{"id":16342,"date":"2024-03-03T00:47:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-03T00:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/03\/they-used-to-swim-and-play-on-the-beach-in-northern-gaza-now-these-children-are-wondering-if-theyll-ever-return-home\/"},"modified":"2024-03-03T00:47:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T00:47:31","slug":"they-used-to-swim-and-play-on-the-beach-in-northern-gaza-now-these-children-are-wondering-if-theyll-ever-return-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/03\/they-used-to-swim-and-play-on-the-beach-in-northern-gaza-now-these-children-are-wondering-if-theyll-ever-return-home\/","title":{"rendered":"They used to swim and play on the beach in northern Gaza. Now these children are wondering if they\u2019ll ever return home"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Before the war, Mohammed Hamouda and his wife, Dina, would stroll along beaches in\u00a0northern Gaza, where their three young children loved to swim, eat ice cream, and ride camels on the shoreline. <\/p>\n

Now, the sound of laughter has been replaced by\u00a0that of\u00a0Israeli strikes raining down on the enclave. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are very fearful. All day, we have to be by their side,\u201d Hamouda reflected\u00a0from Rafah, in southern Gaza, where they have fled. \u201cThey keep asking me about when we will go back home.\u201d <\/p>\n

But the family has no home to go back to. They recently learned that their house in Beit Lahia was destroyed. Hamouda\u2019s youngest child, Kareem, 2,\u00a0is\u00a0too young to understand, but his eldest\u00a0children, Ella, 6,\u00a0and Sila, 4,\u00a0were\u00a0devastated by the loss and would not stop crying. \u201cI couldn\u2019t find any words to console\u00a0her (Ella),\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Of the 2.2 million people living in Gaza, about half are under the age of 18. As a result of Israel\u2019s partial blockade, the life expectancy for Palestinians in Gaza was already a decade shorter than in Israel, with rates of neonatal, infant and maternal mortality more than three times higher, according to the World Bank. Since the war began, life for young people in the strip has become even more fragile. <\/p>\n

Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza after the militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing at least 1,200 people, including 36 children, and kidnapping more than 250\u00a0others. <\/p>\n

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I feel scared and fear the planes will bomb us, especially when my father leaves for work.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ella Hamouda, 9, displaced in southern Gaza <\/p>\n

No relief for injured children<\/h2>\n

Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza has demolished family homes, razed entire neighborhoods, and turned swathes of the territory into rubble-filled wasteland. In recent weeks, the Israeli military\u00a0intensified airstrikes in central\u00a0and northern Gaza, ahead of an anticipated ground offensive in Rafah.\u00a0Families like the Hamoudas fear they will have nowhere left to flee. <\/p>\n

Nearly 30% of Gazans are estimated to have\u00a0no home to return to, with more than 60% of housing units across the strip either totally\u00a0destroyed\u00a0or partially damaged, the UN\u2019s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in February. <\/p>\n

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Ella dreams of the day she can return to the beach with her friends, siblings\u00a0Amira, 8, Yehia, 10, and Mohamed, 6, Hamouda said. <\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t had the heart to tell her that Amira\u00a0<\/strong>was killed, along with her father, Waseem El Ostaz, and his wife, Helal, in a strike on their home in Beit Lahia, in November. Hamouda felt able to tell his daughter only of the\u00a0death\u00a0of Amira\u2019s parents, who were close friends of the family. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe cried a lot, and she was very sad\u2026 She stopped eating,\u201d said Hamouda of Ella. \u201cShe asked me to bring over those kids after the war is over and take them to the beach \u2026 to make it up to them because they lost their parents, so that she can have a role in helping them and comforting them.\u201d <\/p>\n

Both Yehia and Mohamed were burned in the strike, according to Hamouda. Yehia also sustained a fractured lower limb. The two siblings were displaced to a relative\u2019s house in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.\u00a0<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Many children have sustained life-altering injuries from Israeli strikes, according to the UN\u2019s children\u2019s agency (UNICEF). Around 1,000 children lost one or both legs from the beginning of the war until the end of November, UNICEF reported. <\/p>\n

Forced displacement leads to insecurity, hunger<\/h2>\n

Ayas, 8, who was disabled, and lived in an orphanage in Gaza City, was en route to a hospital in Rafah when he died, Hazem Saeed Al-Naizi, the orphanage director, said. <\/p>\n

His condition had worsened after the orphanage was forced to flee with all 40 young people in its care \u2013 most of them children and infants living with disabilities \u2013 and bring them south. Due to shortages, Ayas couldn\u2019t get the medicine he needed. Without it, his muscles stiffened, his convulsions and inflammation increased, making it difficult for him to eat or sleep, Al-Naizi said. <\/p>\n

