by Raya El-Hajjar, age 17
There are many numbers to describe the toll of Israel’s war on Gaza, and they seem to increase every day. According to Al Jazeera, every day, on average, 115 people are killed, including 46 children. Eighty-four percent of schools in Gaza are destroyed and require full reconstruction, per UNICEF. The death toll within Gaza is significant, especially among children, who make up half of Gaza’s population. “The screams, the pain, the suffering of these kids … it’s beyond your imagination,” traveling trauma surgeon Dr. Ammar Darwish told NBC. The United Nations announced in October 2024 that Gaza had the largest number of child amputees in modern history.
Osama Muhammad Abu Mustafa is 13 years old and lives in Khan Yunis. He wanted to be a soccer player until he lost his left leg in an Israeli airstrike. “The occupation killed my dream, ” he said in an NBC interview. “They stole it from me.” Osama’s story is not a singularity. Top U.N. official Lisa Doughten told the U.N. Security Council that each day in Gaza, 10 children are losing one or both of their legs.
Gaza is “not a place to be a child,” says James Elder, a UNICEF spokesperson, according to NBC. “The suffering stretches the limits of what we thought was possible.” In May 2024, Israel was charged with the crime of genocide in the International Court of Justice. It was ordered to cease its occupation immediately, as well as its violence against children. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shifted the blame from his administration to Hamas for “engaging in child sacrifice,” lacking any evidence to support his claims. This year, he has implemented a “starve or leave policy” in northern Gaza, ordering thousands to evacuate from war zone to war zone.
Outside the Gaza Strip, Palestinian children are not exempt from suffering. According to UNICEF, since Oct. 7, 2023, one Palestinian child was killed on average every two days in the West Bank. Rula Salameh, a journalist and producer for Just Vision, an organization promoting the truth about Palestine through storytelling, spoke to IndyKids about the children in the West Bank. “Palestinian children and students do not live a normal life,” she said. “[Palestinian children] watch the settlers attack their homes or arrest their parents or sisters or brothers.”
Amid the horrors broadcasted on social media daily, Salameh emphasizes a message of hope. “With the work we are doing, the conversation [around Palestine] has shifted,” she says. “People are seeing more about Palestinians, about resisting occupation.” She wishes that the world would understand a simple message: “Palestinians want to live like other people in the world. We want to be free in our country … We want to live in dignity.”
Note: This article was written in the Fall of 2024 and may not include the most recent developments.
