At the end of February, at the entrance to a shopping center in the United Arab Emirates, Bisan Alkolak’s little sister started screaming. “Is this an airport? I don’t want to travel! “, repeated the two and a half year old child. His mother then asked him, calmly, why. The little girl continued to shout: “I don’t want to go to Gaza. Gaza is full of blood, of horror. There are bombs. I don’t want to die in Gaza! » A week earlier, the family had been evacuated from the Palestinian enclave, after four months under bombardment. “Our trauma is immense”slips on the phone Bisan, 20 years old, reporting this scene to World.
Her little sister’s terror is not unfounded. Around 40% of the more than 33,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023 are children. In six months, Israeli bombs devastating the small besieged territory, fighting, army sniper fire and now looming famine have killed more than four years of conflict anywhere else in the world, UNRWA reports. the UN agency which deals with Palestinian refugees, on the front line of the humanitarian response in Gaza for months. “Every day, ten children lose their legs”wrote oner April, its general commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini.
“The scale of the psychological impact on these children is unprecedented: some saw soldiers come to their homes and kill their parents before their eyes, others witnessed the bombing of their homes. They lived in freezing cold and starvation, many wandering for days alone in the streets, explains Caitlin Procter, a researcher at the Center on Conflict Development and Peacebuilding in Geneva, who has conducted research on youth in the small Palestinian territory. The situation is such that even children’s mental health experts in Gaza feel completely overwhelmed and need help themselves. »
In Rafah, in the very south of the Palestinian enclave, where nearly 1.3 million displaced Gazans live, the “children are everywhere in the streets”notes Karyn Beattie, team leader of the NGO Save the Children in Gaza.
Some, not yet teenagers, are already breadwinners: they carry liters of water or sell a piece of the food aid they have received on the sidewalks, often to have enough to buy other household goods. first necessity.
Some 17,000 unaccompanied children in Gaza
All would need psychological support, traumatized by the shootings and bombings. In Gaza, children “are also a target for many. They know that other children have been killed, injured and they know that they are not safe anywhere.”specifies Karyn Beattie reached by telephone from Rafah – Israel prohibits foreign journalists from accessing Gaza.
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