Israel’s Brutal War Has Inflicted Severe Psychological Trauma on Gaza’s Children

Interview with Kieran King, global head of humanitarianism with War Child Alliance, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

While there’s been recent hope for a ceasefire agreement, Israel’s war in Gaza rages on. The official death toll among Palestinians as of Jan. 12 was 46,565, including more than 14,000 children. In the first week of 2025 alone, 74 children died. Death by starvation and freezing temperatures have now added to the misery, resulting directly from Israeli airstrikes using U.S.-supplied weapons.

A new report from the UK-based organization, War Child Alliance, reveals the staggering toll on the mental health of Gaza’s children who struggle every day to survive the carnage. Data in the report gathered in June 2024, finds that 96 percent of children in Gaza feel death is imminent, 87 percent display severe fear and 49 percent of Gaza’s children wish to die because of the war.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Kieran King, global head of humanitarianism with War Child, which originated in response to the Balkan wars and now operates in 15 countries in the Middle East and Africa, as well as in Colombia and Ukraine. Here, King talks about the findings in the report and what his and other organizations are doing to address childhood psychological trauma in Gaza.

KIERAN KING: There have been studies done previously on the impact of previous wars and the 18-year blockade on the mental health of children in Gaza. That phenomenon is not new; it didn’t start on Oct. 7. There was a report published by Save the Children in 2022 called Trapped, which found that 59 percent of children were showing reactive signs of mutism, not speaking entirely or partially due to a specific traumatic event; 79 percent of children exhibiting bed-wetting. These are figures you don’t see anywhere else.

We, with our partner, the Community Training Center for Crisis Management in Gaza, managed to produce a new report. The data was collected in June of last year and released in December. Those statistics really laid bare the unimaginable psychological impact on children in Gaza, where we found that 96 percent of the 506 children interviewed believe their death is imminent and 49 percent of children want to die.

This was a structured assessment. Those are testimonies from children directly in response to trained numerators amongst the displacement camps. There was a study recently produced by The Lancet, which is a medical journal in the UK. What it was suggesting was that when you take the average mental health impact across conflict, however many years they looked back, you’d expect 22 percent on average to be suffering from some acute trauma related to that conflict. The figures that I’ve outlined in terms of what children are telling us about their feelings, their reflections, their reactions, you look at 22 percent average, in Gaza it’s undeniable that every child is affected. I mentioned that 96 percent believe death to be imminent; 49 percent wanting to die. Four out of five children – this has been verified through our own programs in the children we meet, as well – demonstrate signs of acute trauma – nightmares, acute anxiety, withdrawal, mutism and also symptoms of physical pain, not from injury but from mental trauma. I think it speaks to one of the areas which is unique about the conflict in Gaza, which is the impacts affecting the entire population and the mental health crisis and the only remedy to that is a ceasefire.

MELINDA TUHUS: You mentioned some of the things you’re doing, and sister organizations are doing to address this widespread – universal – trauma among children, but is that just a drop in the bucket if you’ve got a million children and they’re all traumatized?

KIERAN KING: We do what we can as War Child and there are other organizations also working on child protection, education and mental health and psychosocial support. From our side we run programs to identify children with specific vulnerabilities and protection risks. We work through those cases with those children to address those risks, but when it comes to the mental health solutions, we do group therapy sessions, we do individual counseling. But of course we’re doing that with children who are subject to repeat trauma and repeat displacement. Even if you take War Child staff, they have been displaced an average of seven times. Seven times they’ve had to pick up and move with their families. The risk of that repeat trauma and compounded trauma, which leads to complex trauma, particularly in children, is astronomical in scale. The risk that poses for their future well-being can’t be quantified today, so that’s a massive concern for us and everyone else.

The bigger barrier to addressing a mental health crisis at this scale is the workforce, the expertise. At the moment there are five psychiatrists remaining in Gaza; something in the realm of 20 to 30 psychologists who remain on the ground. We’re working with our partners and with those specialists for ways we can embed mental health expertise into other sectors, such as the health system – what remains of the health system – and what remains of the education system.

And “system” is a strong word to use in the context of Gaza because those things really are non-existent. But as we look toward strengthening those systems as well as they can be in the current environment, embedding mental health through those other services is the only solution, but that takes a long-term investment, a long-term commitment. That’s what we’re committed to do and we’re working with the WHO (World Health Organization) and others to try and make that happen, but it’s really a Band-Aid and it’s a Band-Aid for a very small percentage of children who are impacted and need that support.

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