We hope that this war will end, and the suffering of the children of Palestine will end. Ayas is just a child among thousands of children who suffer here in Gaza and whose lives are exposed to danger every day. They die of hunger, disease, fear or bombing.\u201d <\/p>\n

Hazem Saeed Al-Naizi, orphanage director, displaced in southern Gaza <\/p>\n

UNICEF\u00a0warned\u00a0in January of a triple threat to children in Gaza \u2013 not just the danger of raging war, but also of malnutrition and disease. Israel\u2019s bombardment and restrictions on aid entering the strip have severely diminished\u00a0food and water supplies, exposing the entire population to the risk of famine. <\/p>\n

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In February, UNRWA, the main UN relief agency in Gaza\u00a0suspended deliveries\u00a0to northern Gaza after an Israeli attack on one of their convoys, further limiting aid.\u00a0Soon after, the UN World Food Programme also stopped deliveries, citing attacks. <\/p>\n

One in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza are estimated to be acutely\u00a0malnourished, according to an assessment by the Global Nutrition Cluster, which is co-chaired by WFP and UNICEF. <\/p>\n

Ayas was displaced at least six times before his death, said Al-Naizi.\u00a0At least 1.7 million Gazans have been forcibly displaced, according to\u00a0the UN.\u00a0Many of those\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013 including about 610,000 children \u2013\u00a0have sought\u00a0<\/strong>refuge in cramped shelters in\u00a0Rafah, according to\u00a0Save the Children. <\/p>\n

Forced displacement, even to the homes of relatives or acquaintances,\u00a0exposes children to the indignities of cramped living conditions with little\u00a0privacy, according to Saeed Muhammad Al-Kahlot, a mental health specialist displaced in Rafah with his three children \u2013 Siwar, 15, Muhammad, 9, and Saba, 7. <\/p>\n

As many as 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied\u00a0by\u00a0or separated from their parents,\u00a0UNICEF said\u00a0in February <\/strong>\u2014 about 1% of the total displaced population. Children whose parents have been killed by Israeli bombardment \u2013 or who have been separated from their guardians \u2013 are forced to take on the role of parenting younger siblings. <\/p>\n

\u201cI also saw a kid who is barely seven years old, and he was getting his baby sister\u2019s milk ready, and he was changing her diaper because he lost his mother,\u201d said Hamouda. <\/p>\n

Many kids who lost their parents are now playing the parent for their other siblings.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mohammed Hamouda, father-of-three, displaced in southern Gaza <\/p>\n

Nearly 20,000 babies\u00a0were\u00a0born in Gaza\u00a0from\u00a0October 7\u00a0to January 19,\u00a0UNICEF reported, meaning\u00a0many\u00a0newborns are\u00a0starting life amid\u00a0these dire conditions. <\/p>\n

Robbed of an education<\/h2>\n

Dressed in a blue pinstripe dress with a frilly collar, Ella used to carry her pink and purple rucksack to pre-school \u2013 where she would play with her friend, Aya. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe is very upset because she doesn\u2019t know how to read or write.\u201d <\/p>\n

Children in Gaza are expected to\u00a0lose\u00a0at least a year of education\u00a0because of the war, according to the UN. A recent damage assessment\u00a0by UNICEF\u00a0identified over 160 school buildings that were directly hit. Field reports from the agency\u00a0also found\u00a0that\u00a0nearly four-fifths of school buildings across the strip have been damaged and at least 26 destroyed. <\/p>\n

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There is no safe place for more than 625,000 students who need schooling,\u00a0UNICEF\u00a0added. One in 100 teachers and one in 130 students have been killed by Israeli strikes, as of\u00a0January 30.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Psychological trauma, changes in behavior<\/h2>\n

The number of children\u00a0in need of mental health support has doubled to more than\u00a01\u00a0million since the start of the war \u2013 nearly all children in the strip,\u00a0UNICEF estimated.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cThis situation we are going through has never been seen before in the previous wars,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

Loss is a harsh and traumatic human experience. In the psychological clinic, one of the fathers, who was suffering from a panic attack, told me that he hugs his children every night before bed and firmly believes that this will be their last hug.\u201d <\/p>\n

Saeed Muhammad Al-Kahlot, mental health specialist and father-of-three, displaced in southern Gaza <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no safe place for us to take them to play,\u201d he reflected. \u201cI fear losing their souls and I fear that they might get injured or that they might suffer from a disability for life. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want my children to live like the rest of the world\u2019s children.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before the war, Mohammed Hamouda and his wife, Dina, would stroll along beaches in\u00a0northern Gaza, where their three young children loved to swim, eat ice cream, and ride camels on the shoreline. Now, the sound of laughter has been replaced by\u00a0that of\u00a0Israeli strikes raining down on the enclave. \u201cThey are very fearful. All day, we <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}