On Mother's Day last year, 5-year-old Ronan Arafat picked a rose on her way back from the nursery and offered it to her mother. This year, however, Ronan will not offer her mother a rose. She will not grow another year; she was killed by Israeli warplanes as they bombed their house in the south of the Zeitun neighborhood in Gaza City on Nov. 14, 2012.

Her mother, Nisreen, says, “My daughter was martyred on the first day of the war. Our house is located in a big agricultural area. I remember hearing that day news about the assassination of Ahmed Jabari, so I brought my children together and got ready to go to the house of my family. And the moment my son Jalal and two daughters Maria and Ronan came to me to help them get dressed, the house disintegrated under heavy shelling.”

With tears streaking down her face, she adds, “I was buried with only my face showing. I called out to my children and I heard my son Jalal, who was barely 7 at the time, say, ‘Mom, I am suffocating.’ I saw my elder daughter Maria, who was 9 back then, standing and looking for us, but I did not see Ronan at all and I kept calling out for her. I felt that something had happened to her.” When she reached the hospital, she insisted that her family call to ask about the fate of her daughter. At that moment, they told her Ronan had gone to heaven.

Nisreen told Al-Monitor during an interview at her recently rented house, “Ronan is the youngest. She used to return from kindergarten on foot, and when she was a few minutes late I would run into the street to wait for her. Sometimes she would stop at her grandmothers’ and give her two kisses. She loved my mother a lot; she was a smart and loved child. I wish I had saved her, but I was covered with heavy stones. My son Jalal always asks me about her: Why did we manage to get out from under the house but she didn't? He asks me, ‘Is Ronan drinking and eating, Mom?’”