I wish children wouldn’t die;
I wish they would be lifted up to heaven temporarily until the war ends.
Then they would return to their homes in safety,
And when their families, confused, ask them, “Where have you been?” They will say, “We were happily playing with the stars.”
Ghassan Kanafani
A year has passed, and the wishes of the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani remain as out of reach as ever. Instead of any prospect of peace, this year has been the worst ever for Gaza’s children and one in which they “have endured unimaginable horrors,” as a recent report by the UN children’s agency UNICEF put it.
“They deserve an immediate ceasefire and a chance for a peaceful future,” it stated.
“My father was killed in a mosque. Even mosques were bombed; they didn’t leave any place without bombing,” sobbed 12-year-old Hala, a displaced Gazan girl living in the displacement camp of Al-Zuwayda. The girl features in a video sent exclusively to Al-Ahram Weekly from the NGO the Palestinian Food Bank by its founder Shuaa Al-Rayes. The girl burst into tears and was unable to go on.
“Hala was living with her parents and two younger sisters in Gaza when her father was killed in a strike on a mosque,” Al-Rayes told the Weekly. “Their home was later destroyed in another strike, and they were displaced several times until they came to our camp in Al-Zuwayda.”
Thousands of videos have been inundating social media showing shabby Gazan children sitting on rubble and crying as a result of hunger, fear, and loss — the loss of everything including homes, parents, siblings, school, and playmates. Their tears and screams have broken the hearts of millions around the world, but they have still failed to stop the war.
When the rest of the world’s child population were busy getting ready for a new academic year full of progress and fun, Gazan children were desperately busy digging through rubble, sometimes in search of loved ones, at other times looking for their favourite toys and clothes buried under their destroyed homes.
At a time when mothers in non-conflict countries are busy thinking of creative ideas for nutritious school lunch boxes, children in Gaza are suffering from famine, drought, and disease. They have already missed one academic year, and now they are under threat of losing another since 152 schools in Gaza have been destroyed over the past year. Those that remain have been turned into displacement camps that remain constantly under fire.
“Our children are enrolled in online classes, but the networks are extremely bad, and this impedes the educational process,” Al-Rayes told the Weekly.
The war has had a catastrophic toll on both Gazan women and children. According to UNICEF, more than 14,000 Palestinian children have been killed, as estimated by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, while thousands more have been injured.
“There are no safe spaces,” UNICEF said. “All of Gaza’s children have been exposed to the traumatic experiences of war, the consequences of which will last a lifetime.”
International reports warn that many children have also been exposed to detention by Israeli forces and others separated from their parents and at risk of exploitation.
“Countless Are Missing in Gaza” is the title of a heartbreaking report published by the international NGO Save the Children. According to the report, “thousands [of Gazan children] are presumed dead beneath the rubble. Others have been harmed beyond recognition by explosives, buried in unmarked or mass graves, or gone missing in the chaos of conflict.”
“We may never know what happened to some of these children,” the report says. “But every one of them has had a story, a family, and dreams stolen from them.”
The report says that over 17,000 children have been separated from their families or orphaned. “As Israeli forces continue to block an adequate humanitarian response, it’s almost impossible to find and support separated children, many of whom have been alone for months,” Save the Children warned.
Parents are not allowed to search for their missing children. “Imagine you are a parent in Gaza right now, desperately trying to find your child. If you even attempt to clear what was once your home with your bare hands, you risk your life as a result of missiles, bullets, and unexploded bombs,” Save the Children said.
DISPLACEMENT
Children who have not been killed or are missing are facing the horror of displacement and loss.
Around 1.9 million people, about 90 per cent of Gaza’s population, are estimated to have been internally displaced, half of them children, according to UNICEF.
“They do not have access to water, food, fuel and medicine. Their homes have been destroyed, their families torn apart,” said the report. “Many children have been displaced multiple times and have lost homes, parents, and loved ones.”
“My children, like all children in Gaza, have been displaced seven times since the outbreak of war, and this has impacted them negatively,” Bassem Al-Ganoubi, a Palestinian-Egyptian writer and founder of a Cairo-based humanitarian initiative, told the Weekly.
Al-Ganoubi’s initiative, named Soria Al-Ahl (Syria the Family) extends relief aid to Syrian, Gazan, and Sudanese refugees. He is the author of several books, the last of which dealt with the desolate state of refugees worldwide, and he said that his three children have “been suffering the shock of repeated displacements, the loss of at least eight of their friends to the war, the loss of an academic year, and the horror of daily bombardment, not to mention bloodshed and destruction.”
