‘Don’t talk about my kite’: How war has transformed childhood in Gaza
Shaimaa Eid writes in The Palestine Chronicle on 21 September 2026:
At our camp in Al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, I walk among the tents at midday. The heat is suffocating. Children sit at the entrances of their tents, searching for a breath of air because the tents offer no protection from the summer heat.
At this hour, children should be busy playing. They should be running after a ball, racing one another, or flying their kites, as children do everywhere in the world. But the children of Gaza no longer even have the luxury of playing without fear.
As I walk through the camp, I try to spot even one child carrying a kite. I am looking for a scene I had grown accustomed to seeing here: a child running between the tents, holding a long string as his kite rises into the sky above him. But I find no one. Not a single kite. Instead, I find children talking about bombardment, aircraft, missiles, killing, and explosions—words that have become part of their daily vocabulary, replacing the games and dreams of childhood.
I approach Bashir, a six-year-old who lives near us in the camp. I used to see him holding what we call here a “flying saucer,” playing with it and smiling whenever he managed to send it soaring into the sky. “Where is your flying saucer, Bashir?” I asked him. He immediately jumped toward me and placed his tiny hands over my mouth, trying to silence me. “Don’t talk about a flying saucer … Netanyahu will bomb us,” he said in a frightened voice.