Children of the occupation: growing up in Palestine

Ahed Tamimi, 12, plays hopscotch, likes movies about mermaids and teases her brothers at home in Nabi Saleh.

Nawal Jabarin, 12, and her brothers, two-month-old Issa and two-year-old Jibril, in their West Bank home.

Waleed Abu Aishe's family put a steel cage over their house in Hebron after attacks by settlers: ‘It’s like living in a prison.
No one can visit us. Soldiers are there day and night. I don’t remember anything else’.

‘People respect me because I’ve been arrested so many times,’ says Muslim Odeh, 14, who lives in Silwan, East Jerusalem.

Despite their difficult lives, each of these four children has a touchstone of normality in their life. For Nawal, it is the sheep that she tends. Ahed likes football and playing with dolls. Waleed is passionate about drawing. Muslim looks after horses in his neighbourhood. And each has an ambition for the future: Nawal hopes to be a doctor, to care for the cave-dwellers and shepherds of the South Hebron Hills; Ahed wants to become a lawyer, to fight for Palestinian rights; Waleed aspires to be an architect, to design houses without cages; and Muslim enjoys fixing things and would like to be a car mechanic.

But growing up under occupation is shaping another generation of Palestinians. The professionals who work with these children say many traumatised youngsters become angry and hopeless adults, contributing to a cycle of despair and violence. "What we face in our childhood, and how we deal with it, forms us as adults," Zaghrout says.

Harriet Sherwood/ The Guardian

Photography: Quique Kierszenbaum

Children of the occupation: growing up in Palestine