[RSCT] The Guardian (UK) 1/23/09: Children of Gaza: stories of those who died and the trauma for those who survived

[Rick Kisséll]

Children of Gaza: stories of those who died and the trauma for those who survived

by Rory McCarthy
The Guardian (U.K.)
1/23/09



	
			Amira Qirm lay on a hospital bed
today with her right leg in plaster, and held together by a line of
steel pins dug deep into her skin. For several days after her operation
Amira, 15, was unable to speak, and even now talks only in a low
whisper.
In her past are bitter memories: watching her father die
in the street outside their home, then hearing another shell land and
kill her brother Ala'a, 14, and her sister Ismat, 16, and then the
three days that she spent alone, injured and semi-conscious, trying to
stay alive in a neighbour's abandoned house before she could be rescued
last Sunday.
Ahead of her, she has a long recovery. First there
is an imminent flight to France for the best possible medical
treatment, many more operations and then months of rehabilitation and
psychiatric care.Only now, after most of the dead have been
buried, is the first properly researched reckoning of the toll
emerging. What already stands out is the striking cost borne by the children of Gaza, who make up more than half of the 1.5 million people living in this overcrowded strip of land.
The
Palestinian death toll after three weeks of Israel's war was 1,285,
according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, or 1,268,
according to the al-Mezan Human Rights Centre. Among those dead were at
least 280 children.
The impact will be felt by many more for
years to come. Among the more than 4,000 people injured more than a
quarter were children, some left with severe disabilities. The Gaza
Community Health Programme estimates that half Gaza's children – around
350,000 – will develop some form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Amira
Qirm, who lived in Tel al-Hawa, the scene of some of the heaviest
fighting in Gaza City, is among the few in line to receive medical
treatment abroad.
Already she has a dream to fulfil once she
returns to Gaza. "I want to be a lawyer," she said today , "and to
stand in court facing the Israelis for what they have done."
Most
of the other children will have to make do with treatment in Gaza. Last
week some psychologists were walking through the ruins of a house in
Atatra, talking to a boy from the Abu Halima family who had lost his
father, three brothers and an infant sister in a horrific fire after an
Israeli phosphorus shell hit the house.
"The problem is they are
not feeling safe even in their own homes, on the streets, in the
mosques," said Ehassan Afifi, the psychologist. "This boy is seeing
what happened as if it is an endless movie. The physically affected can
be operated on, sometimes cured. But these mental problems may lead to
problems for the rest of their lives."
Israel has consistently rejected international criticism that its forces used excessive and indiscriminate firepower.
Asked
about the criticisms, the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said in an
interview yesterday in the Israeli paper Ma'ariv that the mental health
of the children of southern Israel had suffered in recent years. He
added: "So now there is talk about Israel's cruelty. When you win, you
automatically hurt more than you've been hurt. And we didn't want to
lose this campaign. What did you want, for hundreds of our soldiers to
die? That, after all, was the alternative."
On the Israeli side
13 died in this conflict, three of them civilians. In total in the past
eight years, 20 people in Israel have died from rocket and mortar
attacks launched by militants in Gaza.
Halting this rocket fire was Israel's primary goal and for the last few days, at least, it has achieved its aim.
But
Eyad al-Sarraj, a prominent psychiatrist who leads the Gaza community
health programme, said that years of violence in Gaza had only fostered
radicalism among its young people, who have seen their fathers
humiliated and now left defenceless.
His organisation is training
1,000 ­people to spread out across Gaza to offer help with grief and
mourning and to pass serious cases on to professional therapists.
Already
there were reports, he said, of children bed-wetting, stuttering,
falling mute, having trouble sleeping, becoming violent or restless and
losing their appetites.
The difference between this war and the
uprisings, like the first intifada of the late 1980s, was that whereas
there was once a frontline, with tanks near the border, now the bombing
and artillery reached deep inside Gaza's urban areas and into the homes
of ordinary families. "Yes, we have developed a coping strategy but we
are still frightened of the Israelis doing this again and again," said
al-Sarraj.
"The devastation is a reminder of what the Israelis
will do. You need to give children a protective environment and give a
chance to the fathers to regain their status as protectors and
providers by giving them jobs and homes to live in 
 This is a massive,
man-made disaster and we have to tackle the results."




	

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