The organization was nerve-wracking, the journey took three days, but in the end 68 children from the SOS Children’s Village were evacuated from Rafah to Bethlehem. This is where a new life begins for them after the trauma of war.
Ammar packs his small backpack: with a tug on the zipper, another new stage in his life begins. “We’ll get a lot of things there – education, new things and also new friends. I can play with them there. I’m looking forward to it.”
Ammar is 13 years old and is one of the 68 children who were evacuated to Bethlehem from the SOS Children’s Village in Rafah in the embattled Gaza Strip in mid-March. Until now he was staying in a hotel there due to space constraints. Now the boy can move to the SOS Children’s Village.
He feels safe and secure here. “When we left Gaza, the situation was very sad. Not anymore. I have accepted it and am looking forward to what comes next.”
The journey takes three days
It was a spectacular event when the 68 children, most of them orphans, and some of their carers were able to leave the Gaza Strip in the middle of the war. Ghada Hirzallah, the director of SOS Children’s Villages in the Palestinian Territories, had been negotiating with all sides for almost five months. After lengthy secret negotiations and grueling weeks of hope and fear, the OK finally came – including from the Israeli authorities.
“It was the most difficult and complicated project of my life,” remembers Hirzallah. “At a certain point I thought it wasn’t going to work. But the fact that I can see the children now, that I can touch them, that they are out of the war zone, is like a dream for me.”
A dream that always threatened to fail. The journey from Rafah in the Gaza Strip to Bethlehem in the West Bank took three days. The bus the children were on kept having to stop. Sometimes he stood for six hours.
Samy Ajjour, the head of the SOS Children’s Village in Rafah, was allowed to accompany the children during the evacuation from Rafah: “Those were the most difficult days of my life. Nothing was certain, we didn’t know what to expect during the journey.” In addition, only three carers would have had to look after so many children. “That was anything but easy.”
Not even after the evacuation. Psychologist Mutaz Lubbad looked after the children in Rafah. He doesn’t leave her side in the SOS Children’s Village in Bethlehem either: “Most of the children were afraid at the beginning. We didn’t know whether this feeling would last longer.” He remembers how a child asked him: “Mutaz, where we are going – will I be afraid too?”
Everyone in the SOS Children’s Village in Bethlehem knew about the difficult task. It wasn’t just an immense challenge for director Ghada Hirzallah – because the children were traumatized by their war experiences. “They’ve seen a lot of things. So we’ve come up with different plans for the children.”
Ammar’s dream of a football career
It’s about psychological and social support, as well as medical help. “What they needed immediately was a regular diet, they just had to eat at first.” Then it went to special educational plans for them. “They just had to get back to a normal life. They are children. They deserve it.”
For 13-year-old Ammar, Bethlehem is his new home. Like so many children his age, he loves playing football. And like other children, he also has dreams: He wants to become a soccer player and play as a striker for the Palestinian team. He already has a role model: “Messi”.
Julio Segador, ARD Tel Aviv, tagesschau, April 29, 2024 7:21 a.m