Gaza: A psychological siege

December 7th, 2008 | Posted in Palestine
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    Safa Joudeh, Electronic Intifada, 3 December 2008.

    Photo: Palestinian boy with candle in Gaza.

Israel’s siege on Gaza, now in its 19th month, has wreaked havoc on all aspects of life and significant attention has been paid in particular to the economic consequences of border closures and blockade. However, an overlooked epidemic threatens the social and familial ties that bond the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Living under a constant state of crisis in which their livelihoods have been denied, the people of Gaza’s once exemplary resilience and determination are giving way to an unfathomable sea of depression and psychological illnesses.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, as a direct result of Israel’s siege, 65 percent of households in Gaza struggle to obtain basic needs such as food, clothing and medicine. Among those struggling is Fouzan Salah, a 35-year-old father of four. Fouzan, who owned a tailoring factory with his brother, began selling his sewing machines in January of this year in order to feed his family. Since Israel began restricting the entry of goods and raw material into Gaza, an estimated 55 percent of private sector establishments have shut down and 97 percent of industrial establishments ceased their operations. Such was the fate of Fouzan’s factory, which received all of its fabric from Israel. The family now has no income and is in danger of losing its home. They Salahs currently rely on charity and the assistance of others, surviving on one, sometimes two small meals a day.

Consequently, Fouzan suffers from severe depression. Despair, worthlessness, incapacitation and emasculation is how Fouzan described the feelings he carries within him each day to the next. “I wasn’t worried when the siege first began,” he said. “I was just like everyone else and it was absurd to think that Israel would continue to enforce the siege on an entire population. It was unimaginable to even conceive that they would take away the livelihoods of all of us civilians. But I was wrong, we were all wrong. And now I’m still like everyone else, living a nightmare. It didn’t take me that long to reach this realization, and that’s when the depression hit me hard.”

Though Israeli officials assert that the closure of Gaza is meant to deter the firing of rockets towards Israel, the blockade better understood as a means of collective punishment intended to turn the population of Gaza against the Hamas-run government. This tactic has implications that will have a further, longer-lasting reach than the direct impact on Gaza’s economy and infrastructure.

“My husband’s condition causes him to be angry and enraged almost all of the time,” explains Ghada, Fouzan’s wife. “We walk on eggshells. He has tried to look for a job but there are no jobs available. Factories have let their workers go, businesses have shut down, the market is empty. We pray for an end, any end. How do you think it feels to be a grown man with a family and feel like an invalid, to not have a single coin in your pocket, to watch your children go hungry and barefoot and claim that you are responsible for protecting them? The younger children are becoming aggressive, insecure and less attentive to their schoolwork. Randa, my oldest daughter, is showing signs of deep depression.”

Most children in Gaza have experienced trauma, and the siege has had a multifold effect on top of that. According to the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP), 15 percent of Palestinian schoolchildren in Gaza are intellectually impaired due to malnutrition. Families like Fouzan’s cannot afford vegetables and meat; their diet consists of lentils, pasta, bread, rice and potatoes, high-carbohydrate foods deficient in other necessary nutrients. Children are also psychologically affected by the siege’s impact on their families. GCMHP statistics show that 47 percent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from psychological shock without their parents, who are unable to cope with the situation, even realizing it.

At 15, Randa is tall, slender, beautiful and charmingly shy. She was all smiles as she awaited my questions in privacy, proud to be considered important enough to have something to say. When the subjects of her father’s depression, her mother’s agonizing worry and the poverty they had been reduced to were broached, Randa’s lower lip quivered and she brushed the issues aside with a few giggles and a lowering of her eyes. When asked her about her friends, her face lit up. “I love my friends so much,” she said.

Tears welled up in Randa’s eyes and in a hesitating voice she added, “I love waking up in the morning just to leave the house. My father screams like a madman if we make the slightest noise. I’m not mad at him, I know that my grandmother makes him angry when she asks for money he doesn’t have when she needs to buy medication, and I know that he and my mother are always sad because they can’t buy us things we need, like food.” A sob escapes, but she can no longer hold it in. “I’m sad all the time but I can’t talk to my mother, because she cries all day long, and it would only make her cry harder. I don’t tell my friends everything, but I love my friends, they love me too, we have fun together.” She forces a smile and dries her face with a tissue.

It is one thing to the evaluate numerically-calculated losses resulting from Israel’s siege on Gaza, but what about the wider, more long-term effects that will be endured by Randa’s generation? The impact of isolating Gaza’s population from the rest of the world will be felt long after the physical blockade is lifted. The mental effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression among children are proven to persist into adulthood. Unless Israel’s siege ends immediately and is followed by intensive emergency aid programs, the future does not look bright for the children of Gaza.

Safa Joudeh is an master’s candidate in public policy at Stony Brook University in the US. She returned to Gaza in September 2007 where she currently works as a freelance journalist.

