Israeli planes and bombs fell silent and the Gaza Strip fell silent, but the 11 days of conflict left children in the enclave traumatized, once again exposed to destruction and fear of death.
"My dear mother, I am very scared. If we must all die, I want us to be buried in the same grave and I want it to be in your arms," wrote Zeina Dabus on a slip of paper that she left under her mother's pillow while the air force Israeli attacked his neighborhood in Gaza City.
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Zeina's testimony, interviewed by AFP the day before the ceasefire that ended on Friday the deadly confrontation between Israel and Hamas, in power in Gaza, shows on a child level a reality that is as terrifying as it is difficult to understand at this age.
"They bombarded all the time next to our house, all the streets," says Zeina. "He was afraid of dying," he says when he explains why he wrote the message for his mother.
This clash, which began on May 10, left 248 Palestinians dead in Gaza, including 66 children, according to Palestinian authorities. In Israel, rockets fired from the Gaza Strip killed 12 people, including a child and a teenage girl, Israeli police said.
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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 subdued by Israel: in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021.
Zeina was just four years old during the previous war. "A whole generation ravaged by repeated conflict," laments Zeina's grandfather, Said Dabus, who lives under the same roof.
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TERROR CRISIS
According to the NGO Save the Children, this repeated exposure to violence seriously affects the mental health of the very young. "Children suffer terror attacks, suffer from lack of sleep, show worrying psychic signs, such as tremors, and go back to wetting the bed," warns this organization specializing in child protection.
Maisa Abu Al-Awf, 22, tells how she tried to quell 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 he screamed and cried," he recalls. Maisa would say to 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 mom to ask for help," he says.
From the early days of the conflict, the Gaza Community Mental Health Center (GCMHP) posted a message for parents on Facebook, 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 in recent years by the children of Gaza. But the specialty center says it receives hundreds of new minor patients each month.
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"BEHAVIORAL VIOLENCE"
Exposure to "a violent shock" frequently leads to "behavioral violence," explains Mohamed Abu Sabeh, a psychologist at the center. "Wars have sown violence at home and at school," said Sabeh, 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 relies heavily on international aid does not make him "optimistic" about future support. "This conflict will necessarily lead to an aggressive, violent and hateful generation," he says. worried.
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