Humans of Gaza: Dima Alhaj, 29-year-old WHO medic and mother

By Humaira Ahad

Dima Alhaj was known among her family and friends for her radiant smile. Her cheerful demeanor and the positivity she exuded even in the face of adversity was her trademark.

The full-of-life 29-year-old was killed along with her husband and 5-month-old baby in Gaza.

Two of her brothers and more than 40 members of her extended family were also killed when an Israeli airstrike struck her parents’ home in the crisis-stricken blockaded territory on November 21.

Alhaj’s bereaved father, Dr Abdellatif Alhaj, senior surgeon at the Islamic University of Gaza, broke the news in a heartbreaking message to a friend.

“I’m in deep pain, I lost my son Majd, his wife, and two of his children. My lovely daughter Dima – a WHO staff member, her husband, and her 5-month-old child. My little son Omar, 17 years.”

Alhaj was an administrator at the Limb Reconstruction Centre in the Gaza Strip, where she worked with the WHO Trauma and Emergency Team. 

“She always had a secret stash of sweets and alternated between advice on the best food shops and inside-out knowledge of needs of the health system,” Tarek Loubani tweeted about his slain colleague.

The young mother had a Master’s degree from the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. After returning to Palestine, she started working for the World Health Organization.

Alaa Alhaj, Dima Alhaj’s cousin, was awakened by the annoying sound of phone notifications, informing him of the tragedy.

“It’s in the ground. Three floors in the ground. I remember that place. That is my family, that is my uncle’s house. All the family was sleeping,” Alaa Alhaj was quoted as saying.

“Always smiling, I lost one of my best friends. “[Dima] came [back] to Gaza full of dreams, full of life,” he hastened to add, describing his cousin.

Alhaj was passionate about environmental and health issues. Her colleagues described her as a team member who would always be ready to take on added responsibilities.

The Palestinian medic regarded her job as a mission to help and bring hope to her community.

While remembering her first encounter with the young Palestinian woman, Roseann Maguire, Alhaj’s host in Glasgow said, “Dima’s smile lit up the room”, and she “called us her second family”.

“She was very determined that she wanted to go back and help the people of Gaza, that was the kind of young woman she was, she went back,” Maguire said.

“It’s an absolute tragedy that her life was taken so cruelly and so young. It's criminal, the fact that they were all killed,” she added, while recalling her prized memories with Alhaj.

In the last text message that Maguire received from the new mother on November 13, Alhaj wrote, “Please tell the truth. Abood, my little boy, I hope he lives to see better days.”

Meanwhile, Alhaj’s devastated father rummaging through the ruins of his destroyed house bewailed: “It seems that Israelis don’t like anything beautiful in Gaza”.

More than 107 UN workers have been killed since the occupying regime started its brutal bombing campaign of the besieged coastal strip on October 7.

Nearly 300 people have been killed only in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to almost 18,000.

Israel has intensified its airstrikes after the seven-day expired on December 1.

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