Amidst the rush of apocalyptic images of the relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israel over a 11-day period, which came to a halt following the Israel-Hamas ceasefire on May 20, what stood out was the terrible reality of children caught up in violence bequeathed to them by adults over generations.
This time too, children’s lives were lost. While there were losses on both sides in the latest round of the decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict, a much higher number of casualties among children were reported from Gaza (two in Israel and over 60 in Gaza). It was an aspect that was captured by several media outlets. For instance, a BBC report on May 19 narrated distressing stories of several children who were killed in airstrikes.
Other reports focused on how the children of Gaza have responded to the onslaught of violence, with many absorbing it like adults. There were children as young as seven and ten who were talking about feeling helpless. Their helplessness did not stem from a fear of the bombs raining down on them, an emotion that one would expect them to experience as children; instead, they spoke about feeling helpless that they were not able to do something for their people.
Nadine, a 10-year-old girl expressed regret thus: “I am 10, I should have been a doctor or something, all grown up to help people facing violence around me.” One would think a 10-year-old would have been scared, would have looked to the adults for comfort and protection. But there she was, blaming herself for not being a grown-up so as to be of help to others. If that is not the extinguishing of childhood innocence, what is?
The same BBC report also featured the story of five-month-old Omar, the youngest survivor of an air attack on Gaza this time, rescued from the arms of his mother who lay dead in the rubble. The infant is the only family his father is left with, as the Israeli airstrike which claimed his mother’s life took the lives of his four siblings as well. Omar’s little body was covered with bruises.
Too young to comprehend the violence, both mental and physical, that has been unleashed on his life, what will happen in the years to come when Omar makes sense of his surroundings as a child of Gaza who survived the moment that took the lives of his siblings and mother? The extreme fragility of the world of Gaza’s children is what prompted UN secretary general Antonio Guterres to remark, “If there’s a hell on earth, it is the lives of the children in Gaza.”
Palestinians ride on a donkey-drawn cart as they flee their homes during Israeli air and artillery strikes, in the northern Gaza Strip May 14, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Mohammed Salem
The online world too has been awash with visuals of mothers asking their children to recite prayers as rockets landed around them, and of mothers sending their children to relatives so that there would be a greater chance of preserving lives and family lineages.
These instances remind me of a family I met in the course of my research on cross-border shelling along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir. The family resided in a high-intensity firing zone along the LoC and my aim was to look at the nuances of a life lived in a zone of violence.
Also read: Recent Photos From Kashmir Should Make Us Think of Children in Conflict Zones
In the course of my interactions with the family, I realised that the scars of wounds fade and sometimes even amputated limbs can be reattached, but the damage that is permanent is often invisible and the most dangerous. It manifests itself more in children, destroying their right to a normal childhood and even adulthood.
The trauma and loss that the young living in conflict zones experience has been reported to be among the most severe manifestations of the mental health crisis affecting children anywhere in the world.
Moreover, the lack of infrastructure to tackle this growing mental health crisis in a context of constant, simmering tension is a big issue. The trauma thus expresses itself in many ways – as a society that remains at odds with itself, but more importantly, as a society that shapes children of conflict into children of resistance.
I have looked into the eyes of such children in the border areas that I have studied so far. Their eyes are mirrors that reflect our collective failure as a society, as a nation, as a state, and as a global community that is expected to protect their childhood but is unable to do so. When you look into eyes such as these, they have but one question for you – how can you let us suffer this endless spiral of violence?’
On occasions when families have sat around me for interviews, the children bearing the mark of conflict and violence on their bodies and psyche, I have often tried not to let myself look into their eyes. The sense of guilt is too heavy a burden to carry back into my life as a privileged researcher from an urban context where children around me learn and grow in a comparatively safer environment, with no imminent threat of prolonged shelling that blows their houses to smithereens.
I remember the time when I met young Iqbal (name changed) in one of the frontier borderland villages in what was then the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in 2018. The teenager – he must have been around 13 or 14 – showed me the bullet-riddled walls of his house, the splinters from the shells that had exploded near the paddy field. The most wrenching mark of violence was on his body – he had lost one eye and a finger by accidentally stepping on a small landmine while playing by the riverside in the district of Poonch, in Jammu.
As the river forms a natural border in Iqbal’s village, with the area on the other side of the river being controlled by Pakistan, the patches of land around it are heavily mined on both sides in order to check infiltration. Following heavy rains, landmines often land up in the river bed, under boulders or stones, and are difficult to identify with the naked eye. That is where Iqbal lost an eye and a finger.
When he took me near the riverbed to show me where ‘it’ happened, I wanted to take a photo of the place with him in the frame. As I asked him if I could do so, he jumped right in front of the camera and took his glove off so that I could capture his hand minus a finger.
Not only that, Iqbal raised his hand high and said, now you can click. I still remember how stern and unrelenting he was that day when he insisted on being photographed thus. I silently zoomed in and captured the river bed behind him. To this day I don’t know what I would have done had he asked me to show him the image.
Also read: The Child Victim as the Face of Modern Suffering
Isn’t learning to live with such violence unleashed on the mind and body an act of resistance in itself for a child? Wasn’t it Iqbal’s spirit of resistance, and defiance, that had wanted me to include his hand in a picture that was supposed to capture life and survival in a zone of conflict and violence, such that the violence became apparent in the frame, visible enough for the viewers to see what he had been living with?
Representative image: An Indian army soldier stands guard while patrolling near the LoC. Photo: Reuters/Mukesh Gupta/Files
Now when I go through the many videos and photographs on Gaza showing the impact of the ongoing conflict and violence on children, I tend to avoid their eyes and faces because I know the question mirrored in their eyes.
Some are much younger than the ones I have met in the course of my research on conflict and violence so far. Five-month-old Omar-al-Hadidi’s bruises and other injuries are as troubling as 10-year-old Nadine’s pleas for peace. Both of them are children who have survived when many among them did not. Various media outlets have spoken to Nadine over the past couple of days, and she has narrated her ordeal to all of them. Her will to speak and share her story has, in fact, become an act of resistance.
Only days ago, Nadine was blaming herself for being too young to do anything. But now her voice is reaching out beyond Gaza to people across the world.
Many reports in recent times have focused on the mental health crisis that children in Gaza have been facing in this decades-long conflict. In fact, an Al Jazeera report of June 4, 2018, on the mental health crisis affecting the children of Gaza, quoted Marcia Brophy, then senior health adviser at Save the Children, as saying, “A whole generation of children in Gaza is balancing on a knife edge where one more shock could have devastating life-long consequences.”
Living on the knife’s edge has made parents devise several tactics to distract the young ones in times of crisis. From hiding under tables, building mattress forts, sleeping with noise-cancelling headphones covering the ears to considering ‘shielded strongrooms’ (in houses in parts of Israel), all sorts of coping mechanisms come into play.
I remember asking Mohammed-ud-din and his family, who live very close to the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir, as to what they do when there is a heavy exchange of fire across the border. Their coping mechanism is very similar. Mohammed-ud-din’s son Javid (names changed), who is an adult now, has been experiencing mental trauma ever since he lost one leg in a landmine incident as a child. He still hides amid a pile of harvested maize sacks kept inside the house.
Is this kind of a coping mechanism the sum and substance of the future that children living in conflict zones can expect from the adult world? That is the unspoken question which reverberated throughout the 11 days of the latest round of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Malvika Sharma writes on Borderlands in Jammu and Kashmir. She strives for a world where children can be safe and at peace.