As the barrage of rockets fired from the northern Gaza Strip began to rain down on the Israeli border town of Sderot the warning sirens were already wailing, sending thousands of Israelis scurrying for their lives in the city's ubiquitous underground bomb shelters.

A few kilometers north at the Barzilai medical center in the town of Ashkelon, staff were on high alert as they scrambled to evacuate patients to safety. One of the Grad rockets fired from Gaza landed a mere 50 meters from the hospital entrance.

All the premature babies in the newborn intensive care unit unit, including two Palestinians, were transferred to the hospital's bomb shelter for fear that the building itself would receive a direct missile hit.

Shortly afterward, Iman Shafi, 32, a Palestinian from the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Lahiya, the origin of many of the rockets fired at Israel, gave birth to twins, a boy Faisal and a girl Bayan.

Her predicament made Israeli news headlines, and within days the hospital was flooded with offers of help for Iman from Israelis whose hearts the Palestinian mother had touched.

Addressing the media Iman, wearing a headscarf and oval glasses and speaking in a soft voice, sat on a chair between two incubators. She had just been given permission to hold her babies in her arms, and the news cameras were there to capture the event.

A nurse brought out the boy first and then the girl. As the tears welled in her eyes, Iman kissed her children on their foreheads.

"If the children had stayed in Gaza, they would not have survived," she said.

Indeed following the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, Israel imposed a strict closure on the strip, hermetically sealing if off.

This has prevented the entrance of essential supplies of foods and medicines, and fuel for emergency generators, forcing Gaza's hospitals to cancel most elective surgeries and preventing them from being able to treat sick and wounded properly.

This rare display of humanitarianism took place in late February while fighting raged between Israeli troops carrying out an intensive military incursion into Gaza, killing nearly 130 people, over half of them civilians, and the retaliation by Hamas with the barrage of rockets on Israeli towns bordering the strip, killing one Israeli and two Israeli soldiers.

Iman and her husband Ashraf Shafi, a 34-year-old lab technician at the Islamic University of Gaza, had been desperate for more children, especially a son and brother for their six-year-old daughter.

After trying unsuccessfully they decided to turn to fertility treatment and Iman eventually fell pregnant with four embryos. However, the first died in the fifth month of pregnancy and the second died a few weeks later.

Iman was then admitted to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, but the condition of the two remaining embryos became increasingly fragile.

"You have to go to Israel," the doctor warned her.

Because Israel refuses to engage in any contact with the authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza, patients have to turn to private brokers who submit their entry applications to the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

But it can be a lengthy process.

The Shafis were very lucky and Iman received an Israeli entry permit after only 24 hours. She was allowed through the Erez crossing, which separates Israel from Gaza, and reached Barzilai Hospital just in time to give birth to the twins by Caesarean section shortly afterward.

Iman's town of Beit Lahiya has been the target of countless Israeli bombings and its death and injury toll is very high. Consequently, the only face she had ever seen of Israelis was that of a cruel enemy.

So this outpouring of compassion from her lifelong enemies and the kindness of the hospital staff, while she herself experienced the fear of living under the threat of Qassam attacks from her fellow Palestinians, opened her eyes.

On the second day after the birth of Bayan and Faisal, a Soviet-made Grad rocket landed on the hospital grounds.

"I heard it hit, 200 meters away from me. The groups that are firing the rockets are not fighting a just war," said the Palestinian mother, adding that they were not abiding by the Prophet Muhammad's statement which explained that wars could only be waged between soldiers, but not against civilians.