A safe space for Gaza women: A sanctuary to speak, heal and share amid war

Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – Every day at around 9am, after providing for her five children’s needs, Ola Saleh steps out of the tent sheltering her family in al-Amal camp.

Some five minutes later, the 39-year-old arrives at another tent in the camp and, for a few hours, she steps away from the demands of motherhood, displacement and grief.

This is a women-only safe space where daily sessions are held as part of a wider programme run by Collective Development Projects, an organisation offering psychological support, group discussions and practical guidance for coping with the pressures of war.

Here, Saleh has the chance to speak with others who understand her feelings without needing to explain them. Surrounded by psychologists and women carrying losses of their own, she finds something she has struggled to feel since Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza took so much from her.

“He was killed instantly,” Saleh says with tears running down her face, referring to her 43-year-old husband, Abdul Jalil Saleh, who was killed last August while walking to buy food and household supplies for the family. “I still don’t know whether it was a sniper or a quadcopter.”

In that moment, Ola lost her family’s sole provider and, as she describes him, the person who had been her greatest source of comfort. Now she’s displaced in Deir el-Balah, raising her children aged between five and 17 alone.

“Every day is harder than the one before,” she says. “My responsibilities keep growing and his absence becomes heavier.”

An estimated 16,000 women across Gaza have lost husbands since the start of war in October 2023, according to UN Women – roughly one in seven families in Gaza is now headed by a woman.

For most, there has been little space or time to grieve. Living in tents without electricity or ventilation, they are occupied with securing food, water and the basics of daily survival.

Alaa Daoud, the field coordinator of the women’s safe space, says the initiative was designed to give women a safe environment to express themselves freely and receive psychological and practical support.

“Every woman comes with her own experience … the things she has been through and the things she wants to change,” she said.

‘It reminds you that you matter too’

The programme at the camp’s al-Farah School in central Gaza was launched last week, with plans to expand to other displacement sites across the Strip. Similar sessions are also being held in the north.

Beyond emotional support, the sessions raise awareness on issues that have become more pressing during the war: Family pressure, economic hardship, mental health and the difficulty in caring for children while displaced.

Daoud says that attendance has grown quickly since the sessions began. The first day brought together some 60 women, rising to 65 on the second day and later reaching between 70 and 75 as more women heard about it and joined.

“Women tell us how much they need safe spaces where they can express themselves freely, safely and comfortably,” Daoud says. “They need a place where they can release their emotions, gain positive energy and learn how to deal with society and their children.”

For Saleh, the sessions at the safe space do not erase her grief but make it more bearable.

She says this is a place she genuinely looks forward to visiting daily, one where she is seen, heard and, for a little while, less alone. Listening to other women’s concerns, joining discussions, hearing professionals talk about trauma and stress gives her moments of relief in a reality otherwise dominated by loss.

“I leave with a dose of hope and positive energy,” she said. “It’s not enough to take me out of everything I’m living through, but it helps me keep going.”

“It reminds you that you matter, too … that you still exist.”

Suad al-Gharabali comes to the same sessions from a different route.

At 63, she is one of the oldest participants in the group and, unlike some of the women who come mainly to speak about their own pain, she often takes a more active role.

She listens to younger mothers and shares her own experience, offering advice shaped by a lifetime of raising her eight children.

Before the war, al-Gharabali lived in Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighbourhood. Like many, she was displaced after her home was destroyed and now shares a tent in Deir el-Balah with her son, his wife and their children.

Displacement was not the first loss the war brought her; she had already lost two sons, aged 24 and 35, killed in separate air attacks in Shujaiya. Both had been engaged and were due to get married.

The elderly woman still struggles to speak about them without breaking down in tears, remembering them as young men who were preparing for futures cut short by the war.

Despite that, al-Gharabali tries to turn her experience into something she can offer other women. At the safe space, she often speaks to younger mothers about raising children at a time when war and displacement have changed family life so dramatically.

“I’m happy with these meetings because they provide awareness,” she said. “Every mother needs to pay attention to her children. This generation is facing many problems.”

For her, the value of the sessions is not only in the support women receive but in what they exchange with each other.

“Someone older than you by a day knows something you don’t,” she said, explaining why she feels responsible for passing on what she has learned.

Her advice comes from decades of hard work. “I used to sew, go to markets, buy and sell so I could educate and raise my children,” says al-Gharabali, whose deeply-lined face reflects the years she spent working to raise her children.

Before she started attending the sessions, her days were mostly spent between her tent, prayer and quiet time with neighbours. But the meetings have given her something else and a reason to leave the isolation of displacement and be around other people.

“It’s a refreshing experience. I share what life taught me with these women.”

For Daoud, the importance of these spaces goes beyond counselling. They are also a way of recognising what women in Gaza have carried throughout the war.

“Women have been among the groups that carried the greatest responsibilities.

They experienced poverty, displacement and enormous pressure. When we tell them how important their role has been and how much they have given, they feel that their efforts and suffering are recognised.”