Each day, as the evening hours enter, the people of Gaza live in a phase similar to waiting for death.
Lately, twelve entire families were erased from the civil registry, according to a statement by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, after Israeli aircraft missiles buried them under the rubble of bombed homes. Those families were centralized in the eastern and northern areas of Gaza City, which witnessed the most violent Israeli massacres.
This prompted the Palestinians in Gaza to search for ways to avoid the complete extermination of their families.
Breaking of Human Nature
The Palestinians circulated a story about one of the fathers, who had to replace two of his sons with his brother, hoping that the family line would extend in case they were exposed to a sudden bombardment by warplanes.
This scene has become a feature that has spread in different areas of the Gaza Strip since the beginning of this war. Many families who lived through the seasons of death were forced to divide and distribute their children in geographical areas, fearing that they would join the convoy of families that disappeared from the civil registry.
Ahmed’s mother says: “This matter is not easy. It is difficult to sacrifice one of your sons in such a difficult time, but the scenes of death that we saw for families who were assassinated in cold blood prompted me to deviate from my human nature by taking this risk.”
She adds that the feelings here are contradictory, nothing describes this situation that I am in now, between her constant fear for her children, fear of death, to thinking about them around the clock while they are far from her.
She added, “Life must go on, even if it is at the expense of feelings and maternal instinct. The smell of death, his everywhere. Everyone in Gaza is alive and suspended. The smell of blood is everywhere. The scenes of destruction, the pain of fathers, and the cries of mothers are the reason why it prompted me to take this step, to avoid living this moment ”. She added that she did not know the purpose of the Israeli army’s targeting of civilians and children with such brutality, “They did not sin to be in this doom.” “The world and the international community must fall quickly to stop these massacres being committed against the innocent.”
There Is No Safe Place in Gaza
The term safe areas fall. Everyone in Gaza is likely to die at any moment. The Israeli military arsenal through the Israeli air force, artillery, and navy does not stop bombing every hour.
The Kolk family in Gaza is one of those families that lost 16 members of their family in the brutal Israeli bombing that targeted their residential building on Al Wahda Street in the center of Gaza City, at dawn on Sunday, May 16th.
Adly Al-Kolak, a survivor of the massacre, describes the first moments of the bombing, saying: “We were in the area at the moment of the bombing. We heard sounds and explosions in three storylines with a black cloud in the middle of fires burning from the center of the neighborhood. Three of my brothers were in the three-floors targeted building, and my uncle’s house is next to us separated only by a narrow lane no more than two meters wide.”
He added: At the moment of the bombing, they rushed to inspect the place and found his brother and his family of 8 were all martyred, and his older brother, with God’s help, survived the bombing, even though he lives on the ground floor. Five of his cousins were martyred in the neighboring building, in addition to his father and two younger brothers, and his wife and two sons are still in Shifa Hospital receiving the proper treatment, as a result of their exposure to burns and deformities throughout their body due to the brutal bombing.
Psychological Effects
The scenes of death and destruction inflicted on Gaza during this war prompted a warning of the psychological repercussions of children in the post-war period, given that the extent of this damage will reflect on their behavior in the future, and affect them in one way or another their outlook on life.
Hassan al-Qatrawi, a Palestinian academic who specializes in psychology, says that the Gaza Strip has long been suffering from a terrible political and economic blocking, which has affected all aspects of life, and its psychological effects were clear on the population there, so this war, which is still raging, reinforced the aggravation of the crisis and the psychological suffering of Palestinian citizens.
He added that the bloody scenes that occur will have long-lasting psychological effects, and may establish long-term psychological trauma, especially for children and women. Therefore, the daily suffering of the population during wars establishes a state of intellectual and cognitive distortions, which will be reflected in the practice of daily life. This means that The psychological state that is born in wars does not end with it, and its symptoms remain for long period, which establishes future psychological diseases from which a person will suffer for a long time, and it is more like a connective condition which is born whenever conversations about war strike.
Destruction of Facilities
The suffering of the people of Gaza in this war was not limited to the death, loss, or injury of their loved ones, but rather, the Israeli policy in this war is based on inflicting the greatest damage on the road infrastructure, which impedes the access of civil defense and ambulance rescue teams to the targeted areas, which causes In increasing the amount of damage from some injuries whose owners are exposed to death due to delay in rescue.
Salem Al-Khatib, the civil defense officer responsible for evacuating the missing after the bombing, says that there is an Israeli policy that is being followed in this war for the first time, which is to impede the work of rescue and civil defense teams, by destroying the main and secondary roads and streets, which causes delays in reaching the targeted areas. Many of those who rose as victims died of suffocation due to their prolonged stay under the rubble.
He added: “We have conducted maneuvers over the past years to deal with such scenarios, but the available capabilities do not allow us to work with great capacity, due to the lack of sufficient rescue and evacuation equipment, because of the active blocking on Gaza 15 years ago.”
Salah Abdul-Atee, head of the International Commission to Support the Rights of the Palestinian People “crowd”, said that there is an excessive force by the Israeli war machine in this unequal confrontation between the Palestinian factions and rates of martyrs and injuries and their quality indicate excessive use of military force that directly targeted civilians given the presence of more than 230 martyrs, half of them children, women and the elderly, and about 2000 injuries, in addition to monitoring the destruction of more than 11 thousand housing units completely damaged, 7 thousand others partially, in addition to the destruction of 100 government offices, including the headquarters of the Ministry of Health, 12 schools, and the displacement of more than 50,000 citizens to UNRWA schools, and their weakness was forcibly displaced from the bombing sites to other areas.
He added that there is a complex humanitarian situation in Gaza, life barely works at the minimum level to sustain human life, due to the damage to the infrastructure system such as drinking water, electricity, communications, the Internet, and main roads, in addition to the psychological damage caused by the bombing, especially cases of panic and fear among children and women, and the use of weapons Internationally prohibited, such as toxic gases, phosphorous, and bombs penetrating fortifications in safe areas.
