For the past week, Palestinians in Gaza have been returning to their homes, now mostly reduced to rubble – and to their dead who still lie beneath. It is only now that we will start to get a fuller picture of the true toll of this war – only now that any kind of grieving or mourning can begin, a process that has been physically and emotionally denied to the Palestinians throughout the past 15 months. Once the final tally becomes clear, what will probably emerge is a colossal death toll of children.
Already, indications point to it being children that have made up the majority of casualties. UN analysis of verified deaths during a five-month period confirmed that of those who died, 44% were children. Most often, those children were five- to nine-year-olds; 80% of them killed in their own homes.
