IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
2014 was a harrowing and devastating year for many people living in Israel and Palestine. Violations of human rights, racism, and hatred did not stop after the 2014 Gaza war and today are commonplace. Presently, there is imminent concern for the increasing numbers of wrongfully detained Palestinian children from East Jerusalem and the West Bank who are subject to ongoing state violence, severe psychological trauma, and denied the basic human right to education.
on February 5, 2015
In a small hall with soothing music in the background, women close their eyes and imagine they are somewhere more reassuring than Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp. Women who have lost their homes and livelihoods to war breathe away their tensions, their exhausted bodies moving softly and uniformly. In a year that saw a third Israeli war on Gaza in six years, the physical and emotional health impacts on residents of the coastal enclave have been dramatic.
on December 23, 2014
“It feels” says Mosallam El Najaar, the retired customs official who is walking me through this small village in southern Gaza, “like the Day of Judgment.” It looks like it, too. Houses are as squashed and scattered as paper cups. A water tower is torn up close to the ground like a stalk of corn. Mosques, schools and factories are blasted, useless shells. Olive trees that were almost ready to yield their fruit are reduced to kindling.
on November 3, 2014
Yesterday, soldiers briefly detained a developmentally disabled Palestinian boy, who is under the age of criminal responsibility, on suspicion that he had thrown stones. The boy, A. a-Rajbi, (full name withheld in interest of privacy) who will be 12 in a month, was detained after Palestinian children threw stones at soldiers on the main road of the Jabel Johar neighborhood in Hebron, close to the settlement of Kiryat Arba.
on October 20, 2014
In Gaza, where the population is very young (over 60 percent of Gazans are under the age of 25), children are everywhere — and they are also the most vulnerable in conflict. Stuck in Gaza, these children only know the occupation and many have already witnessed several Israeli military operations. The latest Israeli offensive, named Operation Protective Edge, lasted for seven weeks and killed more than 500 children.
on September 30, 2014
Fact Sheets
On August 24, nearly half a million Palestinian children in Gaza who were scheduled to start a new school year were unable to do so because of Israel's latest military assault on the occupied and besieged coastal strip, "Operation Protective Edge". The following fact sheet provides an overview of the impact that Israel's latest assault and its siege and blockade have had on the children of Gaza.
on August 28, 2014
In a ward at Shifa, Gaza's largest hospital, child therapist Rabeea Hamouda is trying to elicit a response from two small brothers, Omar and Mohammed, aged three and 18 months, hoping for some words or perhaps a smile. For seven straight minutes the children, peppered with burns and shrapnel wounds sustained in Israeli shelling that hit their home in north Gaza, stare at him blankly, emotionless.
on August 15, 2014
Hassan al-Zeyada has spent decades counseling fellow residents of the Gaza Strip who experience psychological trauma. Now, as he prepares to aid his neighbors after a new round of combat and carnage, he has a challenging new patient: himself.
on August 4, 2014
Beyond the immediate loss in Gaza — destruction of property, infrastructure, and the deaths of more than 1,600 people, mostly civilians — Israel’s onslaught will have long-term mental and physical effects on the Palestinian children who survived weeks of airstrikes and naval and tank shelling.
on July 31, 2014