Aid groups are flying Gaza children to US for health care. Boy, 12, lands in St. Louis. (2024)

ST. LOUIS — A dozen people stood waiting anxiously one recent night at Lambert St. Louis International Airport.

Some of them had worked toward this moment for months. Many wore traditional Palestinian scarves and carried flags. A few arrived on short notice after just hearing the news: A wounded boy from Gaza was coming, and he needed help.

Then they saw him, in a wheelchair pushed by a volunteer. He wore glasses and a bashful smile. He threw up a peace sign with his fingers.

For Hadi Zaqout, 12, landing in St. Louis “felt like a dream,” he said. His life was upended in November when an Israeli airstrike hit his family’s apartment building in Gaza, leading to the amputation of his left leg.

The war in Gaza has injured thousands of Palestinian children, and at the same time damaging hospitals, overwhelming those left, and collapsing the very health care system that could put lives back together. In response, aid agencies have begun identifying children who need help and shipping them overseas, including to the U.S.

Hadi is one of 10, organizers say, brought to the U.S. by the nonprofit Heal Palestine since it started in January. And he’s the first to arrive in St. Louis.

Each child had homes that were destroyed and family killed in Gaza, said Heal founder Steve Sosebee. Each were stuck waiting for months for treatment they couldn’t get there.

And the effort to help every child has been complicated, Sosebee described, taking months to organize personal documents for the families, get government approvals, undergo background checks, arrange travel and pay for it all. For Hadi, Sosebee and others have lined up free medical care at Shriners Children’s Hospitals, plus a network of volunteers to house and care for Hadi and his mother.

A spokeswoman for Shriners St. Louis, which specializes in treating orthopedic and neuromuscular conditions, said the hospital does not publicly discuss individual patients. But the system has “treated many children injured as a result of the conflict in Gaza,” she said, as a part of its mission to provide health care for children “regardless of a family’s insurance status or ability to pay.”

Hadi and his mother, Kamilia Zaqout, don’t know exactly how long they’ll be here, or where they’ll go once rehabilitation ends.

But the volunteers are eager to help, now. Several said they have felt helpless as they watched the war across the world.

“We’re devastated watching what was happening and not being able to stop it,” said Randah Zalatimo, one of several Palestinian-Americans volunteering for Heal. “This is a way for us to show we do care, and we do love them.”

Kirkwood resident Alaa Ibrahim took the first turn hosting the Zaqouts.

One recent day, the doorbell to her suburban home hardly stopped ringing. One visitor brought crutches; another a tray of baklava and other sweets. Hadi chose an American doughnut.

Inside, Zaqout, 42, wept as she described the journey: The destruction of their home in central Gaza. Leaving her children and husband to evacuate Hadi to a hospital in Egypt. Getting stuck in limbo there for months.

Then, finally, meeting Sosebee and coming to St. Louis.

‘I was on the floor’

On Oct. 7, Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killed about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Israel responded with months of airstrikes and ground attacks that have killed more than 35,000 people, wounded at least 80,000 others, displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and restricted food and aid from reaching them.

Hadi grew up in the central Gazan city of Al-Nuseirat, the middle child of seven. He spent his free time playing goalie in soccer games with his friends, swimming at the neighborhood pool and playing video games. He loved to play with his five sisters and brother and run errands with his dad, a teacher at a U.N.-run school.

“I was very happy with my life there,” Hadi said through a translator.

The Zaqouts witnessed four previous wars between Hamas and Israel. But after Oct. 7, each day brought more destruction, Zaqout said.

First, the apartment building the Zaqouts lived in swelled with families fleeing Israeli airstrikes farther north. Next, a bomb hit the apartment building next door, shattering their home’s windows and leaving bodies in the street. Then Hadi’s school was bombed, and the neighborhood lost power and water.

On Nov. 15, Hadi was returning home with water he collected from a hose outside. He was about to open the door when he heard a loud boom.

“I opened my eyes and I was on the floor,” Hadi said. He remembers being put in an ambulance and seeing the bodies of three of his best friends next to him.

He spent the next several days on the floor of three different hospitals, each overwhelmed with patients, before a doctor examined his leg and amputated it. Two days later he was evacuated with other wounded children to Egypt.

But there, he and his mom spent months living in hospitals, waiting for treatment from doctors overwhelmed with an influx of Gazan refugees.

Sosebee met Hadi in February in a hospital in Ismailia, outside of Cairo, while meeting other wounded children.

“I just felt, here is this quiet boy whose whole life has been upended,” Sosebee said.

‘He’s going to have friends here’

Heal Palestine aims to treat any and all kids it can, Sosebee said. In Gaza, where the health care system is “decimated,” Heal is building an emergency field hospital, he said. In Egypt, it’s working to arrange care for wounded kids who are able to travel to get to the U.S. or other countries for treatment.

Sosebee, who led the well-known Palestine Children’s Relief Fund for three decades, said he’s never seen more need.

“Being able to do something now at this moment, even for one child, has a much bigger impact than just getting this boy the treatment he needs,” he said. “It shows that there are people who love and care for the children in Gaza and stand with them.”

But, for the Zaqouts, the move meant further distancing themselves from their family trapped in Gaza, where border crossings were long closed by Israel and Egypt or so close to combat zones they were unsafe to access.

Hadi’s dad and siblings were last sheltering in a tent in the city of Khan Younis, in south Gaza, Zaqout said. Her husband, wounded in the bombing of their home in November, can hardly walk on his own. Her eldest daughter, 17, spends each day baking to feed the family. Other siblings collect food distributed by aid groups.

When she left Gaza with Hadi for Egypt, Zaqout hoped she’d soon return to her other kids. Now she doesn’t know when she’ll see them.

Her youngest is 3.

“It’s getting worse by the second there,” she said. “We want this war to end so we can go back and have a normal life.”

Hadi dreams of getting a prosthetic leg and reuniting with his family, and going on to study computer engineering and design video games.

But for now, the people around him just want to put a smile on his face.

Within minutes of his landing, one of the volunteers, 17-year-old Zane Alhajouj, had laid out plans for Hadi’s next few weeks: going out for ice cream, shopping at the mall, riding up The Gateway Arch.

“He’s going to have friends here,” Zane said. “I want him to just feel like a kid again.”

And Hadi he wants to be able to run again, to play soccer and swim and explore the forests around St. Louis. He wants to grow up to be a computer engineer, or design video games.

“I’ll hardly sit down again,” Hadi said.