2 Years Into Israel's Invasion, Gaza's Children Continue To Face Impossible Odds

Warning: Graphic details below.

With every school bombed, every home demolished, every aid delivery blocked and every parent killed, the children of Gaza continue to pay the heaviest price for Israel’s invasion.

Tuesday marked two years since Hamas launched its attack on Israel that killed 1,200 and captured about 250, some of whom were children. The resulting ongoing Israeli invasion into Gaza has killed more than 66,000 and rendered the enclave uninhabitable, leading credible human rights groups, scholars and activists to declare it a genocide against the Palestinian people.

Children make up half the population of Gaza, but face near-impossible odds trying to survive. Since October 2023, an average of one child every 17 minutes has been killed or maimed. Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees, as well as a shocking amount of orphans, according to the U.N.

“Children have been suffering in their bodies and their minds for way too long” due to Israel’s “disproportionate response,” UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said Tuesday. “They’ve been exposed to disease and violence on a scale unprecedented for Gaza.”

Over the past two years, HuffPost has spoken to dozens of health care workers and aid groups in Gaza, nearly all of whom described just how Israel’s nightmarish offensive has disproportionately affected Palestinian children. Doctors recalled sniper-style gunshot wounds to children’s heads, limb amputations without anesthesia, sickness from sewage and displacement, and malnutrition-related deaths – all of which were extremely difficult to treat given the ongoing blockade of most medical supplies and humanitarian assistance.

“We had six children today — none of them were over 12 — all of whom were shot or damaged by blast injuries at an aid site,” Dr. Michael Falk, a pediatric emergency physician who’s worked in conflict zones before, told HuffPost while volunteering in Gaza for the first time. Falk recalled receiving a 3-year-old child who was hit by a blast.

“The trauma stabilization point thought it was just a little cut. Took the bandage off and you could see bubbles coming out of the wound, and it was a piece of shrapnel that went straight into the brain, and there’s now bone and shrapnel in the frontal lobe,” he said. “So if he or she survives that wound — I’m sorry I can’t remember the gender, it’s kind of sad, that’s sad in its own right — if he or she survives that wound, they’re going to be permanently disabled.”

The offensive has also disproportionately impacted pregnant women, new mothers and their babies. Pregnant women will sometimes miscarry or give birth prematurely, either due to malnutrition, stress or injuries. According to UNFPA, at least 15 women are delivering babies outside a health facility every week, and if they manage to get to a hospital, doctors may have to operate without pain medication.

UNICEF reports that 1 in 5 babies are born prematurely in Gaza, only for starving new mothers to not be able to produce milk. Aid workers have repeatedly claimed that Israel blocks most baby formula from entering Gaza, which the military denies. Health authorities said there was a 41% decline in Gaza’s birth rate in the first half of this year.

“We’ve been denied permission to bring incubators and ventilators to children from the north,” Pires said. “They desperately need that to survive. We’re talking about children sharing oxygen masks in order to stay alive.”

Doctors in Gaza recall most of their pediatric patients being preteen boys with gunshot wounds, likely from their having to fetch food and water for their families. With Israeli forces destroying schools, Gaza’s youth no longer have what advocates say all kids should: opportunities to learn and play safely.

“The thing that’s difficult is watching these kids run around the street trying to be normal kids, understanding though that they’re always on that fight-or-flight mode,” Dr. Tipu Khan, who also volunteered in Gaza for the first time, told HuffPost. “They’re always in this state of hyperactivity and adrenaline, because you never know when — these are their words — we never know when something will fall from the sky.”

Aid groups like Save the Children have tried to provide safe spaces for children to learn, play and communicate with each other, while public figures like Ms. Rachel fight to ensure a future where Gaza’s children can be children. But even if a ceasefire were to begin tomorrow, Palestinian children who survive will likely spend the rest of their lives healing from deep psychological distress.

“What’s going to happen to them as they grow up? We’ve known for two decades that adverse childhood events really affect everything, from chronic medical diseases to of course psychiatric diseases, as we age,” Khan said. “And these kids are growing up and being born and raised in all this trauma. I mean, we just don’t have an example of what this looks like. I think the closest we look back to is 60, 70 years.”