Ahmed al-Jarjawi was 7 years old when he disappeared at an Israeli occupation army checkpoint in the Gaza Strip. For more than 110 days, his family did not know whether he was still alive or had become another number among the victims of the genocidal war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he finally came back, he was not the boy who had left. He has a stutter now and struggles to get words out. Sudden fear grips him, and he cannot sleep through the night. Today he weighs no more than 17 kilograms, though he is more than 10 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His father, Ibrahim al-Jarjawi, says losing him was the hardest thing the family has been through. They had been displaced over and over, scattering in search of safety, when Ahmed vanished at the checkpoint. No word reached them about where he was or what had become of him. For more than three and a half months they heard nothing. They waited, afraid, unable to do anything at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two days before his release, the Red Cross brought them their first news of him: he was alive. The terror was over. The suffering was not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His father asks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Ahmed was a 7-year-old boy. He knew nothing about politics or conflicts. He dreamed of school, of playing, of a normal life like other children. What danger could a child his age pose, to be deprived of his family, his safety, and his childhood for all this time?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He is home, but what happened to him has not let go. When he tries to talk about it, the words stop, and fear shows on his face. His family carries those months too, when they had no idea whether their son was alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family is calling on international and humanitarian organizations to step in without delay: to give the boy the medical and psychological care he needs, and to help him back to school and to a normal life among children his age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the surface, Ahmed’s story is about a boy who came home after months away. It is also a measure of the price children pay in war. He is back in his house. The childhood that left with him more than 110 days ago did not come back whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ahmed al-Jarjawi was 7 years old when he disappeared at an Israeli occupation army checkpoint in the Gaza Strip. For more than 110 days, his family did not know whether he was still alive or had become another number among the victims of the genocidal war. When he finally came back, he was not the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[483,484,485,26,45,41,39,27],"class_list":["post-1437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports","tag-ahmed-al-jarjawi","tag-child","tag-childhood","tag-gaza","tag-human-rights-violations","tag-international-conventions","tag-israeli-prisons","tag-political-prisoners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1439,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions\/1439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asramedia.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}