“I am broken”: Women suffering from domestic violence amid the Israeli war on Gaza | News of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Khan Yunis-Gaza- Samar Ahmed, 37 years old, shows clear signs of exhaustion on her face.

Not only because she has five children, nor because they have been displaced several times since the start of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza 14 months ago, and are now living in cramped, cold conditions in a makeshift tent in the Al-Mawasi area of ​​Gaza. Khan Yunis. Samar is also a victim of domestic violence, and has no way to escape her attacker under the cramped conditions of this camp.

Two days ago, her husband hit her in the face, leaving her with a swollen cheek and a bloodstain in her eye. Her eldest daughter clung to her all night after this attack, which happened in front of the children.

Samar does not want to break up her family – they have already had to move from Gaza City to the Shati camp in Rafah and now to Khan Yunis – and her children are young. Her eldest daughter, Laila, is only 15 years old. She also has 12-year-old Zain, 10-year-old Dana, Lana, seven, and Uday, five, to think about.

On the day Al Jazeera visited, she tried to keep her two young daughters busy with schoolwork. The three sat together in the small rag tent, spreading some notebooks around. Little Dana is huddled close to her mother, looking like she wants to offer her support. Her younger sister is crying from hunger, and Samar seems confused about how to help them.

As a displaced family, the loss of privacy added a whole new layer of stress.

“I lost my privacy as a woman and a wife in this place. I don’t want to say that my life was perfect before the war, but I was able to express what was inside me in talking to my husband. “I could scream without anyone hearing me,” says Samar. “I can control my children.” More at my house. Here I live on the street, and the veil has been removed from my life.”

A loud quarrel between husband and wife drifts in from the neighboring tent. Samar’s face turns red with embarrassment and sadness, while foul language fills the air. She doesn’t want her children to hear this.

Her instinct is to ask the children to go out and play, but Laila is washing the dishes in a small bowl of water, and an argument next door brings her own problems into sharp focus.

“I suffer from anxiety every day because of arguments with my husband. Two days ago, it was a huge shock to me that he hit me like this in front of my children. All our neighbors heard my screams and cries and came to calm the situation between us.

“I felt broken,” Samar says, fearing that the neighbors would think she was responsible, because her husband screams a lot because she is a bad wife.

“Sometimes, when he screams and curses, I keep quiet so that those around us think he is yelling at someone else. I try to maintain my dignity a little,” she says.

Samar tries to preempt her husband’s anger by trying to solve the problems facing the family on her own. She visits aid workers every day to ask for food. She believes that the pressures of war made her husband this way.

Before the war, he worked in a small carpentry shop with a friend and that kept him busy. There were fewer arguments.

Now she says: “Because of the severe differences between me and my husband, I wanted a divorce. But I hesitated for the sake of my children.”

Samar goes to psychological support sessions with other women, to try to get rid of some of the negative energy and anxiety accumulated inside her. It helps her hear that she is not alone. “I hear the stories of many women and try to console myself with what I am going through through their experiences.”

As she speaks, Samar gets up to start preparing the food. She is worried about when her husband will return and whether there will be enough food. A bowl of beans with cold bread is all she can eat now. It cannot start a fire because there is no gas.

Suddenly, Samar became silent, fearing that the voice outside was her husband’s. no.

She asks her daughters to sit and look at their math problems. She whispers: “He came out screaming at Uday. “I hope he’s in a good mood.”

“War did this to us”

Later, Samar’s husband, Karim Badwan, 42, sits next to his daughters, crammed inside the small tent in which they live.

He’s desperate. “This is not life. I cannot understand what I am going through. I try to adapt to these difficult circumstances, but I cannot. I have turned from a practical and professional man into a very angry man all the time.”

Karim says that he feels very ashamed because he beat his wife several times since the war began.

“I hope the war ends before my wife runs out of energy and leaves me,” he says. “My wife is a good woman, so she bears what I say.”

A tear rolls down Samar’s bruised face as she listens.

Karim says he knows what he is doing is wrong. Before the war, he never dreamed that he would be able to hurt her.

