The genocide in Gaza will have consequences – that much is certain.
It’s difficult to comprehend the excruciating pain being endured by Palestinians in Gaza. The devastation includes: tens of thousands murdered in aerial bombardments, more than 100,000 having sustained serious injuries, the majority of homes demolished, and, as a result of Israel’s blockade, mass starvation of more than one-and-a-half million people. In addition, hospitals and schools have been destroyed, and essential services to support births, illnesses, death, grieving and treatment of war’s psychological wounds have been largely terminated.
Most of the dead and wounded are civilians, the majority being women and children. Upwards of 4,000 people have lost limbs. Many wounded children are the only survivors in their families.
I’ve written before about the indecency of “day after” discussions focusing exclusively on governance or bricks-and-mortar while ignoring the conflict’s human dimension and long-term consequences. Of course, governing and reconstruction are important, as are the working papers being developed to address them. But attention must also be paid to addressing and healing this war’s physical and psychological wounds.
Consider the psychic wounds experienced by Gaza’s children. Significant losses produce trauma. Losing a parent, sibling or friend, or even just moving to a new neighbourhood can be unsettling and have an impact on behaviour or mental stability. But the degree of the shock can be mitigated by other factors. For example, a supportive family can somewhat offset a child’s discomfort with losing friends and a familiar environment when their family moves to a new city.
But what if, as is the case in Gaza, your family has lost many loved ones, been forced to move multiple times, and is now living in a tent without food or water? And then imagine a child, already traumatised by loss, joining the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians making the long trek northward home during the last ceasefire, only to find, upon arrival, that your home and your entire neighbourhood is unrecognisable rubble.
This experience is then followed by being forced to deal with hunger and the indignity of witnessing your parents begging for food.
As we grow, our brains organise our experiences to make sense to us. We develop a mental map of our relationships and our place in the world. In the case of a 12-year-old returning to Gaza City, they find no home, and the way to school, the neighbourhood store, a friend’s home, or the mosque or school have all have been erased.
The compounding of multiple losses and extreme dislocation is profoundly traumatising. Under these circumstances it’s impossible to calculate the severity of the impact on this child’s well-being or future development. How will they make sense of these losses?
Given the seriousness of this situation, it becomes imperative not only to end the conflict and make plans for reconstruction and governance, but also to address psychic and developmental needs.
The US media focuses on the need to address the trauma of young Israelis who’ve been held hostage in Gaza. This is obviously necessary, but the extent to which we’ve ignored the trauma experienced by Palestinians in Gaza is disturbing. Why? In a word, racism.
Because we don’t see Palestinians as fully human, we fail to understand how destroying their lives, denying them a normal present and a hopeful future can result in deformities in their sense of self. Without compassion and a comprehensive approach to rebuilding Gaza and restoring its people’s sense of wholeness, I fear what the future may have in store.
Neither Israel nor the US have shown any interest in addressing Palestinians’ humanity and instead are advancing plans that reduce this much-beleaguered people to pawns being moved to help Israel achieve its goals.
The solution must come from a forceful and united stand by Arabs and key European states to sanction Israel for its crimes, force them to evacuate Gaza and end their occupation of Palestinian lands. Then and only then, under an international mandate, can reconstruction begin to rebuild Gaza and heal the wounds of the war’s Palestinian victims.
If we don’t take this course, there will be hell to pay as the bitter seeds being planted today will be bearing fruit in future generations.
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