‘There is a war within each individual’
Arwa Damon, founder and president of NGO Inara, is in Gaza on a humanitarian mission for the second time.
She told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah that children are exhibiting signs of severe and traumatic psychological distress and pointed to a conversation told to her by a father with his five-year-old boy.
“Maybe it would have been better if we had just died and stayed at home rather than having to live like this,” she quoted the boy as saying. “[The father] was talking about how the next war is going to happen once the bombs stop.
“You hear this repeatedly over and over again. There is a war within each individual. Despite all of this madness and tragedy, it’s also providing a certain level of distraction from the true measure, scale and scope of everything that has been lost,” Damon said.
“The traumas, the triggers are relentless. There is no escaping, no respite, no room to breathe … no concept of a safe space,” she told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah.
The Rafah border crossing, the only evacuation point for Palestinians in Gaza has been blocked off.
She recalled a little boy who has a shrapnel injury to his abdomen. If he is unable to get out of Gaza for medical treatment, he will have a permanent disability or possibly die.
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