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An orphan is defined by Islamic
Relief as a child under 18 who has
lost the parent considered the head
of the household, most often the
father, according to a child welfare
programme manager for Islamic Relief
in Gaza, Mahmoud Abudraz. The
official UNICEF definition of an
orphan is a child who has lost one
or both parents.
There are currently about 5,200
orphans under Islamic Relief’s
definition in Gaza.
The recent war waged by Israel
against Gaza Strip resulted in
nearly 1500 children joining the
already lengthy list of orphans in
Gaza. This was disclosed by the
Minister of Social Affairs, Ahmad
Kurd, during the Ministry’s
observation of Arab Orphans Day on
Thursday, April 2nd. It is one of
the by-products of a policy of
aggression aimed at every segment of
the Palestinian society, an
aggression that makes no exceptions:
not for children, nor for women, nor
for the elderly.
Humanitarian relief institutions,
such as British-based Islamic
Relief, estimate that about 1346
children lost one or both parents
during the 23-day assault on Gaza by
the Israeli occupation forces. The
Palestinian Human Rights Center
stated that six children lost both
parents during the attack on Gaza.
The suffering of children due to the
war on Gaza was not limited to the
bitterness of becoming orphans
deprived of the sympathy of their
fathers or the tenderness of their
mothers, or both. Rather, innocent
children became direct victims of
the aggression against unarmed
civilians. This fact is confirmed by
the statistics of local and
international organizations
concerned with human rights, which
placed the total number of
Palestinians killed at 1434 people,
including 960 civilians; among these
were 437 children under the age of
16, 110 women and 123 elderly, in
addition to 14 doctors and four
reporters. These statistics show
that the number of children who died
amounted to more than 45% of the
total number of civilian casualties
of the war.
Short-term
and Long-term Psychological Effects
According to a report by the
humanitarian news agency (IRIN),
citing statistics from the Ministry
of Health in Gaza that were current
up until February 5th, 2009, the sum
of 1872 children were wounded in the
same war.
The British newspaper The Guardian
reported that Israeli soldiers have
been accused of committing war
crimes against the Palestinians by
deliberately using civilians as
human shields during the assault.
This is a violation of the Geneva
conventions, which prohibit
intentional endangerment of the
lives of civilians.
Furthermore, there are the
psychological effects of the war on
children, a result of witnessing
scenes of mass destruction and of
people being killed and grievously
injured in front of them. This age
group is in particular need of
psychological help in order to
regain some modicum of stability.
The testimony of children collected
after the ceasefire in Gaza brought
to light incidents in which young
children remained beside the corpses
of their parents and relatives for
days on end because the bombardments
and fighting made free movement
impossible. Such experiences are
bound to have severe psychological
repercussions. They also reported
shocking crimes perpetrated by the
Zionists against friends and
relatives which they witnessed with
their own eyes; crimes that included
threats, abuse and murder.
Ann Veneman, Executive Director of
the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF), offered some corroborative
testimony in describing her visits
in March of this year to centers for
psychological assistance operated by
UNICEF and the Palestinian Red
Crescent Society in the northern
Gaza Strip. These centers provide
art and music therapy and activities
designed to reduce tension and
psychological stress.
She mentioned that the children in
those centers were drawing pictures
of rockets aimed at their homes. One
little girl painted the bottom part
black and said it was “a place to
bury the dead”, by which she may
have meant a cemetery.
Ms. Veneman stressed that these
children must receive, at the
earliest possible opportunity, the
attention of trained professionals
to help them overcome the effects of
the trauma they have suffered. |
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