According to testimonies from Gazan women living in displacement camps, it is common now to find children wandering through the camps on their own without any parents. These children, they say, have probably lost all their family members, or have lost track of them, and they are now alone and mostly anonymous.
The lucky ones will find a relative to accommodate them, though this can put extra financial burdens on families already unable to feed their own children.
Although women and children bear the brunt of any war, this time they make up 70 per cent of the deaths in Gaza, as estimated by the UN agency. There is almost a consensus that the war on Gaza is in fact a genocide targeting women and children.
The children’s misery seems to start as early as their mother’s womb, since, according to the UN Population Fund, “about 50,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip lack access to essential health services, and over 5,500 women are expected to give birth in the absence of adequate medical facilities.”
Even lucky mothers who survive pregnancy and labour can still hardly keep their babies fed and hydrated. Many mothers have reportedly lost their children and newborns to a lack of food or water or the absence of healthcare.
“Women do not receive enough nutrients. They live on canned food that more often than not has to be eaten uncooked in the absence of natural gas and the rising prices of wood for fuel,” said Walaa Al-Nawagha, a Gazan psychotherapist and the mother of two children aged four and 11.
Breastfeeding is no option for women lacking proper nutrition. “Baby formula is scarce and very expensive, and international organisations provide mothers with only one tin of baby milk per month. The rest of the time, the mother is left to struggle for milk for her baby to survive,” Al-Nawagha told the Weekly.
It is thus no wonder that infant mortality has been so high among Gazan children. Even those children who survive suffer from malnutrition, infectious diseases, and stunted growth.
“Diapers are extremely expensive, and international organisations provide only 12 diapers every 10 days or so,” Al-Nawagha said. “Mothers sometimes clean the diapers and re-use them because they don’t know what else to do, and this of course can cause skin infections and other problems.”
The lack of hygiene, proper nutrition, and medical care in Gaza has resulted in the outbreak of disease among many children.
“My son cried all night from hunger,” said the mother of three-month-old Anwar Al-Khudari, who died from malnutrition in Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital on 14 February this year.
Anwar’s mother was displaced along with his father. His mother was too exhausted to have milk for breastfeeding, and she could not find any formula milk due to the Israeli siege. Anwar’s “temperature rose, and he started having convulsions. He passed away four days later,” the mother told the NGO Defence for Children International — Palestine (DCIP).
There have been reports of dozens of children who have died due to malnutrition in Gaza over the past year, particularly in recent months due to the Israeli blockade on supplies. Gaza’s Government Media Office earlier said that at least 34 Palestinian children had starved to death, but many insist that the real number is higher since official statistics include only children dying in hospitals or deaths reported by parents.
“Young Palestinian children are dying hungry and in pain because the Israeli authorities have deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to northern Gaza, which is an act of genocide,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability programme director at DCIP, said.
The director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hassan Abu Safia, earlier told the DCIP that “the hospital received around 70 to 100 children every day suffering from malnutrition.”
“Over 25 children have died at the Kamal Adwan Hospital due to hunger, with additional deaths reported in shelter centres and homes,” Abu Safia told the DCIP, adding that “many were unable to reach the hospital due to the ongoing Israeli siege and aggression.”
Statistics from the Gaza Government Media Office had earlier revealed that about 3,500 children were already at risk of death due to malnutrition and inadequate medical care. At least 40,000 newborns had not been able to get necessary vaccinations due to the war.
The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA had also warned that around 82,000 children showed symptoms of malnutrition and that 50,000 children were in need of treatment as a result.
HEALTHCARE
Such harsh living conditions combined with the fact that infants have been missing regular vaccinations because of the Israeli war on Gaza have resulted in the occurrence of polio in Gaza, something that has not occurred in the region for at least the past 20 years.
In August, the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated the whole Gaza Strip — particularly Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah — as “a polio epidemic zone” due to deteriorating health conditions.
In mid-August, health officials confirmed the occurrence of the first polio victim in 25 years. The virus infected a 10-month-old boy, who had not received the polio vaccine and is now suffering paralysis. The child underwent tests in Amman, Jordan, and was proved positive. It was later announced that the poliovirus had been detected in the area’s wastewater, spreading alarm over a virus outbreak in the Strip.
Palestinian health officials have repeatedly raised concerns about “the extensive risk of the polio virus spreading in Gaza,” due to a shortage of vaccines and essential healthcare services under the Israeli bombardment of the Strip.
