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CNN Sunday Morning

Palestinian Families Adjust to the Life on the Frontlines

Aired August 12, 2001 - 07:07   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN ANCHOR: Now, to the conflict in the Middle East. Israel's army closed another Palestinian office today on the edge of East Jerusalem. This time, it was a Palestinian communications building.

Scuffles broke out yesterday as Israeli police tried to break up Palestinians who were demonstrated against Israel's takeover of Orient House. The building serves as the Palestinians unofficial headquarters in East Jerusalem. Israel took control Friday in retaliation for Thursday's suicide bombing that killed 15 people at a Jerusalem pizza parlor.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it's been almost a year since fighting broke out between the Israelis and Palestinians.

BUCKLEY: And as CNN's Mike Hanna reports, it's taking its toll on families living on the frontlines.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE HANNA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "They shell us and we can't do anything," says 13-year old Mirad (ph). A tear that could be one of frustration, anger or fear glistens briefly on his cheek. "What can I do?" he asks.

HANNA: This is the neighborhood where Mirad (ph) and his friends used to live until April, in houses demolished by the Israeli army, which said the building sheltered gunman firing on the nearby Jewish settlement. Then in tents, they, in turn, abandoned, following ongoing violence in what's become a frontline in more than 10 months of conflict.

Eleven-year-old Haman (ph) says he comes here to water the trees. "This is our land. We want to live here," he insists. "If they kill us, let them bury us here." "Our parents try to comfort us," says Haman's (ph) younger brother, Mohammad, "but my father can't protect me from the Israelis. We had to run away from our house."

JALAL ABU LOZ, GAZA RESIDENT (through translator): I can't -- how can I protect them? When they bulldozed my home, I was torn apart. I was looking at home being demolished and was thinking of my children. I had someone take my children to a safe place and I cried as I watched my house smashed into rubber. HANNA: The latest home of the Abu Loz family, now in a block of tenement buildings, which also bears scares of conflict despite being more than a mile from the nearest Jewish settlement. It's a massive social upheaval leaving in its wake, say psychiatrists, emotional trauma, which puts immense strain on relationships within the society's tightly knit family structure.

ABU LOZ: There is constant shouting in the house. My wife and I are very tense. She shouts a lot and so do I. Sometimes I can't take it anymore. I lose my mind and I hit my children. One day, I opened up the gas canister and told my children "we will all die now." I just lost my mind.

HANNA: Jalal Abu Loz decided to seek counseling and he allowed CNN to accompany doctors from the community health project to one of their now regular visits to the family.

DR. NIMER ABU ZARDA, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: He feel useless. He feel he cannot offer support and he cannot do anything for his family, because he had seven children. And then his wife brought nine (UNINTELLIGIBLE) from his family.

HANNA: Jalal is a Palestinian authority policeman that says he cannot face going to work anymore. His wife, Fatima, arrives home from the nearby hospital where she works as a nurse.

FATIMA ABU LOZ, JALAL'S WIFE (through translator): My husband walks and talks to me in his sleep. He shouts. I let him get out everything he wants to say. He's of course sleeping, unaware of what he's saying. In the morning, he doesn't remember anything. The children are very nervous. He is violent and will not listen to anything I say. I cannot control him anymore.

HANNA: Dr. Nimer Abu Zarda recently returned to Gaza from London where he was studying forensic psychiatry. But it's his personal experience, he says, that enables him to emphasize with the trauma of this family.

ABU ZARDA: This is from one bullet.

HANNA: Dr. Nimer also has a home on the frontline. And as the fighting raged, his family was also forced to leave, to move in with relatives.

ABU ZARDA: Myself, really I am a survivor. I live in my house. I - my house is affected, as you will notice. My children are -- also my two daughters, they suffer and I try to help them as much as I can here also. But this a problem, which the neighborhood people here, suffer from.

HANNA: But while the majority may suffer psychological trauma, it's very few who actually acknowledge the fact. To do so, say the doctors, would be perceived as a weakness in the face of Israeli aggression.

DR. IYAD SARRAJ, GAZA COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER: Very few people express depression in psychological terms. I have seen over 15,000 cases of depression in this Gaza Strip. None of them said, "I feel depressed." But all of them said, "I have a headache. I have a chest pain. I have a burning sensation in my skull. I have a threatening sensation in my throat." And so the expression would be always in psychosomatic forms and in behavior of people.

HANNA: This behavior among old and young, sometimes taking the form of violence.

ABU ZARDA: When the children start to play you, for example, which is all children and they fight with each other, they more - I believe that they are more aggressive, more violent. They sometimes play with each other by throwing the stones for one to another.

HANNA: Here two doctors from the Community Health Project interact with a group of young girls, aged between seven and 10. They're attending a summer vacation camp.

DR. SAMI UWEIDAH, PSYCHIATRIST: In this case, we'd like to lecture in -- by expressing their emotion, for example, talking, talking about what do they feel, what they do they feel when they -- when it has happened the first time chilling.

HANNA: At first, the children, distracting perhaps by the camera, appear shy, unwilling to express themselves. But as the doctors talk, the children open up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Our house was shelled and we went to my grandparent's house. We slept there two nights. But when we went back home, I was still terrified.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Our school was attacked with helicopters. Nobody goes there now because a person was injured. Now, they've changed our school and we go to one near the sea.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I felt like I was getting a pain in my head all the time.

SARRAJ: We thought to engage the children in so many constructive ways. First, to allow themselves to express themselves and second, to engage in constructive ways of thinking of the future and about their life and the kind of hope. We try, simply, to instill hope.

HANNA: "We must talk about these fears," Dr. Sami tells the girls, "talk about our dreams, talk to our mother, our friends. If we talk about it, we won't be scared." And at the end of the counseling session, a song in which the children confront these fears.

A mother, the girls sing, they placed me in a big prison and then they put God's all around.

Mike Hanna, CNN, Khan Younis, Gaza.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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