What war brings to Gaza and Palestinians

A new peer-reviewed study provides detailed insights into the severe mental health consequences of the latest Israeli military operations on civilians in Gaza. Based on interviews with displaced residents now living in refugee shelters in Rafah, the research offers direct accounts of the daily hardships, psychological struggles, and survival strategies adopted by those enduring the ongoing conflict.

Published in Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health (Hamamra et al., 2025), the study was conducted by Bilal Hamamra, Fayez Mahamid, Dana Bdier, and Mai Atiya from An-Najah National University and Al-Quds Open University.

The study involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews with thirty adult Palestinians, aged between eighteen and fifty-eight, all of whom were forcibly displaced from northern Gaza after the escalation of violence on October 7, 2023. Interviews were conducted under precarious and often dangerous conditions, with the assistance of local research team members who were themselves living in displacement.

The primary objective was to document in the participants’ own words how they experience war-related trauma, how they perceive their circumstances and future, and what personal and collective strategies they use to cope with constant threats to their safety and well-being.

Living Conditions and Daily Challenges

Interviewees described drastic disruptions to every aspect of daily life. After losing their homes, many families were relocated to overcrowded shelters lacking basic necessities such as clean water, consistent electricity, medical care, and privacy. Some participants shared how entire families were forced to live in single tents serving as sleeping quarters, cooking areas, and washrooms. Others described the psychological distress caused by forced separation from family members who were trapped in different parts of Gaza due to movement restrictions and destroyed roads.

Direct Exposure to Trauma

Participants recounted repeated exposure to life-threatening violence, including bombings, collapsing buildings, and witnessing the deaths of relatives and neighbors. These experiences were described as traumatic and continuing without reprieve. Some respondents reported severe psychological responses that manifested physically — for instance, a child temporarily losing vision from fear during an airstrike. The testimonies align with well-established patterns of complex trauma, where prolonged exposure to danger results in deep and persistent psychological harm.

The narratives reveal high levels of fear, sadness, anxiety, and anger among displaced Gazans. Many spoke of feeling abandoned by the international community and misrepresented or ignored by global media and political discourse. Persistent anxiety, nightmares, and emotional exhaustion were common. These symptoms, described throughout the interviews, are consistent with research on how prolonged exposure to conflict can lead to chronic post-traumatic stress and depressive disorders.

Secondary Traumatization

The study also highlights that trauma extends beyond those directly affected. In the section The Setting, the authors discuss how Palestinians outside Gaza, along with global observers and diaspora communities, experience what Abla Abdelhadi (2024) describes as “psychological terrorism” — severe distress, survivor’s guilt, and inability to concentrate caused by watching the destruction unfold from afar. This phenomenon, widely recognized in trauma psychology as secondary or vicarious traumatization, underscores that the mental health impact of the conflict ripples outward, affecting broader communities who share identity, solidarity, or constant exposure to distressing news.

Perceptions of the Future

A dominant theme in the interviews was a pessimistic outlook on what lies ahead. Many participants expressed that they no longer see a viable future in Gaza for themselves or their children. Some spoke of a desire to emigrate due to fear, lack of opportunity, and the daily reality of insecurity, but few believed such an option was realistically available. Rising internal tensions and localized conflicts within Gaza itself were also cited as contributing to fears about ongoing instability.

Despite extreme circumstances, the study shows that many displaced Gazans actively use cultural and social resources to cope. Key strategies include strong support networks within families and among neighbors in the camps, as well as deep reliance on religious faith as a source of hope and meaning. Some respondents described humor and honest emotional expression as essential to managing stress and maintaining psychological balance. These findings illustrate how collective resilience operates under crisis, providing short-term relief and preserving community cohesion even when external resources are minimal.

Collective and Transgenerational Trauma

Drawing on broader theories of trauma, the researchers frame Gaza’s situation as an example of collective, colonial, and transgenerational trauma (Hamamra et al., 2025). The repeated destruction of educational institutions and healthcare services, documented in the Educide and Medicide sections of the paper, contributes to the erosion of social structures that are vital for community recovery and mental health support. This cycle reinforces deep psychological wounds that, if unaddressed, are likely to be transmitted to future generations, affecting children’s development and the long-term social fabric of Palestinian society.

Hamamra, B., Mahamid, F., Bdier, D., & Atiya, M. (2025). War-related trauma in narratives of Gazans: challenges, difficulties and survival coping. Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health, 12, e34. https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2025.23

Οι συνέπειες στην ψυχική υγεία του πολέμου στη Γάζα και του Παλαιστινιακού λαού.