The roar of bullets and the roar of the bombing steal sleep from their eyelids, while they are croaking them for a few minutes to relax their bodies, exhausted by the sleeplessness, the place is tight, and fear messed with them until their hearts reached their throats.

The bodies of the six family members, parents and 4 children, are piled in one small room in their apartment in the large town of Abasan, southeast of the Gaza Strip, since the outbreak of the Israeli war, "like canned sardines," as the mother Rawiya Awad describes.

The mother - who works as a teacher in a public school for the primary level - says that she tires during the day to search for innovative activities that occupy her children and isolate them from the atmosphere of terror.

However, one of the young girls surprised the mother with a surprising question before him, unable to answer: “Mama Shaw (what) do we do after you if you were martyred?” Despite his innocence, it is a shock to her in all meanings.

This silence breaks the voice of her 15-year-old son, Muhammad, as he instructs his three sisters on the best safe way, in his opinion, to evacuate the house at risk.

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Fateful questions

The teacher, Rawiya Awad, lives with her family in an apartment in a family building that contains apartments in which her husband's father and brothers live, about 3 kilometers from the security fence separating the Gaza Strip.

During the 2014 war, the family escaped certain death, when an artillery shell penetrated their apartment and two other apartments and the house of their neighbors, causing great damage. She said, "This incident is still in the memory of my children, and terrifies them."

She added: It was a harsh experience, my children took cover inside the wardrobe, and my husband and I were in a room next to the one that was penetrated by the shell. I went out in panic looking for my children and found them on the ground with dust and shrapnel covering their bodies.

Yesterday, my daughter Jana, who was five years old at the time, asked me, "Will they bomb us too once?" Awad asks, "What do I answer a child while she was shivering at every moment from the intensity of the bombing?"

Awad deals with such questions once by preoccupying her children with other matters, and many times she finds nothing but awareness of the reality of what is happening, and says, "Our children grow up prematurely from the horror of the ruthless occupation we see."

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Home emergency

Awad collected all of the family's belongings, including identity papers and some clothes, in a small bag and placed them from the first day of the war near the door of her apartment in order to make it easier for her to carry her and save her children when an emergency occurs.

With the occurrence of the first Israeli raid on Gaza last Monday evening, she rushed to provide an additional quantity of medicine for her two sick daughters Jana (11 years) and Gori (8 years), fearing that the days of the war would be prolonged.

The residents of the Gaza Strip face great difficulty in moving and providing for their household needs, in light of the intensive overflights of the Israeli warplanes, which spread death and sow terror.

"On the second day of the war, Israeli warplanes bombed a car to distribute household gas cylinders, near my house," Rawia said. "No one in Gaza is safe from targeting."

It provides residents with additional quantities of foodstuffs, at a time when the deteriorating economic situation has not helped the majority to do so, with about 80% of the two million people in the Strip relying on relief aid, according to figures issued by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). (UNRWA).

Rawya's husband, Yasser Awad, has lost his job in the maintenance of household washing machines since the outbreak of the war, and she points out that her husband used to work daily for a wage that does not exceed about $ 6, and since the outbreak of the war he does not move from the house, and the available food supplies are enough for them for only a few days.

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Psychological effects

In this context, the psychologist Olfat Al-Ma`sabi recommends that families in Gaza provide physical and psychological protection for their children as much as possible by keeping them away from places of danger and exposure to violent news.

She told Al-Jazeera Net: The atmosphere of wars affects children's personalities and their healthy mental and physical development, and leaves them with behavioral symptoms that later appear as disturbing dreams and aggressive behavior.

She added that the child is not stupid and feels what is going on around him, and he has the ability to exaggerate in imagining things, and parents must answer the child's questions logically and explain the reality to him in proportion to his age, so it is not right to mislead him.

Al-Maasabi advised parents with novels and stories that enhance children's stability and psychological stability.