• Each month, Israel utilizes drones over Gaza for 4,000 flight hours — the equivalent of permanently deploying five unmanned aircraft.
•  Children experience “fear and anxiety” as a direct result of unmanned aircrafts in the air, she says.
• Israel and Hamas have engaged in four conflicts in the past fifteen years.

The buzzing sound of Israeli military drones above the densely populated Palestinian territory makes it difficult for Bissam, a teenager in Gaza, to sleep and concentrate.

When she stays at home in her family’s tight flat, the 18-year-old feels that “the drone is constantly with me in my bedroom — worry and fear don’t leave our homes.

“Sometimes I have to put the pillow on my head so I don’t hear its buzz,” she explained, adding that the drone noise gives her migraines.

Unmanned surveillance aircraft has become an intrinsic feature of Israel’s 15-year blockade of the impoverished enclave, and 2,3 million Palestinians are forced to endure their constant hum.

Bissam, whose family requested anonymity for security concerns, stated that the drones, along with the street noise, create an unpleasant cacophony.

“At night I try to review the lessons for my exams, but I can’t read because of this annoying racket,” she said from the small apartment she shares with her parents and five siblings in Gaza City.

Each month, Israel utilizes drones over Gaza for 4,000 flight hours — the equivalent of permanently deploying five unmanned aircraft, according to the Israeli military as reported by AFP.

According to a commander from Israel’s Palmachim airport, where the planes take off, the drones “collect intelligence data 24 hours a day.”

“I’m as terrified as my children”

During an 11-day conflict between Israel and Gaza militants in May 2021, the Israeli army used 25 drones for 6,000 flying hours in order to continuously monitor the territory, according to army data.

During a three-day conflict in August of this year, it increased its presence by deploying 30 drones for more than 2,000 flight hours.

Even when there is no active war, Bissam’s mother Rim attempts to soothe her children as Israeli drones hover overhead, for fear that an Israeli airstrike may follow.

“I’m basically scared like them. How can I reassure my children?”  remarked the 42-year-old.

Due to its proximity to a base of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Gaza’s rulers Hamas, the din above the family home is particularly loud, but drones can also be heard above bustling retail areas.

“The kids sleep intermittently. We wake up, we sleep, then we wake up” again, Rim said.

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“The drone is ever present”

Iman Hijjo, a psychiatrist in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Yunis, treats Palestinians whose war trauma is reactivated by the sound of Israeli drones.

Israel and Hamas have engaged in four conflicts in the past fifteen years.

“When an insect moves around you, you can hit it, but not the drone,” said Hijjo, adding that the circumstance induces a “sense of helplessness.”

She stated, “The drones keep Gaza’s skies closed, without a horizon or hope.”

Children experience “fear and anxiety” as a direct result of drones, according to Hijjo, who laments the lack of scientific studies to evaluate the longer-term effects.

Sami Oweida, a colleague psychiatrist, observed, “Children need to feel safe in order to develop.” However, the presence of drones in the skies prevents these emotions from flourishing.

Unmanned planes are so ubiquitous that even artists have mentioned them in their works.

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha said in his latest English-language book “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear” that the “sound of drones flying above my family and friends stops the games, the chatting, and the laughter.”

“The buzzing of the drones and the intermittent raids of the F16 (warplanes) have become an integral part of our lives,” he told AFP.

“I write about the sky, the sea, the clouds, the setting sun, my children, my neighbors,” he added. “But always, the drone is there. It fails to leave us.”

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