In a spring that brought nothing but pain to the child, Mohammed Khaled Hijazi, while he was playing like any other child his age, the unexpected happened.

Mohammed, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy, lost his right eye when a suspicious object left over from the Israeli war exploded while he was playing with his friends in front of their destroyed home in Jabalia camp, north of the Gaza Strip, last March.

“My son was just playing with other children,” his father, Khaled Hegazy, says, trying to hide his heartache. “He wasn’t carrying a weapon and didn’t commit any crime. What was his fault? Why was his eye stolen like this?”

Mohammed had no idea that what he had picked up from the ground was a deadly weapon, left behind by one of the attacks that did not distinguish between a house and a toy, between a stone and a child.

The explosion destroyed his right eye and injured his face. What's even more devastating is that his left eye is in real danger, requiring urgent medical intervention outside the Gaza Strip.

But the blockade imposed on Gaza stands as a wall of impotence in the way of his father's attempts to save what remains of his son's sight.

“I am not asking for a miracle, but I want Mohammed to see again and play again like other children. Every day that passes is wasting time, and his eyes are in danger,” the father added.

Mohammed's story is not an exception in Gaza. Rather, it is a picture of the ongoing suffering of children facing death not on the battlefronts, but in playgrounds and amid the rubble of their homes.

According to reports from human rights organizations, hundreds of suspicious objects from war remnants remain scattered in residential areas, threatening the lives of civilians, especially children, on a daily basis.

In light of this reality, Mohammed's family has launched urgent humanitarian appeals to international medical institutions and human rights organizations to provide Mohammed with safe treatment before he loses his sight completely.

“We don’t ask for anything but a decent life for our children. We don’t ask for anything more than to escape death and live with open eyes, not closed from terror or blindness,” the father concludes in a choked-up voice.

The story of Mohammed Khaled Hijazi is a living testimony to the reality of besieged Gaza, and a stark reminder that war doesn't end with the end of the bombing. Rather, its scars remain embedded in the ground, waiting for someone to step on them—whether a child or a small dream.