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Que Dieu accueille dans son vaste paradis, notre cher martyr Larbi Ben M’Hidi, qui n’a pas renié ses principes, bien qu’étant en mauvaise posture, entre les mains du tortionnaire français. En effet, il avait répondu, non sans une certaine fierté à un journaliste qui lui reprochait l’utilisation de couffins piégés comme moyen de la lutte armée à Alger: donnez-nous vos chars et vos avions et on vous donnera nos couffins. Cette phrase restera dans les annales de l’histoire et le martyr de celui-ci ne sera pas le dernier à l’encontre de l’injustice. Le même phénomène se reproduit ainsi aujourd’hui à une échelle disproportionnée : d’un côté, des civils pourvus de moyens de combat dérisoires et dépourvus de soutien et de l’autre, des occupants sauvages, dotés d’une panoplie meurtrière, devant laquelle, les armes françaises de l’Époque paraitraient des jouets ou des gadgets, sans plus. Ces derniers sont, en outre, appuyés par la superpuissance américaine et l’Occident, militairement, économiquement et médiatiquement, ainsi que par leurs larbins arabes, ces zombies sans état d’âme, sans vergogne, dénués de tout scrupule et de toute fierté.
Parlons de ces suppôts de Satan qui se vautrent dans leurs trônes périssables et leur honte méprisable; ils se croient éternels devant l’Éternel, ne pensant pas un seul instant à leur triste sort de cendres de l’enfer. Honte à ces figurants-là, qui ne savent rien faire que lâcher leur meute de chiens déguisés en policiers ou en militaires, à chaque fois que quelqu’un ouvre la bouche pour dire la vérité. Ces zombies, vils et obéissants, tirent sur tout ce qui bouge et mâtent toute contestation, et dire que les dirigeants occidentaux, prétendus démocrates soutiennent ces énergumènes, arriérés et vante souvent les bienfaits de la liberté, alors qu’ils les ont formé eux-mêmes à commettre des atrocités sur leurs peuples, chose qu’ils ne tolèrent pas chez eux! Donc la faute incombe, en premier lieu, aux régimes arabes fantoches, avant d’incomber à la Maison-Blanche ou à Tel-Aviv, du fait qu’Ils ne peuvent pas désobéir à leurs maitres.
Gaza souffre sous un déluge de feu, infernal et agonise sous le blocus criminel, tandis que les dirigeants barbares cherchent des solutions dans des discussions byzantines que nous connaissons déjà et que nous exécrons. Déshonneur à ces corps sans âme, ces hypocrites, qui déambulent à gauche et à droite, ne sachant que faire, mangeant, buvant et évacuant comme de vulgaires bêtes de cirque, en présence de leurs dompteurs.
Quant à leur invincible État d’Israël, il n’est pas aussi irréductible que ça; peut-être l’est-il avec les armées de pacotille arabes, qui ont vendu leurs âmes au diable. Ces derniers s’enfuient ainsi pieds nus devant l’ennemi au moindre coup de feu, car étant formé pour protéger les régimes contre des peuples désarmés, et non pas mener une guerre face à des gens aguerris. La police et l’armée arabes sont la honte de notre nation. Il vaut mieux qu’elles soient dissoutes, pour que les masses arabes puissent profiter de leur colossal budget, étant donné que les armes achetées ne servent à rien et vont être bouffées par la rouille.
Donc le mythe de Tsahal s’est effondré devant les coups douloureux du Hizbollah en 2006 et il en est de même aujourd’hui avec les lions du Hamas. D’où leurs raids aériens contre tout ce qui bouge : enfants, vieillards, femmes enceintes, ambulances, et même tout ce qui ne bouge pas aussi : Hôpitaux, mosquées (un sacrilège qu’ils vont payer tôt ou tard), écoles,….Faute de faire mieux, ils écrasent tout sur leur chemin, lâches qu’ils sont. Rasons tout avant d’entrer et marcher sur les cadavres des martyrs! Et même le Coran nous dévoile leur couardise devant ces mêmes Philistins, lorsqu’ils dirent à leur prophète qu’ils n’entreront pas dans cette cité avant que les guerriers géants ne l’évacuent!!!! Donc leur poltronnerie est connue. Eux et l’humanité telle qu’on la conçoit font d’eux. On dirait des robots assoiffés de sang et de destruction. Tout ça parce qu’ils ont peur, mais la mort dont vous voulez vous échapper vous suivra là ou vous irez, même si vous étiez dans des tours fortifiées ou sous terre dans vos piètres bunkers.
Le jugement de Dieu vous happera maudits Sionistes là ou vous irez, ni Bush, ni un autre Antéchrist ne pourra vous sauver, lorsque l’ordre de Dieu viendra et il n’est pas si loin que ça, j’en suis entièrement convaincu.

Comment by hamid zeid — January 5th, 2009 @ 9:32 PM

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