Poignant footage shows devoted Palestinian son who climbs hospital to sit outside window of mother's room

While a Palestinian woman lay in hospital with COVID-19 and leukemia, her devoted son climbed up to her window to see her before she passed away.

In Palestine, there’s been more than 10,923 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 67 deaths. Rasmi Suwaiti, 73, died last Thursday, July 16, following a stint in the intensive care unit of Hebron State Hospital.

She passed away not long after an unexpected visit from her son, Jihad Al-Suwaiti. However, after his mother was admitted to hospital, he wasn’t allowed to enter to building to see her, so he decided to climb the wall and sit on her window ledge.

The son of a Palestinian woman who was infected with COVID-19 climbed up to her hospital room to sit and see his mother every night until she passed away. pic.twitter.com/31wCCNYPbs

— Mohamad Safa (@mhdksafa) July 18, 2020

The heartbreaking image of Jihad was shared by Mohamad Safa, a human rights activist and representative for the United Nations. He wrote: ‘The son of a Palestinian woman who was infected with COVID-19 climbed up to her hospital room to sit and see his mother every night until she passed away.’

The image, alongside a custom illustration, has amassed more than 205,000 likes and 76,000 retweets since being posted on July 18, MailOnline reports.

My heart is full reading this. Lost my Mom (not to COVID) just before lockdown. Had she not died, I'd have certainly driven 2 1/2 hours to stand outside her window at her LTC residence, just so she could see I was there. This young man personifies the definition of a good son.

— Nora (Cassidy) Tyll (@Nora1968) July 18, 2020

The 30-year-old, from the town of Beit Awwa, ‘spent most of his day there’, a hospital official told local media, adding that Jihad was: ‘observing his mother’s condition from outside the window, before coming down when he was convinced that his mother was fast asleep’.

Jihad told The Arabic Post:

At 8pm I went out… to bring her things, then my nurse brother called me to tell me that my mother became very tired. When I tried to enter her room; to be next to her at the last moments, the door of the department was closed, so I climbed up to the window of her room, and I watched her sorely from behind the outer glass until she breathed her last.

I sat helplessly behind the outside window of the intensive care room… I felt the utmost inability to do anything to save her, then she died and left me.

Jihad was said by family to be ‘angry and in shock’ following his mother’s death, but ‘now he seems to have accepted the fact’. He and his two brothers buried her at night in Beit Awwa, ‘because we do not want gatherings and cause the virus to spread to our society… thank God for everything’.

Jihad has also reportedly written a letter to government asking for further action on public awareness around COVID-19. ‘People are poor and confused, and some do not believe that there is a virus,’ he wrote.

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