With this ceasefire, let Gaza’s kids finally return to their childhoods

The Palestinian identity and trauma is inherited. As a mental health professional and psychiatrist working with children in Gaza, I am all too aware that the ceasefire will have a special meaning for children, the most vulnerable in Gaza. Despite not understanding the same way adults do, young kids have experienced the same things too. The loss, grief, fear, and displacement. With any ceasefire, the processing of this collective trauma will only just begin as they attempt to go back to their normal lives.

But what does a normal life look like when they’ve lost everything, their neighborhoods, homes, relatives, family members, loved ones and peers? They will search for normalcy, especially to try to go back to education and for the things that children turn to grow up and mature. These things were all taken from them and they are all important aspects for their community and their futures.

When we think of children’s trauma in psychiatry, it is usually an incident of abuse, an event, something that has changed the way the child thinks and perceives the world due to their pain through a single defined, isolated event. But the genocide is not a single incident or traumatic event. It is a generational wound that Palestinians have been feeling in Gaza for years. What has happened over the last 15 months, has been an unmeasurable ongoing trauma. New generations have been born into this horror, some already as orphans or as refugees – an inherited identity for these children because of Israel’s war on Gaza.

What we hope more than anything is that the ceasefire means an end to this process of continuous grief and trauma. That the children can try to return to their childhoods. It may mean an end to violent military experiences, but nothing can take away their pain of losing their caregivers, mothers, fathers, siblings, and peers. Or the experiences of being displaced, freezing through the winters in tents and starving and scavenging for water. These will stay with them, accompanying them through growing up. But with a ceasefire, the consequences of these traumas will start to become more apparent.

Working in psychiatry and mental health throughout this genocide has not only helped my community, but helped me in ways that I am still beginning to process. Being from Gaza, I am experiencing the same that my patients are living through. This genocide has rewritten the meanings of grief, trauma, loss, and survival – with these frameworks generally having their origins in Western contexts, they lack the nuance and understanding of the Palestinian culture, as well as the profound and violent experiences that Palestinians have been put through in the last 15 months.

“Working in mental health throughout this genocide has not only helped my community, but helped me in ways that I am still beginning to process”

When I think of the ceasefire, I hope that it will last, but I don’t believe that Israel will hold their end. In my years of life, I’ve lived through countless agreements that were only broken with Israeli attacks, aggressions and bombardments. In 1994, when I was a child, then again 6 years later, the Second Intifada. Then in 2006, the first major Israeli escalation against Gaza – and again in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023.

When this has been our lives and realities, it is impossible to think Israel is done committing violence against us and against Palestinians. There are simultaneous escalations in the West Bank, and with total impunity from the international community, there is nothing to stop Israel from breaking the ceasefire and continuing to kill us until there is no Gaza left. We have a sliver of hope now that there can be peace and we can have some time in Gaza to rebuild and live.

After 15 months, it is clear that Israelis and the international community supporting Israel do not see us as human beings. With Israel agreeing to cease fire for a hostage exchange, there is little hope that after they have gotten what they want that they will not continue to bomb and target the people of Gaza. It is clear that our lives are not worth anything to them, considering us inferior, openly calling us human animals and world leaders have remained largely silent on how we are treated. We have no extra security when Trump takes office. This is our reality, and we would be foolish not to remember that there is nothing holding them back or putting pressure on Israel to stop massacring us after 15 months of genocide.

“When I think of what we return to, I remember that my own house is a mountain of rubble”

When I think of what we return to, I remember that my own house is a mountain of rubble. I have nothing to go back to. No home, no structure. This is the same for the majority of Palestinians who have been displaced. Gaza is piles of rubble and corpses, and we have not had the luxury of being materialistic in our hopes after a ceasefire. The hope that the aid increases, the crossings are opened, and we can continue to fight for our lives and dignity once the bombing stops.

For Palestinians, this is something deeper than the stones and bricks of our destroyed houses. It is about survival and the indigenous construct of the world, living in our land and the active choice and decision of living in spite of the occupation.

We will go back to our traditions and to cultivating our land, even with so much of it gone. The war of loss, grief, the end of survival mode, all of this starts with a ceasefire. We will need to learn what we have lost, give our trauma space, and let the semblance of healing begin. Even with all this, I have faith in our power, in Palestinians as a community, in our resilience and strength to survive this. We will get through this together, as long as we survive long enough to see ourselves rebuilding the lives that were taken from us.