Israeli planes and bombs fell silent and the Gaza Strip fell silent, but 11 days of conflict leave children in the enclave traumatized, exposed once again to destruction and the fear of death..
“My dear mother, I am very scared. If we all must die, I want us to be buried in the same grave and I want it to be in your arms,” Zeina Dabus wrote on a piece of paper she left under her mother's pillow as the Israeli air force attacked her neighborhood in Gaza City. .
The testimony of Zeina, interviewed by AFP the day before the ceasefire that on Friday put an end to the deadly confrontation between Israel and Hamas, in power in Gaza, shows at a child level a reality as terrifying as it is difficult to understand at this age.
“They bombed all the time next to our house, all the streets,” says Zeina. “I was afraid of dying,” he says when he explains why he wrote the message for his mother.
This confrontation, which began on May 10, left 248 Palestinians dead in Gaza, including 66 children, according to the Palestinian authorities.. In Israel, rockets fired from the Gaza Strip killed 12 people, including a child and a teenager, Israeli police said.
In Gaza, where the birth rate is among the highest in the world, half of the two million inhabitants are under the age of 18, according to UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund).. In less than 13 years, four conflicts have devastated the Strip, a territory subjugated by Israel: in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021.
Zeina was just four years old during the previous war. “An entire generation ravaged by repeated conflicts,” laments Zeina's grandfather, Said Dabus, who lives under the same roof..
terror crisis
According to the NGO Save the Children, this repeated exposure to violence seriously affects the mental health of the youngest.. “Children suffer terror attacks, suffer from lack of sleep, show worrying psychological signs, such as tremors, and return to wetting the bed,” warns this organization specialized in child protection.
Maisa Abu Al-Awf, 22, tells how she was trying to calm the panic of her two-year-old brother Ahmad after an attack destroyed their home and killed part of their family in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza.. “In each explosion I screamed and cried,” he recalls. Maisa told him: “Don't worry, it's just a balloon that has burst.”
The bodies of 42 people, including 10 women and eight children, were found under the rubble of the building.. His seven-year-old sister Maram survived, but two others died.. “I was under the stones, I called my mom for help,” he says.
Since the early days of the conflict, the Gaza Community Center for Mental Health (GCMHP) posted a message on Facebook for parents, urging them to try to distract them by playing or drawing, talking to them and even praying.. No study has been able to quantify the extent of trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by children in Gaza in recent years.. But the specialized center says it receives hundreds of new minor patients each month.
“Behavioral violence”
Exposure to “a violent shock” frequently gives rise to “behavioral violence,” explains Mohamed Abu Sabeh, a psychologist at the center. “Wars have sown this violence at home and at school,” Sabeh points out, and these mental health problems, with possible consequences for development in adulthood, affect “a catastrophic number of children.”. And the lack of resources in this overcrowded territory that already depends heavily on international aid does not make him “optimistic” about future support. “This conflict will necessarily give rise to an aggressive, violent and hate-filled generation,” he says. concerned.