Mimicking the motion of combing locks of hair with a brush, Sama Tubail stares at her reflection in a mirror and begins to cry. <\/p>\n
For the eight-year-old, the movement brings back memories of a life before October 7, 2023 \u2013 when she had long hair and played outside with her friends in northern Gaza\u2019s Jabalya. But since then, Sama and her family have been among the estimated 1.9 million Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes, fleeing first to the enclave\u2019s southern Rafah region under Israeli military orders. As the violence escalated, Sama moved to a displacement camp in central Gaza\u2019s Khan Younis. <\/p>\n
Tubail family<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Tubail family<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Israel launched a war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people \u2013 mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and kidnapping more than 250. Israel\u2019s military offensive, paused for almost two months under a fragile ceasefire deal, has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza\u2019s health ministry. <\/p>\n
UNICEF, the United Nations\u2019 children\u2019s agency, estimated in a report last June that nearly all of Gaza\u2019s 1.2 million children need psychological support, especially those exposed to repeated traumatic events. <\/p>\n
A week after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced in January, the UN\u2019s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, told the UN Security Council that \u201ca generation has been traumatized.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cChildren have been killed, starved and frozen to death,\u201d Fletcher said, adding that \u201csome died before their first breath \u2013 perishing with their mothers in childbirth.\u201d <\/p>\n
Last year, doctors diagnosed that Sama\u2019s hair loss was a result of \u201cnervous shock,\u201d specifically after her neighbor\u2019s house in Rafah was hit by an Israeli airstrike in August. The traumatic upending of her daily life since October 7 also likely contributed to her alopecia, a condition that causes hair loss, they said. <\/p>\n
A report late last year by the War Child Alliance and Gaza-based Community Training Centre for Crisis Management highlights the severe psychological toll on children of Israel\u2019s onslaught in Gaza over the past year. The report, based on a survey of more than 500 caregivers of vulnerable children, found that 96% of children in those circumstances felt that death was imminent and nearly half \u2013 49% \u2013 had expressed a \u201cwish to die\u201d because of Israel\u2019s assault. <\/p>\n
Sama\u2019s mental anguish intensified after she was bullied by other children for her hair loss, leading her to retreat indoors. Outside, she wears a pink bandana to cover her scalp. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want to die and have my hair grow in Paradise; God willing.\u201d <\/p>\n
With the tenuous ceasefire in place, tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians started moving back home toward northern Gaza. Sama\u2019s house was flattened in Israel\u2019s bombardment and she and her family remained in Khan Younis, unable to afford travel costs to return home. <\/p>\n
\u201cTransportation costs are too high, and even if we go, there is no water, and we don\u2019t know where we would stay,\u201d she continued. <\/p>\n
Providing mental health services in Gaza has always come with challenges. But Dr. Yasser Abu Jamei, director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), explained that during Israel\u2019s 15-month assault his staff had also suffered trauma which made it difficult to treat others. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey still carry on and try to bring some hope and support to families (while) working in shelters.\u201d <\/p>\n
One technique he said the GCMHP employs is drawing therapy, which allows children to express their feelings through non-verbal communication. He recalled an instance in which giving a child the space to draw enabled them to talk to a GCMHP psychologist about their pain. <\/p>\n
\u201c(The child said) my friends are in heaven, but one of them, they found him without his head,\u201d Abu Jamei said. \u201cHow could he go to heaven while his head is not there? (The child) continued to cry.\u201d <\/p>\n
While the fragile ceasefire held, Abu Jamei said the GCMHP was employing a mental health plan to treat patients which could last for up to six months. GCMHP workers were \u201crelieved\u201d by the pause in fighting, he added, but still felt a \u201cheaviness of the work that awaits them.\u201d <\/p>\n
Seven-year-old Anas Abu Eish and his sister Doa, aged eight, live with their grandmother Om-Alabed in a displacement camp in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis. The siblings suffered the loss of their parents in an Israeli strike. <\/p>\n
Om-Alabed said the children had been deeply affected by what happened and that Anas experiences moments of aggression whenever he sees other children being embraced by their mothers. <\/p>\n
\u201cI frequently remind people to be understanding, as he has lost not only his parents but also the safety, security, warmth, and affection (they) provided,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey are interacting. I\u2019ve seen children, they just look at you and they don\u2019t say anything. They don\u2019t cry, they just look at the space (around them), I worry about (those) children more,\u201d Foa said. <\/p>\n
Though their home is close by in Rafah, Anas and Doa remained in Al-Mawasi even after the truce was agreed, unable to return as it was under a \u201cred zone\u201d designation \u2013 an area considered likely to be targeted if hostilities resumed. <\/p>\n
Om-Alabed said after the ceasefire was announced, they did travel back and found their house in ruins. It felt too dangerous to stay there. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t handle it,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are here waiting and dreaming that our red zone becomes a green zone so we can go back and put our tents over the rubble.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAll the buildings are crashed into each other,\u201d Om-Alabed continued. \u201cTo walk from here to there, you have to climb rubble as if you are climbing a mountain, just to get to our area.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the same displacement camp, six-year-old Manal Jouda calmly recalls the night her home was destroyed, killing her parents and trapping her under the rubble. She described the terror of waiting to be rescued. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was sand in my mouth, I was screaming, they dug with a shovel, our neighbor was saying \u2018this is Manal, this is Manal.\u2019 I was awake, my eyes were opened under the rubble, my mouth was opened, and sand was coming into it,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the kind of child I would follow to see if there was a way of reducing the pain her brain will hold later on,\u201d Foa said of Manal. <\/p>\n
Even with a ceasefire, children need stability to help aid their healing, Foa said. But she believes that with the right treatment, Palestinian children can make a partial recovery. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey will never be the same as before the war, but they will recover in the sense that they could be functional,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey can be content most of the time, not be distressed, not being dysfunctional and go on with their life.\u201d <\/p>\n
But for children like Sama, stability remains out of reach. <\/p>\n
Heavy rain and strong winds have battered displacement camps, destroying makeshift tents and leaving the young girl and other Palestinian families with little shelter. <\/p>\n
Even with a truce in place, her hair didn\u2019t grow back and she wonders if it ever will. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time my hair starts to grow, I look at it with hope, but then it falls out again,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Her mother explained that Sama feels ashamed of having no hair, even in front of her sisters, and feels she can\u2019t restart her life until it regrows. <\/p>\n
\u201cSama always told me \u2018I want to go to the north to find my clothes and my memories,\u2019\u201d Om-Mohammed said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut now she has changed her mind and says \u2018where would we go? We don\u2019t have a home anymore; all my friends have hair, and I don\u2019t.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Mimicking the motion of combing locks of hair with a brush, Sama Tubail stares at her reflection in a mirror and begins to cry. For the eight-year-old, the movement brings back memories of a life before October 7, 2023 \u2013 when she had long hair and played outside with her friends in northern Gaza\u2019s Jabalya. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}