Children constitute most of the victims of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip (social networking sites)
Behzad Al-Akhras, a Palestinian psychiatrist, says that his days before the war in Gaza were going on with a normal routine, as he would go to work in his clinic, visit friends, spend time with his family, and live a normal life.
But he and his family are now refugees in Rafah, after the Israeli army ordered them to leave their home in Khan Yunis. They now live in the worst, unimaginable situation, spending their days waiting.
“We wait in line to get two or three gallons of drinking water, or food or plain flour to bake over the fire after months of power outages,” says the Palestinian doctor.
Al-Akhras recounts, in an article in The Guardian newspaper, that when 1.4 million people heard a few days ago that Israel was preparing for a ground invasion in Rafah, they knew that there was nowhere else to turn, and that all they could do was wait for the worst. Life seemed like an eternal, never-ending day, full of suffering and scenes of horror interwoven with each other.
He comments that it has become a new routine to hear, watch, sit, and walk alongside death, which seemed closer than ever before when the Israeli army launched large-scale air strikes during the night of February 12.
“I have spent my professional life in the field of mental health and community trauma in Gaza, but even that did not prepare me for the profound sense of despair that has now spread through our society, permeating everything,” he says. “Almost everyone around me has lost family members, whether martyred in Israeli raids or "They were killed by snipers, or they were taken by the Israeli army, or they were displaced to other areas. It is uncertainty that is killing us slowly, as we do not know who will be kidnapped next by death or who will lose their family."
Palestinians before removing the bodies of the martyrs from the morgue of Al-Najjar Hospital for burial in Rafah (Anatolia)
Al-Akhras points out that when any person faces a danger or a threat to his life, he responds in one of three ways: resistance, flight, or freezing. You cannot resist what you cannot escape from, so it freezes in place, and many have remained like this for 4 months now.
He adds that when a person is in a frozen state, they cannot act or feel normal. People become like the living dead.
“And when I am at the clinic in Rafah, waiting in water lines or talking with neighbors, what I notice is that people’s faces have become lifeless. They are masks of fear, despair and emotional numbness.”
Al-Akhras continues that what is happening is not a war for the Palestinians, but rather a never-ending bloodbath. But as the world watched the genocide unfold, no action was taken that could prevent it. Nothing that happens is justified and no human being should have to suffer like this.
He concluded his article by saying that the Palestinians fear that the warnings issued by Israel are paving the way for what is to come, so that they will make people around the world get used to the idea that Rafah has become a target, and therefore it will not come as a shock when the Palestinians are killed. Only international intervention will stop this. The international community must continue to exert urgent pressure for a ceasefire, "and this may be our only chance of survival."
Source: Guardian