Khan Younis, Gaza – Samar Ahmed, 37, had a visibly tired look on his face.

That’s not just because she has five children, but also because they have been displaced several times since Israel’s brutal war on Gaza began 14 months ago and now live in cramped, cold conditions in makeshift tents in Israel’s Mawasi district. Khan Younes Samar was also a victim of domestic violence, and in the cramped conditions of the camp she could not escape her abuser.

Two days ago, her husband hit her in the face, leaving her with swollen cheeks and blood spots in her eyes. The attack occurred in front of her children, with her eldest daughter clinging to her throughout the night.

Samar did not want to separate her family – they had been forced to move from Gaza City to al-Shadi camp in Rafah and now to Khan Younis – and the children were still young. Her eldest daughter, Laila, is only 15 years old. She also has Zain, 12, Dana, 10, Lana, seven, and Adi, five, to consider.

On the day Al Jazeera visited her, she was trying to keep her two young daughters busy with their studies. The three of them were sitting in a small tent made of rags, with some notebooks spread out around them. Little Dana huddled next to her mother, as if trying to give her support. Her sister cries from hunger, and Samar doesn’t seem to know how to help either of them.

As a displaced family, the loss of privacy adds a whole new layer of stress.

“In this place I lost my privacy as a woman and as a wife. I don’t want to say that my life was perfect before the war, but I was able to express my inner thoughts in conversations with my husband. I could scream without People hear my voice,” Samar said. “I have more control over my kids at home. Here I am living on the street and the cover of hiding has been taken away from my life.”

There was a loud argument between a couple in the tent next door. Samar’s face was flushed with embarrassment and sadness, and the air was filled with profanity. She didn’t want her children to hear this.

Her instinct is to let the kids go out and play, but Laila is washing the dishes with a small bowl of water, and the quarrel next door brings her own problems back into focus.

“Every day I suffer from anxiety over disagreements with my husband. Two days ago I was devastated when he hit me like this in front of the children. All our neighbors heard my screams and cries , came to calm the situation between us.

“I feel heartbroken,” said Samar, who was worried that her neighbors would think she was to blame – and her husband was shouting that she was a bad wife.

“Sometimes, when he screams and curses, I stay quiet so the people around us think he’s screaming at someone else. I try to maintain a little dignity,” she said.

Samar tries to curb her husband’s anger by solving the problems faced by the family herself. She visits aid workers every day to ask for food. She believes it was the stress of the war that turned her husband into this.

Before the war, he worked with friends in a small carpentry shop, which kept him busy. There is less debate.

Now, she said: “Due to serious differences between my husband and I, I wanted to divorce. But for the sake of the children, I hesitated.”

Samal attended psychological support sessions with other women in an attempt to release some of the negative energy and anxiety that had built up inside her. It helps her know she’s not alone. “I heard a lot of women’s stories and I tried to comfort myself through their experiences.”

As she spoke, Samar stood up and started preparing the food. She was worrying about when her husband would come back and whether she would have enough to eat. All she could eat now was a plate of beans and cold bread. She couldn’t light a fire because there was no gas.

Suddenly, Samar fell silent, worried that the sound outside was her husband’s. This is not the case.

She sat her daughters down and looked at their math problems. She whispered: “He went out and yelled at Addy. I hope he’s in a good mood.”

“The war did this to us”

Later, Samar’s husband, Karim Badwan, 42, sat next to his daughters in the small tent where they lived.

He was desperate. “This is not life. I can’t make sense of my life. I’m trying to adapt to these difficult circumstances, but I can’t. I’ve gone from being a pragmatic, professional person to someone who is always angry.”

Karim said he was deeply ashamed of beating his wife many times since the war began.

“I want the war to end before my wife’s energy wears off and she leaves me,” he said. “My wife is a good woman, so she will put up with what I say.”

Samar listened, a tear rolling down her bruised face.

Karim said he knew what he was doing was wrong. Before the war, he had never dreamed that he could hurt her.

