Around Rouaa Hassouna and her oud, displaced children chant and cover the sound of drones and the battle in the Gaza Strip. It’s just another way to have fun and relax.
According to the UN, children account for half of the 1.9 million individuals who have been displaced in the besieged Palestinian territories since the beginning of the conflict.
They have been forced to abandon their everyday life and live under Israeli army bombing since Hamas’s brutal onslaught on Israeli land on October 7, which left roughly 1,140 dead, according to an AFP count based on the most recent official data.
This war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement has considerably affected children, underlines musician Rouaa Hassouna.
This 23-year-old young woman, along with others, offers activities to children in makeshift camps in the southern city of Rafah (south), where a large part of the 2.4 million inhabitants of the country are crowded together in precarious conditions. Palestinian territory.
“We are trying by any means to remove children from the war,” she explains. “The aim of blackmailing them is to alleviate their stress” and the psychological distress in which they find themselves after more than two months of hostilities.
When Rouaa Hassouna intones the first notes of music, the children around her “no longer hear the buzzing of the +zanana+ (Arabic word for drone). They ignore the +zanana+ to listen to the sound emanating from the oud and sing with the oud”, the oriental lute.
On the faces of the children with marked features, a few smiles emerge, then shy sounds and clapping of hands. Carried away by the music and the warm atmosphere, a boy even starts dancing among the crowd.
