Children of war

Mirvat Al-Majdawali stands on her crutches looking out to sea on the shores of central Gaza. She is slender and graceful. The wind blowing in from the Mediterranean parts her hair to reveal a scar. It runs from just below her right eye to her mouth. Her shattered left leg has been patched together with metal plates. 

Mirvat’s account of the day — October 27, 2023 — when her parents, brother and uncle were killed in an Israeli attack on northern Gaza, is precise, almost prosaic – like a metronome, entirely devoid of emotion. There are no tears. Only her black, almond-shaped eyes hint at an unbearable sadness and a worldliness way beyond her years. 

The Israeli missile struck the house next door which collapsed onto hers. She was buried under the rubble. Her surviving uncle saw her hand poking out of a pile of crushed concrete. He dug her out with his bare hands and rushed her, unconscious, to Al-Shifa hospital 

Mirvat, is 10-years old and an orphan. We know that because she and her two younger brothers have survived to tell the tale. Her brother Yousef, 7, who has been separated from Mirvat and lives in the north, describes seeing his parents’ bloodied bodies. In a territory devastated by war they are Gaza’s provisional census takers, its cause-of-death statisticians. 

UNICEF reckons that, after a year of war, there are around 18,000 ‘unaccompanied’ children in Gaza. They are not formally called orphans because many of their families’ whereabouts are unknown. An accurate tally will only be possible if and when the dead, still under the wasteland that was the largest city in Palestine, are uncovered.  

Save the Children, the British charity, estimates that more than 14,000 children have been killed in Gaza so far. Perhaps as many have died from disease and hunger. Nearly 20,000 are missing. Even though all casualty figures in Gaza are disputed, these are obscene numbers. 

War harms everyone. But it is the children, scarred for life, who bear the brunt and will do so for many years to come, precisely because they are so young. So much for the League of Nations 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child. This states: “Mankind owes to the child the best it has to give.”

The children of Gaza spend their days just trying to stay alive. They take shelter where they can from the incessant bombardment and the ever-present drones whirring overhead. 

Aid workers describe apocalyptic scenes of children, many shoeless, many visibly malnourished, often alone, wandering the ruined streets of Gaza searching for food and water. They are reduced to utter destitution. 

An entire generation – perhaps 600,000 children, perhaps more — are without schools. Nine of ten schools have been destroyed. Those that are still standing are mostly used as shelters. 

Basic sanitation and health facilities have collapsed. Medicines and medical supplies are in short supply. The number of unburied bodies is rising. The scarcity of clean water threatens major disease outbreaks. Since the Rafah crossing at the Egyptian border was closed in May, aid flows have plummeted by over 70%. 

International Rescue, the US-based NGO headed by David Miliband, the former Labour Foreign Secretary, warns that the sudden reemergence of the polio virus in Gaza threatens the lives of thousands of children. It says that the spread of the virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis in a matter of hours, is a direct result of the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure, and Israel’s restrictions on repairs and supplies. 

Cases of upper respiratory infections, diarrhoea, skin diseases, jaundice and meningitis are on the rise. Without sufficient vaccinations for newborns, children are exposed to the risks of severe cold, malnutrition and respiratory and skin diseases. With the onset of winter, continuing attacks and a chokehold on supplies into Gaza by Israel, things look bleak for the survivors including, of course, the surviving hostages.  

For a moment in September things seemed to get a bit better. An organisation calling itself Gaza Soup Kitchen opened a temporary school in a commercial building. Volunteers erected makeshift classrooms and decorated the entrance with balloons and dressed up as clowns. 

On the roof it placed a large sign in Hebrew and English which said: “School. Please don’t bomb.” Earlier this month the building was targeted by the IDF. 

The United Nations estimates that a staggering 400 million children around the world live in war zones: Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to name just a few. And of course Jewish children attacked or seized by armed Palestinians as they were on October 7. It is a roll call of shame. 

In Gaza the number of children at risk is especially high. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth. Hamas, who triggered the war with their attack on October 7 last year, has been embedded in towns and villages. 

Israel has now been at war for over a year: first with Hamas in the south, then with Hezbollah in Lebanon — although a fragile ceasefire with Hezbollah has now been declared. Then there are Iran and the Houthis in Yemen. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims that this relentless conflict is necessary for Israel’s self-defence. 

This is a familiar narrative and might, in some measure, be justified — were it not for one of the root causes of this epic conflict: the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and the increasingly violent and lawless behaviour of Jewish settlers on the West Bank and Jerusalem. 

The logic of Netanyahu’s wars is clear. There is no room for a Palestinian state. Israel can only survive by proving every few years that it is mightier than its neighbours. 

The aftershocks of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon cannot yet be foreseen. Netanyahu has bought Israel some time. He has bought himself a respite from the charges of corruption he faces. But he has also stored up trouble for the future. To pretend otherwise would be naïve. 

The children of war are famously resilient. They adapt. The orphans of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon may be so shocked by the punishment inflicted on them by Israel that they will be compliant in a future re-ordering of the Middle East, led by US President-elect Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia. 

But they could equally harbour such hatred that they will rise up again, once they are in positions of influence. They are, after all, the future. This war is far from over.