“I had friends who used to beat their wives. I used to ask, ‘How does he sleep at night?’ “Unfortunately, now I do.

“I did it more than once, but the most difficult time was when I left marks on her face and eyes. I admit it was a huge failure in terms of self-control,” said Karim, whose The voice trembled.

“The stress of the war was great. I left my home, my job and my future behind to sit in a tent, helpless in front of my children. I couldn’t find a job and when I left the tent I felt like if I talked to anyone I would Will lose his temper.”

Karim knew his wife and children had suffered a lot. “I apologized to them for my behavior, but I still did it. Maybe I needed medication, but my wife wasn’t worth what I was going through. I was trying to stop so she wouldn’t have to leave me.”

Samar’s despair is compounded by the loss of her family, which she left behind to escape the explosions in the north with her husband and his family. She is really lonely now.

Her greatest fear was that she would become completely exhausted and unable to care for her family, as she feared her husband had already done.

The responsibilities of finding water and food, caring for her children, and thinking about their future all took their toll, and she lived in constant fear.

“Trying to be strong for my mother”

As the oldest child, Laila became severely anxious due to arguments between her father and mother, and she worried about her mother.

She said: “My dad and mum fight every day. My mum suffers from a strange neurological condition. Sometimes she yells at me for no reason. I try to bear and understand her situation so that I don’t We’ll lose her. I don’t like seeing her like this, but the war gave us that.”

Laila still thinks Karim was a good father and blames the world for allowing this brutal war to go on for so long. “My father often yelled at me. Sometimes he would hit my sisters. My mother cried all night and woke up with her eyes swollen from sadness about our lives.”

She sat in bed for long periods of time thinking about their life before the war and her plans to learn English.

“I try to be strong for my mother.”

‘Unimaginable conditions’

This family is not alone. In Gaza, where domestic violence has increased significantly, many women attend psychological support sessions offered by clinic aid workers.

Since the war began, psychologist Kholoud Abu Hajir has seen many victims in clinics in camps for displaced persons. However, she fears many more people are too embarrassed to talk about it.

“Women have a lot of secrecy and fear about talking about it,” she said. “I get a lot of cases of violence outside of group meetings – women wanting to talk about what they’re suffering and get help.”

Living in a state of continued instability and insecurity, being repeatedly displaced and forced to live in crowded tents, deprives women of their privacy and leaves them with nowhere to go.

“There is no comprehensive psychotherapy system,” Abu Hajar told Al Jazeera. “We only work in emergencies. The cases we deal with do require multiple sittings and some of them are difficult cases where women need protection.

“There are very serious cases of violence that have reached the level of sexual assault and that’s a dangerous thing.”

There has been an increase in divorces, many between spouses separated by the armed corridor between northern and southern Israel.

Abu Hajar said the war has taken a heavy toll on women and children, especially women.

Nevin al-Barbari, a 35-year-old psychologist, said it was impossible to provide Gazan children with the support they needed under such circumstances.

“Unfortunately, what children went through during the war is beyond description. They require long psychological support courses. Hundreds of thousands of children lost their homes, their families, many of them their entire families.”

Being forced to live in difficult (and sometimes violent) family circumstances makes many people’s lives worse.

“Especially among the displaced, there is very clear and widespread domestic violence… The psychological and behavioral state of the children is very negatively affected. Some children become very violent and violently attack other children.”

Recently, Barbary encountered a case where a 10-year-old child beat others with a stick, causing serious injuries and bleeding.

“When I met the child, he was crying,” she said. “He thought I was going to punish him. When I asked him about his family, he told me that his parents would have huge fights every day and his mother would stay in the family tent for days.

“He said he missed his home, his room and the way his family used to be. This child is a very common example among thousands of children.”

Barbari said these children still have a long road to recovery. “There are no schools to occupy them. Children are forced to take on heavy responsibilities, refill water and wait in long lines for food aid. There are no recreational areas provided for them.

“These kids are living a lot of stories every day that we don’t know about.”