In a long-term study she found that when a woman gets raped, or when a child is abused, it will have a measurable impact on the genes of their children and grandchildren. This traumatic event will result in a much less active form of a particular gene. The less active these genes are, the weaker these children are to recover from negative events in their lives. So, a child whose grandparents have been abused will be less able to cope for example with the divorce of the parents, or a war situation, or another stressful event, because of genetic reasons.
As a result, the child or youth might develop disturbed behavior, become aggressive, or even violent. But Terrie Moffitt also found that the weakened genes did not necessarily have to lead to disturbed behavior and that the genes can be positively influenced as well. This is contrary to popular believe and previous research which suggest that we are completely helpless to change our genetic ‘layout’. Moffitt says that by giving affected children more time and love, the negative genetic impact can be reduced.
Moffitt is saying that we are not the ‘product’ of our genes. There is no ‘crime’ gene, or an ‘intelligence’ gene. But the genes determine how we react to events in our environment.
Now what does this mean for children of refugees, in particular children of Palestinian refugees?
The children living now in the refugee camps in Lebanon, for example, are fourth generation 
refugees. Their great-grandparents had to flee their homeland in 1948, their grandparents were born as refugees, their parents were born as refugees, and they themselves were born as refugees. Their collective trauma, experienced over four generations, must have left those genes that Moffitt is talking about very weak indeed. This means that they cannot deal as well as healthy children with negative situations, and their lives in the refugee camps in Lebanon are full of negative situations.
refugees. Their great-grandparents had to flee their homeland in 1948, their grandparents were born as refugees, their parents were born as refugees, and they themselves were born as refugees. Their collective trauma, experienced over four generations, must have left those genes that Moffitt is talking about very weak indeed. This means that they cannot deal as well as healthy children with negative situations, and their lives in the refugee camps in Lebanon are full of negative situations. (Photo by the author)
The same holds for the children of Gaza, where 80% of the population are registered refugees, and about half of the population is living in camps. The violence and depravation experienced for more than 60 years would have put these children at an immense disadvantage and must have weakened the genes much more than one violent event would have done.
During my 2008 visit of the refugee camps in Lebanon, I had the opportunity to have a long discussion with the psychologist who treats the children and adults at the mental health facility of Beit Atfal as-Samoud – our partner in Lebanon – in Beddawi Refugee Camp, near Tripoli in the north. She told me that for every new patient who will come to her she will begin by taking his or her story, beginning with asking the mother of the patient what kind of pregnancy it had been: mentally and physically easy or difficult, family conditions at the time of pregnancy, etc. etc. Then she would continue to take the patient’s history up to the present day.
The really interesting part of her explanation was when she told me that after the 2006 War on Lebanon, the Lebanese children who were brought to her for treatment because of trauma recovered much faster than the Palestinian children from the camps who had been equally traumatized by the war. There are now two explanations, equally compelling; but most probably both reasons have a combining and mutually reinforcing negative effect on the children:
1) The above mentioned weakened activity of the gene to withstand impact of negative events in the lives of the children,
2) The deprivation of the children during the fetal stage in terms of sufficient nutrition, and flooding with stress hormones due to negative events in the lives of their mothers during the pregnancy.
Under the best of circumstances, after warfare comes a time of recovery. During such time, much of the deprivation of children and adults can be made good again. As Moffatt has found, even damage to the genes can be healed with an extra load of love and care for these children.
What is extraordinary about the Palestinian refugees is that many of them have not come to this stage of recovery and calm, but have accumulated negative events for four generations. This heap of negative impact – the collective trauma - can be seen clearly when visiting the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: the children are beautiful, but many look malnourished, with black rings under their eyes who look at you with the experience of old people. Many are extremely quiet, depressed and sad; many are extremely active and outright aggressive.
What is extraordinary about the Palestinian refugees is that many of them have not come to this stage of recovery and calm, but have accumulated negative events for four generations. This heap of negative impact – the collective trauma - can be seen clearly when visiting the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon: the children are beautiful, but many look malnourished, with black rings under their eyes who look at you with the experience of old people. Many are extremely quiet, depressed and sad; many are extremely active and outright aggressive.
The children in the refugee camps in West Bank also look the same.
According to a Queen’s University study entitled ‘The Psychological Effects of War on Palestinian Children’ (John Pringle, 2006) “there is a pattern of violence against Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip that has serious and debilitating psychiatric and psychological effects.”
According to the study, a child in Gaza who has had a severe head injury has 4 times the risk of emotional disorder. A child who has been severely beaten has 3.9 times the risk of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A child who has witnessed friends injured or killed has 13 times the risk of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A child in a refugee camp has 5 times a greater chance of witnessing traumatic events and 4 times a greater chance of direct physical trauma.
According to the study, a child in Gaza who has had a severe head injury has 4 times the risk of emotional disorder. A child who has been severely beaten has 3.9 times the risk of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A child who has witnessed friends injured or killed has 13 times the risk of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A child in a refugee camp has 5 times a greater chance of witnessing traumatic events and 4 times a greater chance of direct physical trauma.
(Photos by WAFA) 
Add to this the negative impact on the genes of all the events going back to the grandparents lives, it is a miracle that any of these children is able to become a halfway happy and content adult; it also shows the resilience of the human spirit and the extraordinary ‘sumoud’ of the Palestinian people.