“I had friends who used to beat their wives. I used to say: How does he sleep at night? Unfortunately, now I do it.

“I did it more than once, but the hardest time was when I left a mark on her face and eye. I admit that this is a major failure in terms of self-control,” Karim says, his voice trembling.

“The pressures of war are great. I have left my home, my job and my future and I am sitting here in a tent helpless in front of my children. I cannot find work and when I leave the tent I feel that if I talk to anyone I will lose my nerve.”

Karim knows that his wife and children have endured a lot. He added: “I apologize to them for my behavior, but I continue to do this. I may need medication, but my wife does not deserve all this from me. I am trying to stop so that she does not have to leave me.”

Samar’s despair worsens after the loss of her family, which she left in the north to escape the bombing there with her husband and his family. Now, she feels very lonely.

Her biggest fear is that she will burn out and be unable to take care of her family, and she is already worried about her husband.

The responsibility of finding water and food, caring for children, and thinking about their future has taken a toll on her, and she lives in a constant state of fear.

“I’m trying to be strong for my mom.”

Laila, the eldest daughter, suffers from severe anxiety due to the quarrel between her father and mother, and she fears for her mother.

“My father and mother fight every day,” she says. My mother suffers from a strange neurological condition. Sometimes she yells at me for no reason. I try to tolerate her and understand her condition so as not to lose her. “I don’t like to see her like this, but the war did all this to us.”

Laila still considers Karim a good father and blames the world for allowing this brutal war to continue for so long. “My father yells at me a lot. Sometimes he hits my sisters. My mother cries all night and wakes up with her eyes swollen from sadness over what we are experiencing.”

She sits in bed for long hours thinking about their life before the war and her plans to study English.

“I’m trying to be strong for my mother.”

‘Unimaginable circumstances’

The family is not alone. In Gaza, there has been a noticeable increase in domestic violence with many women attending psychological support sessions provided by aid workers in clinics.

Kholoud Abu Hajir, a psychologist, has met many victims since the beginning of the war in clinics in displacement camps. However, she fears that there are many more who are ashamed to talk about it.

“There is great secrecy and fear among women to talk about this matter,” she says. “I have received many cases of violence outside of group sessions – women who want to talk about what they are experiencing and seek help.”

Living in a constant state of instability and insecurity, enduring repeated displacement, and being forced to live in very closely packed tents, has deprived the women of privacy, leaving them with nowhere to turn.

“There is no comprehensive psychological treatment system,” Abu Hajar tells Al Jazeera. “We only work in emergency situations. The cases we deal with do require multiple sessions, and some of them are difficult cases where the woman needs protection.

“There are very serious cases of violence that have reached sexual assault, and this is a serious matter.”

The number of divorces has risen – many of them between spouses separated by the Israeli armed corridor between north and south.

Abu Hajar says that the war has inflicted heavy losses on women and children, in particular.

Nevin Al-Barbari, 35, a psychiatrist, says it is impossible to give children in Gaza the support they need in these circumstances.

“Unfortunately, it is impossible to describe what children experience during war. They need very long psychological support sessions. “Hundreds of thousands of children have lost their homes, lost a loved one, and many have lost their entire families.”

Having to live in difficult – and sometimes violent – family circumstances has made life immeasurably worse for many.

“There is clear and widespread domestic violence among the displaced in particular… The psychological and behavioral state of the children has been very negatively affected. Some children have become very violent and are violently hitting other children.”

Recently, Al-Barbari came across the case of a 10-year-old boy who beat another with a stick, leaving him seriously injured and bleeding.

“When I met this child, he kept crying,” she says. “He thought I was going to punish him. When I asked him about his family, he told me that his mother and father fight every day and his mother goes to her family tent for several days.

He said he misses his home, his room, and the way his family used to be. This child is a very common example for thousands of children.

Al-Barbari says it will be a long road to recovery for these children. “There are no schools to keep them occupied. The children have to bear great responsibilities, filling water and waiting in long lines to receive food aid. There are no recreational areas for them.

“There are so many stories that we don’t know about, that these kids live with every day.”