a nineteenth-century war in the twenty-first century

While the bombs continue to destroy every bit of the life they knew before October 7, trying to imagine a tomorrow in Gaza is an exercise that borders on torture. Especially when the war it suffers is already breaking sinister records. Israel’s aerial bombardment campaign in the enclave is the most indiscriminate in terms of civilian casualties in recent years, according to a study published in the Israeli media ‘Haaretz’.

“He pace of killing in Gaza, compared to the recent war in Ukraine, causes civilian death tolls to increase much faster” in much less time, he says Michael Spagat, specializing in examining death tolls in conflicts around the world. In the Gaza Strip, some have already lost their lives 24,448 people and some 61,504 have been injured by Israeli attacks. (These numbers have probably increased as you read this article.) Every day about 300 people have died in Gaza, according to figures from the Ministry of Health. One hundred of the daily fatalities have been children.

Thus, children in the Gaza Strip are witnesses of the permanent disappearance from their family, their friends, their teachers, their classmates, their neighbors. He 70% of deaths Those who have occurred in these hundred days and nights in hell have been women and children. Are civilians, non-combatants. “In a war like the one being fought in Gaza, every organ in a child’s body is affected,” he explains. Ayesha Kadira pediatrician specializing in the impacts of armed conflict and forced displacement on children’s health and development.

“If a child and their community are attacked, or are in a place where a conflict is occurring that may force them to leave your homebeing uprooted due to the violence he has often witnessed, this child will see how his mental health “It will be affected directly and indirectly,” he tells EL PERIÓDICO.

Increase in violence

He psychological impact that these children already experience begins with absence of decent living conditions. “It is the loss of home, the lack of a safe place and to cover their basic needs by not having water, food, or a safe and regular source of both,” says Kadir. “In addition, whenever an armed conflict or war occurs, there is a general increase in violence in the community and in homes, so they are exposed to multiple forms of violence and also subject to it,” notes this humanitarian health advisor. for Save the Children. Just a month before the war, last September, this organization carried out research on the mental health of children in Gaza to conclude that, since 2018, psychosocial well-being of children, young people and their caregivers drastically decreased to alarming levels.

“Being born in Gaza was, in some way, stillborn before October 7, as it was a territory that had been subject to blockade and isolation for more than 17 years,” he says. Vicente Raimundo, director of cooperation at Save the Children. “Now being born in Gaza is born in absolute hell “if they manage to survive,” he adds to this newspaper. Before the inferno, children in the Gaza Strip were almost Half of the population of 2.3 million in the enclave. 47% of Gazans were under 18 years old. 85% of them, some 800,000 minorsthey had never known a life outside the blockade.

“They assume adult roles”

Virtually nothing in the world can resemble this anguish, which has already killed more than 10,000 children. “His entire life is upside down and there is a lot of violence, suffering and insecurity that have aggravated the impacts on their health“, their development and their well-being,” denounces Kashir. At the same time, the pain suffered by these little ones has a full impact on their parents. The war has not only taken away their natural role of caregivers and protectors of their children, but, for many, it has condemned them to the greatest heartbreak by seeing them die without being able to do anything to prevent it.

“Parents have lost the ability to provide security for their children and that is hugely traumatic for them,” explains this pediatrician. In addition, many of them have been injured or suffered from a previous illness that the collapse of the health system prevents them from treating. “Children assume adult roles caring for their caregiver, becoming the financial support of the family or covering everyone’s basic needs” going to look for water or food, adds Kashir.

The magnitude of the war in Gaza has forced medical personnel to invent the “new category of surviving minor whose entire family has disappeared”Raimundo explains. “They are children who have been left alone without any family reference; “It’s devastating,” he acknowledges. Both these children and those who still have a family member nearby, all of them have been subjected to the more severe and persistent trauma at an early age.

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These experiences probably condition your life. “Experiencing adversity and severe adversity alters the brain and also the functioning of the organs of the body,” says Kashir. “Severe adversity is detrimental to the entire development of this child and is associated with some very serious physical and mental health illnesses and also with premature death and suicide among adolescents and adults,” she adds.

Tomorrow in Gaza also seems to be tinged with death. “The ratio of civilian deaths to combatants is unprecedented “neither in this century nor in the past,” Raimundo denounces. Furthermore, bombings are no longer the only threat to life in the Palestinian enclave. “In Gaza, 100% of the population suffers from food deprivation“You have to go back to the 19th century to find a similar situation, when there was still no international humanitarian law,” he adds. Although thinking about the future involves a certain perversity in this narrow corner of the world, one day the bombs have to stop falling on the Palestinian enclave. “Then there will be one deeply traumatized society “physically and mentally,” states the cooperation director of Save the Children.

Causes of the high number of civilian casualties

Without having experienced it firsthand, it is almost impossible to imagine the suffering that Gazans have experienced in the last 108 days. What are you experiencing now? Israeli media such as ‘Haaretz’ or ‘+972 magazine’ have confirmed that this is probably one of the military campaigns deadliest against the Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948. “Unlike Ukraine“The demographic composition of the deaths is very different in Gaza, because a large part of the victims are women and children,” says Spagat. There are several reasons that explain this high number of civilian deaths. “The main one is that the Israeli forces have been willing to accept really high levels of civilian deaths to attack something that they considered a military objective,” adds the president of ‘Cada Baja Account’. ”.

Furthermore, the operation ‘Iron Swords’, as the Israeli Army named it, began with little planning after the Hamas attack on October 7. An investigation carried out by the journalist and archivist Yuval Avraham for the magazine ‘+972’ published at the end of November and based on stories from people familiar with the Army, stated that the troops had “reduced level of caution (already limited) that characterized them in the past”, “increasing the rate of permitted collateral damage”. The air offensive during the first three weeks of the war was intended to “reduce the risks for ground forces of Israel when they finally entered to undertake the “sterilization” from the combat zone, whether attacking military infrastructure or encouraging civilians to flee. At the same time, with the aggressiveness of this operation, the political and military leaders have sought recover your defunct reputation after the failure of October 7, which broke the Israeli population’s sense of security and eroded their confidence.

A future of radicalization

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After this war, Israel will probably achieve one of its objectives, that of annihilate Hamas. But those Palestinian children who have seen their parents die, or flee with their clothes for the umpteenth time, will prevent that second objective of eliminate any threat to Israel’s security that it comes from the Gaza Strip does not remain, once again, eternally unresolved. “Radicalization is an inevitable outcome; “Having lived through this war, what other path is there for them?” says Spagat. “This whole round of attacks just will make the situation worse in the long termas it may be that the Israeli side will succeed in the short term in removing much of the infrastructure and many of the weapons that Hamas has depended on and that this will generate a period of relatively low violence“But I fear, and this is my prediction, that we will end up recruiting more radical and violent people who will join other organizations or create new ones with views similar to Hamas,” he concludes.

For Dr. Kadir, the future of Gaza’s children is quite clear. “It largely depends on what we do. “since as the world continues to watch and allow this to continue, the more damage it will cause, both psychological and physical,” he acknowledges. Raimundo agrees: “What would you do if your entire family died overnight?” “These children are seeing how generation after generation “They are losing everything: their life, what was and what could have been,” he laments. Without present or past or future, the unknowns for these little ones are evident. Why live if, in a second, a bomb can destroy my entire existence? ¿Why love? If my loved ones can disappear without me being able to do anything to prevent it? Why build if every building collapses on me? Why dream if the most imminent memory evokes the smell of death? If I take a gun, some think, at least I will die resisting.