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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Opinion: How the suffering in Gaza is different from other conflicts | |
Opinion by Arwa Damon | |
Updated: | |
9:23 AM EDT, Tue May 7, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
Note: This article includes descriptions of disturbing impacts of | |
violence. | |
A child shrieks in pain in a medical tent at a field clinic in southern | |
Gaza. He’s 7, with severe burns on his back that are being cleaned | |
and slathered with balm. It’s an excruciating process that would be | |
done under anesthesia, in the sterile setting of a hospital, in ideal | |
circumstances. But after nearly seven months of bombing and shelling in | |
Gaza, conditions of any sort have ceased to be even adequate, let alone | |
ideal. | |
I’m in Gaza on a humanitarian mission with my charity, International | |
Network for Aid, Relief and Assistance, which I established in 2015 | |
when I was still a senior correspondent for CNN. We’re working on | |
setting up medical stations and expanding the number of shelters and | |
camps we work in. | |
I’ve worked in war zones for the last 20 years, both as a journalist | |
and a humanitarian. I sometimes find myself rolodexing memories of | |
Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, of sieges and starvation, of families | |
on the run seeking safety, as I try to home in on what makes the | |
suffering in Gaza so different. | |
The answer, as it turns out, is all around me. It is the psychological | |
obliteration: What makes the trauma different in Gaza is the sheer | |
constancy of it. Trauma compounds trauma every single day; there is no | |
respite, not even a brief one. | |
Death and destruction are not unique to the war in Gaza, but the as is | |
the intensity and ferocity. | |
The constant bombardment is a dagger plunged repeatedly into the gaping | |
wound of a crushed psyche. The soundtrack of every night and day is the | |
relentless buzz of drones that taunts, “Oh you think you’ve | |
survived? Just wait, death can still come.” | |
The screaming boy’s young mother looks like she’s weighed down by | |
fatigue, sitting with her head in her hands mumbling — whether to | |
herself or her son — “It’s OK, it’s almost over.” | |
But it’s not. She won’t be taking him home — their home doesn’t | |
exist anymore. What substitutes for their home these days is a | |
fly-infested tent. She won’t be able to ply him with ice cream as she | |
did before the war. . The limited food rations consist of canned beans | |
and lentils, and for that, she is deeply grateful. What she’s unable | |
to tell him is, “Everything’s better. You’re safe now.” That | |
lie would be so obvious, even the youngest children would know better | |
than to believe it. | |
I smell the distinct stench of death and peer out through the tent | |
flap. It’s emanating from the remains of those killed a week earlier | |
that were only just recovered now, brought to this field clinic to be | |
body-bagged and cataloged. The smallest corpse is a toddler about the | |
size of my arm. The other remains consist of just body parts — I | |
catch a glimpse of a foot and half a leg. I see a man in the corner, | |
alone, crouched down sobbing quietly. They are all that is left of his | |
relatives, someone working at the camp tells me. | |
These are the daily, harrowing images of loss and suffering that the | |
population here endures every day. Even those who remain physically | |
intact are often psychologically broken. | |
A found that around 80% of children in Gaza reported feelings of | |
sadness or depression among other negative emotions including grief and | |
fear before the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that sparked the war. | |
Those numbers must surely now be at 100% — or very close to it. | |
Parents and caregivers I’ve spoken to describe their children as | |
being scared, anxious and angry. They are prone to bedwetting and | |
lashing out, or at times become hyper-vigilant and hysterical. | |
The problem is that one cannot address the effects of this sort of | |
trauma while it is still ongoing every day. Currently, my small INARA | |
team provides services across 13 shelters and makeshift camps. We | |
distribute everything from hot meals to washable sanitary underwear, | |
but the crux of our activities centers around running mental health and | |
psychosocial activities for children. These include group play, games, | |
art and other creative outlets. | |
It suggests something else deeply sobering about the conditions of | |
those who survive this war. Brick and mortar structures may eventually | |
be rebuilt, but nobody can fully heal Gazans’ fragile, damaged | |
psyches. Surgeries and bandages can’t help Gazans recover from | |
emotional loss or shellshock. | |
Children are quite adept at expressing themselves through play. The | |
activities provided by my group are emergency interventions targeting | |
not the body, but the spirit. In other words, we try to create a | |
temporary distraction and give children the small comfort of something | |
to look forward to. | |
The children’s faces brighten the moment our team arrives. It helps | |
the parents too in a small way, to see their little ones smile and | |
laugh. The children’s songs we play are loud enough to drown out the | |
drones and the explosions in the distance. As I watch them dance, play | |
