In a hotel on Hamra’s Bliss Street, in central Beirut, Joury, a six-year-old in fluffy purple pyjamas, relaxes on a bed as her cousin, Ali, scutters around the apartment, his runners lighting up as he steps.
Joury was at risk of having her arm amputated, though doctors say this is now unlikely to be necessary. Ali (2½) has injured his head, fractured his collarbone and had a hand amputated, as well as losing his parents and sister. He’s had at least seven surgeries so far, a social worker says.
The children were injured in an Israeli air strike on the southern Lebanese town of Sarafand on October 29th. The attack killed 14 others from their family, says Joury’s father, Ali Khalifa. Lying on the bed beside Joury is an aunt who lost her husband and three children – and her left arm.
Khalifa – the family spokesman – repeatedly shakes his head when asked about the family’s future, the survivors’ needs and whether there can ever be justice for what happened to them. “I don’t know ... I am trying the best to be his father now, to give him a good future,” he says in reference to Ali.
Khalifa and his relatives are among 11 Lebanese families with serious injuries receiving medical support from the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund, which was set up to care for critically injured children from both Gaza and Lebanon.
In Gaza, where Israel has been engaged in a sustained bombing campaign against Palestinians since the October 2023 attack led by Hamas, a November report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found that children between five and nine years old accounted for the largest number of dead, followed by 10- to 14-year-olds and babies and children aged 0-4. The total death toll since October 2023 stands above 45,000, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health.
But in Lebanon, children have also paid a heavy toll.
Between October 4th and 31st last, the UN children’s agency Unicef said, at least one child was killed and 10 injured daily by Israeli attacks in Lebanon; in November, that rose to an average of 3.5 children killed each day, a Washington Post analysis found. Between October 2023 and the ceasefire in late November 2024, at least 2,961 people were killed by Israeli attacks in Lebanon, including 248 children, Lebanon’s health ministry said. At least 16,520 more were wounded, 1,436 of them children.
In the early weeks following the September escalation in Israeli attacks, Unicef warned of a “lost generation” of children. “War tears apart the safe and nurturing environments children need,” said executive director Catherine Russell in late October. “When children are forced to endure prolonged periods of traumatic stress, they face severe health and psychological risks, and the consequences can last a lifetime.”
The long-term impact on children of both forced displacement, and witnessing violence, is immeasurable. During months of war in Lebanon, The Irish Times met children who described seeing air strikes and their aftermaths, including dying or badly injured people, but also mothers who could not access standard medical care their children needed. One worried that her daughter had become sick from playing in areas where Israel had fired white phosphorus. Others were concerned about the mental effects on them.
In October, two mothers described the impact of war on their children, during interviews in a shelter in Bechmezzine, in Lebanon’s north. The shelter was home to 85 people, made up of 20 families sharing 11 rooms.
Iman’s two boys, aged five and six, had been enrolled in private school in Lebanon’s south. The 36-year-old minded them while running a furniture refurbishment business.
“We were having breakfast in the morning when a rocket fell on the house near us and the door exploded. I was alone as my husband was in Beirut, I started asking for help from anyone. My husband set out to reach us. The road that should have taken him one hour took him nine hours,” she recalled.
The family fled to Beirut’s southern suburbs, “but there were more air strikes. The children were hiding under their beds and saying the mattresses would protect them from the rockets.”
They eventually moved to the shelter with their extended family: 11 people in total, sharing one room. “The kids didn’t really feel comfortable at the beginning,” Iman said. “I’m witnessing a kind of violence among children. Each is from a different background, culture ... Most of it is stress. I have to keep them inside our room so they don’t fight and then they start fighting.”
She said she lied to keep them calm. “When there is a military airplay passing by I tell them it is civilian. They believe it. I don’t want them to be traumatised.” She said her children used to follow the news but she started keeping them away from it.
“Now they ask when are we going back home, that’s the only thing they ask. I say when your father fixes the door.”
Sandra Chahine, a child protection and education manager in Lebanon’s north governorate, said she had noticed children acting aggressively because of trauma.
Rima (45) recalled how the Israeli assault on greater Beirut began when her children were days into a new school year: “They were just getting to know each other, buying books.”
She said her sons, aged 13 and 14, slept rough when bombardment began in their area of Burj al Barajneh, greater Beirut. “All my life, there’s been war,” she worried.
“All wars are a war on children,” says Jennifer Moorehead, Lebanon country director with Save the Children, during an interview in her office. During conflict, she said children are very exposed to not just violence, but the stress of their parents.
Amid chaos, school is “the greatest, most important stabilising factor for a kid’s life”, Moorehead says. But in Lebanon, war meant that hundreds of schools were turned into shelters.
Educational institutions in Lebanon have been closed at various prior points because of Covid-19, air strikes and other disruptions, while children who spoke to The Irish Times also missed school years when their parents could not afford fees or associated costs. This is the “sixth year of significantly disrupted education” in the country, which could take “generations” to recover from”, Moorehead says.
Just over a week before the ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah came into place in late November, the NGO Seenaryo led a few days of workshops in Ghobeiry, Beirut’s southern suburbs. Seenaryo facilities play and theatre for children in Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Ghobeiry was one of the areas most badly hit by air strikes, yet 12 children still assembled on a rooftop, even as a rumble sounded in the distance – a sonic book caused by Israeli jets.
Facilitator Samer Zaher (26) said it was necessary to give children something to focus on besides “war itself”. If there are noises, including when air strikes hit nearby, he said they try to “ignore” it and continue with their activities, knowing any fear they show could be transferred on to the children. They want to show them “even if there is war, we can still do what we are doing, and we keep surviving that way”, he said.
Along with Sally Idriss (21) he led singing, and an introductory game where the children had to say a word starting with the same letter as their name (“Hassan; hummus”, “Zain; zaitouna”).
Next came acted out scenes. In the first, two children pretended to fight over a folder, with others trying to resolve their dispute. At the end, they celebrated its resolution.
Through the acted-out scenes, Zaher said, the facilitators learn a lot about what is going on in children’s minds and homes – sometimes noticing unexpectedly adult behaviour and concerns. “Then when we know about it, we try to change it. We shift to something more light, not something that is dark ... Let them know that you can be still be kids.”
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