Suffer little children

In the week that Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, spare a thought for some people with rather less cause for celebration: the children terrorised and starved by its government.

"Every once in a while Ibrahim Hawash, 42, calls his wife Noha from his nightshift job to make sure that she has followed the treatment course prescribed by their family doctor for the involuntary urination of their four children, who are in primary school. The doctor says that the four children lost their ability to control urination due to the fear they underwent when Israeli army jets bombed a home near theirs in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip during the "Warm Winter" military campaign three weeks ago. The four children still remember the terrifying night when they woke frightened up to the sound of a thundering explosion in the area and found that the glass of their home's windows had fallen onto their bed. Hawash, who works in one of the Palestinian security agencies, says that his children refuse to sleep alone, insisting on sleeping in the same room as their parents because they are scared of the night. He adds that he exerted great efforts to convince two of his children to go back to school, for they were afraid that they would be killed in an Israeli bombing operation on their way there, or while at school. Thousands of Palestinian children have experienced what Hawash's four children are undergoing."

"Aish Samour, director of the Psychiatric Hospital in Gaza, says that 30 per cent of Palestinian children under 10 years of age suffer from involuntary urination due to deep-seated fear, and mentions other nervous problems such as nail- biting, nightmares, bodily pains of unknown cause, crying and introversion."

"According to a study conducted by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, each Palestinian child has been exposed to more than nine shocking events. The study says that 95.6 per cent of children have seen images of the wounded and killed, .... a total of 60 per cent of children have undergone moderate psychological shock..., and 33.3 per cent have undergone major psychological shock. The study notes that 15.6 per cent suffer from minor post-traumatic syndrome disorder, while 62.2 per cent suffer moderately and 20 per cent severely."

"Eyad Al-Sarraj, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, says that Palestinian children have lost the two most important pillars in their lives: a sense of security that has been lost due to raids, bombings and destruction, and a sense of joy and happiness that is a staple of childhood. He says that when a child sees his father, "impotent and incapable of providing security", the child feels immediately "estranged". He adds that according to data gathered in a study his institution undertook, 45 per cent of children studied said that they had seen occupation soldiers beat their fathers and insult them before their eyes."

"Al-Sarraj points out that matters are made more complicated by the fact that due to the Gaza siege, Palestinian children suffer from a chronic state of malnutrition that affects their intellect. This is reflected in the fact that 15 per cent of Gaza's children suffer from impairments in their intellectual abilities due to malnutrition. He adds that repression and violence accumulated within the lives of Palestinian children affect their creative capacities and push them to resort to extreme acts that reflect the pain and frustration they feel."

Read the whole report, "Gaza's suffering children" by Saleh Al-Naami, here, at Al-Ahram Weekly.