Polio is a highly contagious virus that may cause permanent disability and even death in the absence of proper healthcare. It has been posing a threat to children in the Strip, particularly in crammed camps and settlements, and this will continue if a ceasefire is not reached.
In attempts to curb the spread of an epidemic, the WHO, UNICEF, and other aid organisations launched vaccination campaigns among Gazan children. The Palestinian Health Ministry told reporters that more than 640,000 children of the targeted age group had already received vaccinations.
But polio is linked to the Strip’s severely damaged health and sanitation infrastructure, a direct result of the Israeli bombardments, and this means that more efforts should be directed to stopping the war if children are to be saved.
The non-stop Israeli bombings since the outbreak of the war have destroyed all the basic infrastructure in Gaza, including the water and sewage networks.
In addition, the electricity has been cut, impeding health services in hospitals and medical centres, and all sanitary supplies have been blocked, leading to the spread of infections and epidemics, particularly among children in congested displacement camps.
“Having a bath has become a luxury, and the harsh conditions of living in tents in the hot summer and the severe lack of clean water have led to the spread of infectious skin diseases,” Al-Nawagha lamented.
Gaza health officials have confirmed outbreaks of skin diseases such as scabies and chickenpox, attributing these to the dire conditions in overcrowded displacement camps. Poor living standards, including overcrowding and inadequate personal hygiene, along with open pools of sewage water caused by the collapse of sewage networks, have all contributed to the spread of these diseases.
“My sons caught a skin infection that remained undiagnosed,” Al-Ganoubi told the Weekly. “The reasons were known, though, since the prices of shampoo, soap, and detergents in general are staggering; mothers are unable to get sanitary pads, and camps are crowded in a way that has made skin infections spread, especially among children.”
Al-Ganoubi said that his children were covered in itching blisters that hardly allowed them any night’s sleep. “The unavailability of medicine has forced a team of doctors in Gaza and here in Egypt to try traditional alternative medicine, like putting salt and herbs on pimples. Fortunately, those traditional treatments worked,” Al-Ganoubi said. “But that is not the end of story since the cause of the disease remains and the infections are still there.”
Gaza’s children are not just fending off diseases and hunger, but their mental health has also been severely impacted. Every child has been left with mental scars that may never heal.
“The symptoms include extremely high levels of anxiety, a loss of appetite, and an inability to sleep,” UNRWA said. “They have emotional outbursts or attacks every time they hear the bombings.”
“The very fact that children have to constantly move and live under fire has affected them tremendously,” Al-Ganoubi said. “The fact that displacement camps are home to so many children of different ages, all living under constant stress with no spaces for sport and play, has also led to the outbreak of violence among the children, and this puts more pressure on their parents who are already extremely stressed.”
Al-Nawagha said she receives complaints from mothers of their children’s outbursts and tantrums, which “are sometimes due to the fact that the mothers themselves are stressed and screaming all the time.” Other children are reportedly suffering from mutism, an anxiety disorder which leaves a shocked person unable to express him/herself.
“Before the war, more than 500,000 children were already in need of mental health and psychological support in the Gaza Strip,” UNICEF said. “Today, it is estimated that more than one million children are in need of such help.”
ORPHANS
Estimates by Palestinian civil-society and aid organisations suggest that between 15,000 and 25,000 children have lost at least one parent or both in the Gaza Strip.
According to UNICEF, “at least 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated from their parents, whether dead, hospitalised, or detained.” UN Women suggests that 19,000 children had become motherless in Gaza by April, while the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a non-profit group, estimates that “more than 24,000 children have lost one or both parents.”
Its major concern, however, is that an estimated 19,000 orphaned children have ended up alone with no immediate family member to look after them.
Jonathan Crick, chief of communications for UNICEF Palestine, told the BBC that “many of these children have been found under the rubble or have lost their parents in the bombings of their homes.” His statement was part of a recent BBC story titled “Injured, Hungry and Alone — the Gazan Children Orphaned by War.”
“Others have been found at Israeli checkpoints, hospitals and on the streets,” Crick elaborated. “The youngest ones very often cannot say their name, and even the older ones are usually in shock, so it can be extremely difficult to identify them and potentially regroup them with their extended family.”
Even when relatives can be found, they are not always well-placed to help care for bereaved children, according to the BBC.
Al-Ganoubi concurred, saying that “families in Gaza do not leave their children, but having more family members under such harsh conditions puts extra burdens on families already unable to feed their children and in fact unable to provide proper care for those children.”
The consensus remains that the Israeli war on Gaza must stop, since otherwise the children in the Strip will continue living in conditions of almost unimaginable horror.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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