and race each other, my eye is drawn to one little girl sitting on a | |
pink plastic chair with a doll in a sparkly green dress. She’s | |
watching the others but it’s like she herself is not there. I’ve | |
seen that before, too many times, in adults and in kids, physically | |
there — but not fully there emotionally. | |
She reminds me a bit of another child I encountered, 4-year-old Ahmed, | |
whom I met months earlier in a hospital in Egypt where he had been | |
medically evacuated. Half his head is shaved. A long, angry scar worthy | |
of Frankenstein is visible on his scalp beneath the hair that is | |
beginning to grow back. | |
Ahmed is the sole surviving member of his immediate family. He, his | |
sister and his parents were fleeing toward a shelter when a nearby | |
building was bombed. “We thought he was also dead,” his | |
grandfather, who was evacuated with him, told me. “But then 10 days | |
later we found him in a hospital.” | |
His grandfather doesn’t know what happened to Ahmed in that time, | |
what he witnessed, if he heard his parents and his sister’s cries of | |
pain or if their deaths were instantaneous. Ahmed, who used to talk, | |
has not said a word. But he does interact. His eyes brighten as I pull | |
out books, plastic building blocks and other toys for him. He smiles, a | |
little bit. He gives me a high five. He waves. | |
I ask Ahmed’s grandfather how he himself is holding up. “I can’t | |
think about any of this. I can’t think about or mourn my son, my | |
daughter-in-law, my granddaughter.” He sighs and shakes his head. | |
“I don’t know what I am doing, where we are going, where life is | |
going.” | |
The yo-yoing of positive developments in negotiations toward a | |
ceasefire-hostage deal only to have them fall apart just adds to | |
Palestinians’ mental anguish. Hope is dangerous, burning deeper each | |
time it’s crushed. After months of deadlock, there are reports of a | |
possible breakthrough in negotiations leading to a rise in hope, but | |
also fear. | |
Israel vowed that if no deal is made for Hamas to release at least some | |
of the 129 hostages in Gaza from its October 7 attack on Israel, it | |
would launch a large-scale ground invasion into Rafah in southern Gaza | |
where more than a million Palestinians have taken refuge. Israel has | |
been warned by allies, including the US, against undertaking such an | |
operation due to the potential for additional mass civilian casualties, | |
but on Tuesday Israel’s military announced that it had of the | |
Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, a vital entry point for aid to | |
Gaza on the Egyptian border. | |
Like the children they are tasked with trying to protect, adults cannot | |
process the pain, fear and anxiety that crush their psyches, | |
threatening to push them over the edge and into insanity. No one can | |
make sense of what Gazans have endured for more than half a year. It is | |
in people’s faces — especially in their deadened eyes — and in | |
their lethargic, mechanical movements when you see how the last seven | |
months have gouged at everyone’s soul. | |
“I’m driving through a sea of zombies,” I morbidly think to | |
myself as the car I’m in tries to weave its way through tents, | |
stalls, donkey carts and human traffic in southern Gaza. | |
Yet one at the same time feels churning waves of pain emanating from | |
each person, so powerful, so aching you feel like you are also drowning | |
in an endless sea. | |
At one stop I make, a mother grabs my arm. “My son, he’s 7,” she | |
says. “Every night he screams and convulses. He’s been doing this | |
for two months. Ever since he saw his younger sister’s head fly off | |
when the bomb hit.” | |
I feel like my brain freezes. Not just at the horror of what she is | |
describing, but her monotone voice when she is describing it. She was | |
there too; she also saw all of it. It hits me just how deep she’s had | |
to bury her own emotions, and how much she has had to fight every day | |
to make sure they don’t surface. If they do, if she cracks, she will | |
completely break. | |
She reads my silence, as if she is reading my thoughts. “I have | |
children who are still alive. They need me,” she says in that same | |
tone of voice. | |
It is in being here that one starts to grasp the depth and breadth of | |
the psychological destruction Gazans have endured. And if Gaza is to be | |
“rebuilt” that too must be addressed. There is no full healing from | |
this sort of trauma. Recovery of a sort is possible, but recovery does | |
not mean forgetting. It means that the mental scars are kept in check | |
so that perhaps in the future they will no longer be paralyzing, | |
inhibiting, debilitating. | |
A few days after my encounter with the mother, I’m on a bus | |
traversing the no man’s land between the Rafah crossing and the | |
Egyptian side. There are a handful of us international NGO workers; the | |
rest are mostly women and children. Some have medical papers; most have | |
paid astronomical fees of around $5,000 to companies that act as | |
intermediaries and provide travel approval. | |
As the bus door is about to slide shut, a young man jumps through and | |
grabs his mother’s hands, kissing them. She and his sister are | |
departing, he is staying. Those sitting around her start to cry softly | |
as a deep sadness sweeps over them all. | |
“Stay alive, my son,” I hear her tell him. “Stay alive.” | |
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