At least 49 people, including 17 children, were killed and more than 360 people
\nGAZA
\nWhen Israeli missiles started landing in Gaza in early August, shattering glass and collapsing buildings, Jouman Abdu put on headphones, covered her eyes with a blindfold and stretched on the couch.
\nThe 8-year-old Palestinian girl said she came up with this ritual to escape the bang of the blasts, the second round of steady violence she had experienced in 15 months.
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to hear the sounds of explosions,\u201d she told Reuters as she sat with her mother. \u201cI was afraid they would bomb our house.\u201d
\nThe latest outbreak of hostilities lasted only a weekend but buttressed the trauma faced by Palestinian children growing up in the densely populated strip in the years since 2007 when Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade, cutting it off from outside, four people, including parents and experts, told Reuters.
\n\u201cIf you are a child in or around Gaza and you are 15 years old, in your life you have already gone through five different conflicts,\u201d said Lucia Elmi, special representative of UNICEF, the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund, in Palestine.
\nIsrael this month launched a series of airstrikes against the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza, in response to what Israeli authorities said was a concrete and imminent threat from the group following the arrest of one of its senior leaders.
\nIslamic Jihad, a militant group committed to Israel\u2019s destruction and the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state, fired more than 1,000 rockets towards Israel and held Israel responsible for the escalation, saying it had informed Egyptian mediators it was about to call off a state of high alert among its fighters when the Israeli strikes began.
\nThe Western-backed Palestinian Authority also condemned Israel\u2019s attacks.
\nAsked for comment on the mental health impact of the blockade and repeated violence in Gaza, the Israeli military said the reality of fighting was difficult for Palestinians in Gaza and Israelis who live around the strip.
\nIn a statement it said it \u201ctook every feasible effort to reduce damage to civilians and civilian property\u201d.
\nReuters was unable to independently confirm the claims made by Israel and Islamic Jihad.
\nAt least 49 people, including 17 children, were killed and more than 360 people, among them 151 children and teenagers, were wounded, Gaza health officials said, before an Egyptian-brokered truce halted the fighting.
\nChildren make up about half of Gaza\u2019s 2.3 million Palestinian population.
\nThere are no safe shelters in the strip, where Palestinian officials and international humanitarian organisations have warned that the healthcare system is on the brink of collapse.
\nA report in June by the aid group Save the Children found the psychosocial wellbeing of children in Gaza was at \u201calarmingly low levels\u201d based on a survey of 488 children and 160 parents and caregivers. One in two children in Gaza is in need of mental health and psychosocial support, Elmi said.
\nThis was already the case after May 2021, she added, when 11 days of fighting between Israel and the Islamist Hamas left 250 Palestinians in Gaza and 13 people in Israel dead, leading to \u201ca cumulative effect of long-lasting trauma for children.\u201d
\n\u2018CONTINUOUS\u2019 TRAUMA No casualties were reported on the Israeli side this time but children living in Israeli communities around Gaza, within immediate range of rockets fired from the strip, also suffer from trauma, UNICEF\u2019s Elmi said.
\nIsraeli studies over the years have established that children under continuous exposure to bombardment experience high levels of stress, with particularly high levels of anxiety in areas near Gaza.
\n\u201cThere is endless research and work regarding the long-term effects of exposure to traumatic situations,\u201d said psychologist Ilana Elyassi, speaking in her office in Gevim, in southern Israel. \u201cI think it affects almost any area of the personality, the internal world and people\u2019s functionality.\u201d
\nSitting in a fortified room in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, Ravit and Amit Shubely played with their two children to distract them from possible sirens warning of incoming rockets.
\nEven inside a fortified room, \u201cthere\u2019s always a fear of death,\u201d Ravit, the mother, said. During the fighting, her children kept waking up at night and repeatedly asked her what to do in case of sirens, she added.
\n\u201cWe live here in a kind of pressure cooker in which you don\u2019t know when it can hit you. It can happen at any time, in crazy hours and you cannot control it,\u201d said Amit, the father.
\nIn Gaza, aid groups say, Palestinians do not have bomb shelters or the missile defence systems that protect Israelis. Access to health services is limited, movement is severely restricted, and the psychological scars run deep, they say.
\nA 2015 study by the non-government Physicians for Human Rights\u2013Israel organisation found that average life expectancy among Palestinians in the occupied territories was 10 years less than that of Israelis due to significant disparities in health conditions \u2013 and the gaps were increasing. Dr. Sam Owaida, a psychiatrist with the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, said the effects on children of the repeated bouts of fighting ranged from refusing to leave the house and clinging to parents to problems with speaking, bed wetting and sleep disturbance.
\nIn Gaza, \u201cthere is no such thing as post-trauma, the trauma is continuous,\u201d he said.
\nParents and caretakers, many already in poverty due to Gaza\u2019s shattered economy, have become more aware of coping techniques but the resources available in Gaza may not be enough to fill the growing need for trauma support, he added.
\nA December 2021 humanitarian needs overview by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs determined that existing shortages in specialised personnel and medication in Gaza were compounded by COVID-19 and last year\u2019s war, with many frontline workers either overloaded or unable to return to work.
\nElmi said UNICEF is working with partners to scale up counselling services in the strip.
\nFor Najla Shawa, a humanitarian worker and mother of two in Gaza, this round was difficult to experience as a parent despite a relatively short duration. Previous traumas in her daughters, Zainab, 7, and Malak, 5, surfaced almost immediately, she said. The girls refused to go anywhere alone \u2013 even to the bathroom \u2013 and whenever loud explosions were heard, Zainab complained of intense physical pain in her chest, their mother said.
\n\u201cI was trying my best to really hold myself together and just be this ideal parent,\u201d Shawa told Reuters. \u201cHow can we comfort them? The fear is shared by everyone, adults and children alike.\u201d
\n\u201cThere is no such thing as \u2018they will get used to it,\u2019\u201d she added. \u201cIt is as if you live through the war for the first time all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least 49 people, including 17 children, were killed and more than 360 people GAZA When Israeli missiles started landing in Gaza in early August, shattering glass and collapsing buildings, Jouman Abdu put on headphones, covered her eyes with a blindfold and stretched on the couch. The 8-year-old Palestinian girl said she came up with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-278140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n