: Rachel Goldberg-Polin has a piece of tape attached to her shirt, bearing the hand-written number of days her son Hersh has been held hostage in Gaza.
It is “an emblem of my pain,” said Goldberg-Polin, 54, speaking to AFP at her office in Jerusalem, where an Israeli flag waves next a banner featuring her 23-year-old son’s portrait and calling to “Bring Hersh home.”
Holding back tears, the US-born mother decried “an embarrassment to the human race that we haven’t been able to save” the 121 hostages held by militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip since October 7.
The figure includes several foreigners or dual citizens like the Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and 37 captives the army says are dead.
Ever since the October attack, the soft-spoken mother, a former mental health professional who “used to work out six days a week,” said she hasn’t exercised, listened to music or eaten sugar.
“It’s a different life,” she told AFP.
For nearly eight months, she has suffered anguish, uncertainty and “indescribable” pain as the family awaits Hersh’s return.
A one-week truce in November saw 105 hostages freed. Hersh, like most other Israelis of fighting age, was not among them.
Relatives of hostages have piled pressure on the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging immediate action to secure their release.
But “wanting and doing are two very different things,” Goldberg-Polin said of the stated political will to bring them back.
A dual Israeli-US citizen, she moved to Jerusalem in 2008 and lives there with her husband Jon. They have three children, including Hersh.
Goldberg-Polin said she has turned to her Jewish faith through this period.
“When I pray every day... it’s a form of meditation and it’s a form of therapy.”
She said that when she prays for Hersh, she repeats same mantra: “I love you, stay strong, survive.”
Her younger daughters, 18 and 20, have also been a source of comfort.
“They have to often be maternal to me, which I feel bad about because my job is to be maternal to them,” said the mother.
In late April, Hamas released a video showing her son — a sign he may still be alive and the first time the family saw Hersh since October 6.
It was a Friday night, and after the Goldberg-Polins went to synagogue and had dinner with friends, Hersh left.
Recently back from a long trip across Europe, he decided to go camping, his mother said.
Without her knowing, Hersh went with a friend to a music festival near the Gaza border.
As an observant Jew, Rachel usually avoids using technology on Saturday, the Jewish day of rest.
But in the early morning on October 7, she looked at her phone. A message from her son read “I love you,” followed by another: “I’m sorry.”
The family initially thought Hersh had died, before learning of his abduction from the Nova rave site, where more than 360 people were killed by militants from Gaza.
Hersh’s left forearm was torn off during the attack, while his friend, Aner Shapira, was killed.
Militants were throwing grenades at them, and Shapira “kept picking them up and throwing them out” until one of them killed him, said Goldberg-Polin.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s relentless efforts to push for her son’s release has made her a well-known figure in Israel and beyond.
She has met with Pope Francis and last week with US President Joe Biden, who was “very emotional,” noted Goldberg-Polin.
In April, US magazine Time ranked her among the 100 most influential people in 2024.
“It was immediately clear that I do not belong on that list,” she said, but being included in it helped bring attention to “this global humanitarian crisis.”
Hamas’s October 7 attack during which Hersh was abducted resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, and triggered the ongoing war.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza, which officials have said aims to rescue the hostages and destroy Hamas, has killed at least 36,224 people, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the territory’s health ministry.
Goldberg-Polin said that “from the very beginning” she had also been “deeply worried” for “the innocent civilians” in Gaza.
“I don’t think it’s a competition of pain,” she said.
Now, people she meets and recognize her “start crying” as they already know her story, Goldberg-Polin said.
“I’m praying for the day when people see me and they smile.”