Gaza (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)

Eyes riveted on a laptop displaying the photo of her sister and her children struck down by an Israeli strike, Ola tells the unspeakable: "I hoped to find them alive under the ruins," the young woman whispers to a psychologist in Gaza.

In her early thirties, Ola puts down the phone, runs her hands over her wet eyes, as the psychologist comes to inquire about her fate and that of the families of the more than 60 Palestinian children and adolescents killed in the "11-day war" with Israel.

From May 10 to 21, the Israeli army shelled the Gaza Strip, a micro-territory of more than two million people, in response to rockets from the Islamist movement Hamas towards Israel.

One of the bombings devastated the al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City and pulverized the building of Abeer, Ola's sister.

Ten hours after the destruction, rescuers uprooted rubble, as miraculous, the husband of her sister, Riad, and her eight-year-old daughter, Suzy.

But Abeer and the couple's other four children did not survive.

"I keep thinking about my sister and her children who may have been alive for hours under the ruins. And I am in shock, I am afraid now of losing my children," says Ola Ashkantana, who refuses taking anti-anxiety medications.

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In the next room, Riad holds Suzy on his knees while Hassan al-Khawaja, a doctor specializing in mental health, suggests that she start psychotherapy.

"I'm suffocating. I even thought of going to live alongside them in the cemetery," says Riad, who remained silent several days after the tragedy, according to his family.

"I will never be the same again".

And Ola and Riad are not alone.

- "Relapse" -

The war in Gaza, the fourth since 2008, in this strip of land under Israeli blockade, has led to the destruction of a thousand apartments, offices and businesses.

But the few psychiatrists and psychologists in the enclave fear they will have to "rebuild" hundreds of thousands of souls after air strikes of rare intensity.

"We have a significant portion of the population who suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome)" inherited from past wars, says Dr. Khawaja.

But each war causes its share of "relapses", but also of "acute reactions to stress".

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However, this intense stress, if it is not taken care of, can turn into PTSD, hence the importance of having specialized teams now to try to prevent an explosion of cases in the coming months.

"After the war, we have to go into the field, but we cannot simply assess the suffering of people and then say" bye bye "(...) we must be able to help them", notes this specialist.

At al-Awda hospital in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip, Bilal Daya, 24, has a broken right arm, a hole in his calf, and his left leg encased in splints.

And yet, it is not his physical injuries that worries the medical staff.

One evening in May, Bilal was drinking tea outside the family home in the eastern Gaza Strip when a neighbor was injured in a strike.

"He was screaming for help, I tried to carry him, but there was another knock. I felt a kind of huge buzz in my ears, and around me there were body parts humans, smoke, I could not stand on my legs, because I was injured by a shrapnel, "he says.

Bilal, who says he is not a fighter, crawled for rescue but seven other people in the neighborhood died.

On his hospital bed, he has a haggard look.

Nothing more to do with the photo of the sparkling young man, which his father stares at.

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Overwhelmed by an "acute reaction to stress", Bilal is followed by Mahmoud Awad, a Palestinian psychologist from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who tries to prevent the trauma from ravaging him.

"This is the most important trauma of his life. We are trying to prevent him from falling into PTSD in a few months. For the moment he is in shock and in denial, he has a tendency (...) to talk about Gaza in general, but without talking too much about it, ”summarizes Mr. Awad.

- "No cure" -

The war of 2021 was shorter than that of 2014, and left fewer dead and displaced, "but the psychological consequences will be greater," said psychiatrist Yasser Abu-Jamei, director of the Community Mental Health Program in Gaza. (GCMHP), a local NGO.

This war "was in everything (Gaza) and of unprecedented intensity, you felt that death was there, that you could not tell your children that everything will be fine."

In Gaza, where no university offers a full specialty in psychiatry, mental health services fail to keep up with demand.

And some specialists doubt that the term PTSD is the most appropriate to define the condition of their patients.

"There are the traumas of private life, of the past, the Israeli blockade, the bombs, so there is no post-trauma situation, strictly speaking", explains Dr. Samir Zaqout, specialist in mental health. .

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"The people here are living in traumatic conditions. It's an ongoing process. People are trying to cope, but they can't really, and that also leads to a high rate of depression and anxiety," underlines for his part the psychiatrist Fadel Ashour.

And Dr Zaqout added: "To heal, you have to be in a safe place, but in Gaza (...) there is no safe place. We can therefore speak of adaptation, resilience, but not healing ".

© 2021 AFP