Twenty-one-year-old Waad Al-Shafei recites verses from the Quran as she rocks and pats her son Jawad.
Their home is barely fit to live in: cramped and dark even during the day, with worn-out furniture, it is only accessible through narrow passageways snaking deep inside the camp.
Ever since Israeli occupation soldiers held Jawad for over 10 hours in late March, the 21-month-old cries all the time, says his mother.
Jawad was released through the International Committee of the Red Cross on 19 March, while his father, Osama Abu Nassar, 25, remains in detention.
Grief weighs on Waad as she contemplates the fate of her husband, who was arrested near the Yellow Line , east of Al-Maghazi camp.
Marking a new buffer zone created by the Israeli army, this artificial border spans the length of the enclave parallel to Gaza's main artery, Salah al-Din Street, and is full of checkpoints.
Speaking about the horrific incident, Waad says Jawad has now changed completely. "He screams for no reason and prefers not to play with other children as he used to," Waad shares with The New Arab. "Sometimes he runs a fever and trembles." She adds that Jawad, her only child, won't stop crying unless he is with her or his grandmother. They need to either hold him or sit beside him in bed all day. Signs of torture and psychological trauma "It was the worst moment of my life," Waad continues, recalling the sight of her son's blood-soaked trousers, the cigarette burns and the wounds consistent with attacks by a sharp object such as a nail or piece of metal. "When the Red Cross brought him home, he was wrapped in a large sheet of tin foil," she remembers. "It was extremely cold."
The signs of torture were documented in a medical report issued by Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, she says.
"It was painful to see my child, whom I still nurse, in this state," adds Waad. When Jawad returned, Waad immediately took him to the hospital on a gruelling eight-kilometre ride in a donkey cart from east of Al-Maghazi camp to Deir al-Balah, and rode back the next day.
"It was Eid ul-Fitr," she said, but while others celebrated, she and her family drowned in grief, fear and despair.
"I can't handle Jawad psychologically," Waad revealed, adding that he does not eat much or play as much as he used to. His movement has also been affected; he can no longer walk as well as he did before the ordeal. "He used to play with other children, run around, and was never so attached to me or anyone. But now needs constant attention from his grandmother or me."
Sporadically, she says, he would utter words related to the incident like "bang", "bullet", "blood", "tank" and "army" the way a toddler would say them. It breaks her heart. A grandfather's grief "My grandson was subjected to torture at the hands of the occupation army, despite all attempts to deny it," Waad's father-in-law, Mohammed Abu Nassar, tells The New Arab .
"Every mark on his body confirms this, as does the medical report issued by an official health institution," the 51-year-old, father of nine, adds. Mohammed, visibly consumed by tension, anxiety, and fear over the unknown fate of his detained son and the deteriorating psychological state of Jawad, denies claims that the blood stains on the child's clothes were from a bullet wound in his father's shoulder, in a shootout with Israeli soldiers.
He insists his son has no affiliation with any armed Palestinian factions and that claims by the occupation are entirely false.
In a statement , Israeli occupation forces denied torturing Jawad and claimed that his injuries were the result of splinters caused by warning shots, claiming that "his father, a Hamas member, used his toddler as a human shield."
But Mohammed strongly disagrees: "Why would my son carry his infant on his shoulder and approach the Yellow Line if he had any party affiliations?" he asks. He explained that his son Osama had no history of mental illness and was not on any related medication, noting only that he had asthma.
But about 10 days before the incident, he says, Osama, who worked as a day labourer, started showing signs of anxiety and psychological stress.
"If he had any intention to act against the occupation, would it make sense for him to carry his only child and walk toward them?" Mohammed questions. He explains that Osama left home, which is about 300 metres from the Yellow Line, without their knowledge, and the neighbours saw him come under heavy fire from the Israeli army.
He recalls rushing to the scene, hoping to catch up with his son, but by then his son was already detained.
"It was a life-threatening gamble," he said.
He later found out from eyewitnesses that a drone ordered him through a loudspeaker to strip down to his underwear, and that he was made to walk to the Israeli army checkpoint after being subjected to heavy gunfire.
"My son loves life and is known for his work ethic, however hard things were," Mohammed told The New Arab. " He was optimistic and devoted to his family and had no affiliation with any factions. In fact, he despised those factions."
With the entire family preoccupied with Jawad and anxious about his father's fate, a momentary lapse in attention led to a fire at the home's entrance.
The family had been burning firewood to heat water for bathing and to prepare food when the flames spread to parts of the house, and they were brought under control using two precious water barrels.
When the fire was put out, Mohammed settled into a quiet grief as he recalled how the incident had upended their already precarious life.
"Being so close to the Yellow Line, our life was closer to death, but now our situation is even more wretched," he says.
All he wants is for authorities to conduct an impartial investigation into what happened to his son and grandson.
"The hardest moment was when Jawad looked at a picture in a calendar hanging on the wall and told me, 'That's where the army shot at us.' He connected the olive tree and the sky in the picture to the scene of the incident where it happened."
Long before the war in Gaza, Israel was known to have systematically tortured children. Since the genocide that began in October 2023, Israel has operated industrial-scale torture facilities for Palestinian detainees.
Dr Dardah Al-Shaer, professor of social psychology at Gaza University , told The New Arab that the Gaza Strip is now experiencing one of the largest collective psychological disasters in modern history. "We are not talking about individual cases of depression or anxiety; we are talking about an entire society living a continuous collective trauma, where people lost safety, home, family, work, and the future at the same time, and this leads to widespread psychological collapse," he said.
"Children are the most psychologically affected group by the war, because a child cannot interpret what is happening around them — bombing, killing, displacement, and loss of family — so many psychological and behavioural symptoms appear such as bedwetting, sudden silence, stuttering, nightmares, severe fear, and sometimes what is called psychogenic seizures or dissociation from reality," Dr Dardah added.
Jawaad's grandfather holds back his tears as he speaks of the misfortunes raining down on him from every direction.
He is afraid for his detained son and worried about the impact on his grandson. "When I first gave interviews, I didn't think it would become such a major story," he shares.
"All I wanted was to speak about the torture of my grandson and the detention of my son, hoping he would be released." Mohamed Solaimane is a Gaza-based journalist with bylines in regional and international outlets, focusing on humanitarian and environmental issues This piece is published in collaboration with Egab