Khaled al-Ramlawi (Khālid al-Ramlāwī) (خالد سعيد الرملاوي), age 41, was a professor of engineering at the Islamic University and specialized in hydrology and water resources. He had recently received (2021) his PhD from the College of Engineering, Dokuz Aylül University in Izmir, Türkiye, and had chosen to bring his expertise in water management back to Gaza. 

Dr. al-Ramlawi had been well on his way to a successful career and obtaining citizenship in Türkiye when he decided to return to Gaza with his wife Bisan and five children in 2022. He had his own lab at Dokuz Aylül University and had co-published several academic papers that explored new methods for estimating rainfall, as well as a study of the Gaza coastal aquifer entitled, “Investigation of the Influence of Excess Pumping on Groundwater Salinity in the Gaza Coastal Aquifer (Palestine) Using Three Predicted Future Scenarios,” Water (August 2020, 12/8). He told friends that he chose to go back to Gaza to teach students there and to live close to his parents, remarking that all the jobs and nationalities of the earth were not equal to a single night of samar (an evening of extended social conversation) shared with them.

After Israeli attacks began in October 2023, Dr. al-Ramlawi, his wife, and his children sought shelter with other family members in the apartment complex, Burj al-Taj in al-Rimal, Gaza City. On 25 October multiple Israeli planes dropped some 20 major bombs on the complex without warning, destroying ten residential buildings and killing over 129 people, including his three-year-old daughter Alina and 18 other members of his family, his mother and father among them. Dr. al-Ramlawi and his daughter Sama, age 15, were trapped under the rubble for five hours until they were rescued, and he was left with a serious leg injury that required surgery without anesthesia. His wife and his surviving children fled to Rafah where he planned to join them as soon as he had recovered sufficiently to travel. He was killed a few weeks later, on 18 December 2023 (date also given as 7 or 12 December), by an Israeli bomb attack on the house of relatives where he was sheltering.

In his final Facebook post on 29 November 2023, he wrote of his great losses – his daughter, parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews – and asked: “How will we ever be able to live normally after such an affliction? Oh God, reward us for this affliction and replace it with something better. Pray for our wellbeing.”

Photo credits: X