Beyond the Rubble: Healing the Scars of Gaza’s Children and Building a Future of True Peace 

The poignant question from a Gaza child, “Where are we going next?” encapsulates the profound trauma of a generation enduring repeated displacement and the utter loss of a safe and stable childhood. As articulated by Friar Ibrahim Faltas, this reality forces children to live in a state of perpetual anxiety and insecurity, robbing them of the normal developmental pillars of family, school, and routine, and normalizing violence in their lives. The article argues that this crisis demands an urgent, multi-faceted response focused on immediate psychosocial support, a reimagined education system that teaches peace and emotional literacy, and empowered caregivers, all backed by a global moral commitment.

Ultimately, it is a call to action to answer the child’s question not with further uncertainty, but with the concrete hope of healing, returning home, and building a future defined by genuine peaceful coexistence.

Beyond the Rubble: Healing the Scars of Gaza’s Children and Building a Future of True Peace 

The most haunting sound in Gaza is not the roar of airstrikes or the rumble of collapsing buildings. It is a simple, devastating question, whispered from the lips of a child to a parent who has no answer: “Where are we going next?” 

This question, as recounted by Franciscan Friar Ibrahim Faltas of the Custody of the Holy Land, is more than a query about physical destination. It is the stark embodiment of a childhood erased, a symbol of the profound trauma being inflicted upon an entire generation. It is a question that speaks to a rootless existence, where the concept of “home” has been replaced by a perpetual, terrifying journey into the unknown. 

For these children, life is not measured in school terms or birthdays, but in displacements. Each hurried evacuation, each rushed packing of meager belongings into a bag, each desperate search for a tent or a corner of a crowded shelter, deepens a psychological wound that may never fully heal. They are not just losing their homes; they are losing the very foundations of their development—stability, safety, and the innocent belief that the world is a secure place. 

The Anatomy of a Shattered Childhood 

Childhood development experts universally agree that the earliest years of life are critical for forming a person’s worldview. It is a time when the family unit, the school environment, and the broader society are meant to act as pillars, transmitting values, security, and the cognitive tools needed for growth. 

In Gaza, these pillars have been systematically replaced. The family, instead of being a source of protection, is often itself helpless and terrified. Parents, as Friar Faltas poignantly notes, have no credible reply to their children’s questions. They cannot promise safety, they cannot point to a “beautiful place,” and they cannot guarantee that this displacement will be the last. The very adults who are supposed to be anchors of certainty are adrift in the same sea of uncertainty, their authority and ability to reassure utterly compromised. 

School—the institution of learning, socialization, and routine—has been obliterated or transformed into an overcrowded refuge. The tools of growth—”games, books, pencils, and notebooks”—are often casualties of war, replaced by the tools of survival. The curriculum of their lives is no longer math and science but resilience, fear, and loss. This forced maturation, this theft of innocence, is one of the war’s most cruel and lasting crimes. 

The Deeper Wound: The Psychology of Perpetual Displacement 

The constant trauma of insecurity compounds the immediate fears of death and pain. Psychologists identify several profound impacts on children experiencing repeated displacement: 

• Hypervigilance and Anxiety: Living in a constant state of “fight or flight” wires a child’s nervous system for panic. This can manifest as severe anxiety, sleep disorders, and an inability to relax or focus, crippling their capacity to learn and form healthy relationships. 

• Attachment Disorders: When caregivers are themselves traumatized and unable to provide consistent emotional comfort, children can struggle to form secure attachments. This foundational relationship is crucial for building empathy, trust, and self-worth later in life. 

• A Loss of Future Perspective: A child who does not know where they will sleep next week cannot conceptualize a future for next year or next decade. The question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” becomes meaningless. This erasure of future ambition is a direct attack on hope itself. 

• Normalization of Violence: When destruction is your daily panorama and loss is your most consistent companion, violence risks becoming a normalized, even expected, part of life. This is the fertile ground in which the seeds of continued conflict are sown, creating a vicious cycle that is painfully difficult to break. 

Answering the Unanswerable: The Imperative of a Culture of Peace 

Friar Faltas’s reflection is not merely an observation of despair; it is a urgent call to action. He points to the “innate capacity [of children] to recognise what is good, to welcome differences rather than judge them.” This inherent potential is the key to a different future, but it will not flourish on its own. It must be actively, deliberately nurtured. 

The responsibility, as he states, falls upon “educators, families, civil societies, and governments that believe in peace and truly desire it.” This is not a vague hope but a concrete demand for a multi-layered strategy: 

• Immediate Psychosocial Support: The first priority, alongside food, water, and medicine, must be trauma-informed care. This means training local community members, teachers, and health workers to provide basic psychological first aid, creating safe spaces for children to play and express themselves, and helping them process their experiences in a healthy way. 

• Reimagining Education: When schools are rebuilt, the curriculum must be rebuilt with them. Education cannot return to “normal” because normalcy failed. It must integrate peace education, conflict resolution, and emotional literacy. It must teach the history of the region in a way that fosters critical thinking over inherited prejudice, and humanize the “other” rather than demonize them. 

• Empowering Families: Parents and caregivers need support to heal their own trauma so they can once again become stable anchors for their children. Community-based programs that offer parental guidance and mental health resources are essential to rebuilding the family unit. 

• A Global Moral Commitment: Governments and international bodies must move beyond geopolitical maneuvering and see this for what it is: a humanitarian catastrophe creating a lost generation. Funding for long-term psychological and educational programs in Gaza must be a non-negotiable part of any future aid or reconstruction package. True peace is not just the absence of war; it is the presence of justice, opportunity, and healing. 

The Power of Hope in a Time of Darkness 

In the face of such overwhelming suffering, hope can feel naïve, even irresponsible. Yet, as Friar Faltas insists, it is our most powerful weapon. His desired answer to the child’s question is a beacon: “The nightmare is over. That they are going home, to their loved ones, to rediscover friends and teachers, games, books, pencils, and notebooks.” 

This is not a fantasy. It is a blueprint. It defines what peace must actually look and feel like for a child: the return to simplicity, to learning, and to love. 

Building that reality requires a courage far greater than that of war: the courage to believe in a shared future, to invest in the invisible wounds of children, and to relentlessly pursue a political solution that values human dignity over power. It requires us to listen to the question echoing from the rubble of Gaza—“Where are we going next?”—and to finally, collectively, decide that the answer is not another makeshift tent, but a home. Not another cycle of violence, but a lasting peace. The journey to that answer begins with our unwavering commitment to the children who are asking.