Lebanon’s children face physical, psychological trauma amid Israel’s war

Beirut, Lebanon – Four-year-old Malaika was in her home in southern Lebanon’s Mayfadoun when Israel’s bombs began to hit on March 2.

Malaika’s mother made an immediate attempt to flee, knowing that more attacks were likely. She grabbed Malaika and her younger sister Sara, putting the latter in the back seat of her car, and Malaika in the front passenger seat.

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The mother sat in the driver’s seat. Then a strike hit near the car.

Malaika woke up in a hospital hours later, with burns on her forehead and damage to her left eye that hospital staff say will require surgery. Sara was also wounded, but not as badly as Malaika.

However, their mother – who the family did not wish to name for privacy reasons – was killed in the strike. In her last act while alive, she had used her body to protect Malaika.

Almost 1,000 children wounded

Israel intensified its war on Lebanon on March 2, launching attacks that came after Hezbollah had responded just hours earlier to the February 28 killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ending more than a year of restraint despite daily Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon.

Israel has since killed at least 3,613 people in Lebanon, including at least 245 children, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.

“Children continue to bear a disproportionate burden of the conflict,” Elissar Gemayel, response director for World Vision Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “Children are experiencing repeated displacement, disruption to education, psychological distress, and growing uncertainty about their future.”

Malaika and Sara are just two of the more than 900 children to have been wounded by Israeli attacks since March 2. A ceasefire announced by United States President Donald Trump on April 17 has not stopped Israel’s attacks, with at least 40 children killed or maimed since then, according to Save the Children.

Israel’s war on Lebanon has displaced more than 1.2 million people in the country, some multiple times. Among them are around 400,000 children. Many of them have been displaced to stay with relatives, in apartments in safer areas, or in schools turned shelters. Others are living in tents.

Violations of international law

War disrupts children’s routines, pulling them from the perceived safe spaces of their homes, their rooms, their gardens, and their schools. And even those who have not been physically injured have their routines disrupted and their sense of safety shattered, potentially leading to serious psychological effects.

Marianne Abboud is the mental health and psychosocial support adviser for War Child, an international humanitarian organisation focused on the rights of children living with violence or armed conflict. She told Al Jazeera that many children in Lebanon have “experienced repeated violence, displacement and loss of loved ones during critical stages of their development”.

Abboud shared the story of a mother displaced to the northern city of Tripoli whose daughter “had become so distressed by everything she had experienced” that whenever triggered, she would “start hitting her head against the wall”.

Experts told Al Jazeera that children need a strong community around them – including adults they can trust – so that they can recover from trauma.

But finding that stability is impossible, the experts said, as long as Israel continues to attack Lebanon, including renewed attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday.

And even before Israel’s war, children in Lebanon had already experienced educational disruptions due to several crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Beirut port explosion, and the country’s economic collapse.

Nora Ingdal, Save the Children Lebanon’s country director, told Al Jazeera that children need a return to stability so they can “start recovering and return to school”.

Save the Children and War Child are among the many organisations calling for a permanent ceasefire in Lebanon.

Ingdal also said that her organisation was calling on countries around the world to ensure that international humanitarian law is upheld, adding that it has been violated through the “killing and maiming of children, the denying children of access to healthcare, and denying children access to lifesaving humanitarian assistance”.

Societal impacts and government response

Humanitarian workers who spoke to Al Jazeera praised the Lebanese government for taking the lead on the response to the humanitarian crisis, in contrast to previous crises.

Still, with so many people and children displaced, they maintained that there were inevitably gaps. Ingdal pointed out that the large number of displaced people meant that current government efforts were not sufficient to aid all of the children in need.

Part of that is the result of funding cuts. The United Nations appealed in March for $308.3m for humanitarian assistance, but has only been able to reach half of its target so far.

Experts noted that the longer the war goes on, the harder it will be to help the children impacted, particularly those displaced.

“If we continue on this [track], we are talking about the possibility that society will fragment,” Davide Musardo, a clinical psychologist with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who spent time treating children in Gaza, told Al Jazeera.

Psychological trauma can lead to a “high rate of suicidal ideation or intention in children”, Musardo said. In his time in Gaza, children told him they preferred to die because then they could release all their pain.

Slow healing

It has now been three months since the attack that killed her mother and left her badly wounded, and Malaika sits in a playroom at the office of the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund (GASCF) in Beirut, where her surviving family has relocated. Their family home had survived months of Israeli attacks, but Malaika’s father said it had been destroyed just a couple of days earlier.

Wounds still mark Malaika’s forehead and left cheek. Her father and uncle sit on a couch nearby as she uses a yellow crayon to colour an image of a duck.

Malaika’s social worker, Sara Issa, told the story of how the young girl had woken up in the hospital.

“She arrived to the emergency room with severe wounds on her face and lots of shrapnel in her face,” Issa said.

Her family tried to tell the girl that her mother was in another room, but Issa said Malaika already knew her mother’s fate. While recounting the story, Issa, who is nine months pregnant with her own child, broke into tears and was consoled by a member of the GASCF staff.

Psychologists said Malaika’s story will stay with her for life. Musardo said that children like Malaika sometimes blame themselves for the loss of their parents.

When Malaika first arrived at GASCF, Issa said she was often afraid. But support from her family and her social worker has helped her to slowly express herself more.

On the day Al Jazeera visits, Malaika is upbeat. She smiles and enjoys the attention of the adults around her – her father, her uncle, Issa the social worker, and another member of the GASCF staff. Her hair is tied back, showing the burns still marking her forehead.

She tells her father she wants to get a manousheh, a Lebanese breakfast staple, when they leave the office. When asked what kind, she said she wants tomato and onion.

Still, Malaika is aware of the reality around her. She knows she’s not at home. She says she misses Mayfadoun, where her father would let her go to the local corner store to pick out treats. The one in Beirut just isn’t the same.

Issa said that Malaika also asks about her mother frequently.

As she colours, she puts down the yellow crayon and picks up a green one.

“This is the colour of a tree,” she said, doing her best to scribble only between the black lines. “Mama told me a long time ago that this is its colour.”