Shahed Quishta was curled up in an armchair one late afternoon during the Gaza war when a shell slammed into her living room. Shrapnel pierced the 8-year-old’s head and neck, and she died minutes after arriving at a hospital.
Her funeral was held before nightfall, in line with Muslim tradition. Her family couldn’t host a customary three-day wake, typically attended by hundreds of people, because streets remained dangerous during ongoing fighting between Israel and Gaza militants.
Almost a month after her death from what her father says was an Israeli tank shell, her family remains paralyzed by grief.
Sister Rojina, 14, can’t sleep in the room they shared, spending nights on a mattress in the hallway. Her mother Nisreen, 38, takes clothes from Shahed’s closet from time to time, crying as she inhales the lingering scent.
The Quishtas are among thousands who suffered a loss during the current Israel-Hamas war, the third in Gaza in just over five years. The emotional wounds, though sometimes hidden, can be seen in the grim statistics of the conflict.
Close to 2,000 Palestinians were killed, including 459 children, and more than 10,000 people were wounded since fighting began July 8, according to UN figures. About 20% of Gaza’s population of 1.8 million people has been displaced, including about 100,000 whose homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
Based on these numbers, “the psychological effects (in this war) will be much higher than in the previous ones,” said Dr. Iyad Zaqout, who runs the community mental health program of Gaza’s main aid group, the UN Relief and Works Agency.
Children are especially vulnerable because they can’t put their experiences into context yet, he said.
The UN estimates that about 373,000 children in Gaza need direct psychological intervention because they’ve witnessed violence, lost a relative or have been displaced. Such children often display one or more of a range of symptoms, including bed-wetting, nightmares, irritability or clinging to parents.
In the last major round of fighting in Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009, about 18,000 of some 190,000 children attending UN-run schools required counseling, Zaqout said. Several hundred still haven’t recovered, he said, adding that repeated exposure to trauma — a given in Gaza — compounds the problem.
Some 100 UN trauma counselors now visit several dozen crowded UN schools that have been turned into shelters for those who fled or were made homeless by the fighting. Several private groups providing trauma relief have also sprung up in recent years, though the demand continues to outstrip available treatment.
The counselors offer psychological “first aid” to those at the shelters. Children are usually accessible, eagerly joining playgroups in school courtyards or picking up crayons to draw what they saw in the war. At least 30% of the children at the shelters will need longer-term treatment, Zaqout estimated.