Gaza teen Bissam says she has trouble sleeping and concentrating as the hum of Israeli military drones over the crowded Palestinian enclave drives her to despair.

When she’s at home in the family’s cramped apartment, the 18-year-old says she feels like “the drone is always with me in my bedroom – worries and fears don’t leave our home.

“Sometimes I have to put the pillow on my head so I don’t hear its buzzing,” she said, adding that the drone noise gives her a headache.

Unmanned surveillance planes have become an integral part of Israel’s 15-year-old blockade of the impoverished enclave, and 2.3 million Palestinians endure their incessant hum.

Bissam, whose family asked that her last name be withheld for safety reasons, said the drones combined with the street noise created an unbearable cacophony.

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

Israel deploys drones over Gaza for 4,000 flight hours each month – the equivalent of constantly flying five of the unmanned aerial vehicles in the sky – the military told AFP.

The drones “gather intelligence data 24 hours a day,” said Omri Dror, a commander at Israel’s Palmachim Air Force Base, where the planes take off.

During an 11-day war in May 2021 between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army deployed 25 drones for 6,000 flight hours to constantly monitor the area, according to the army.

It intensified that presence during a three-day conflict in August this year, using 30 drones for a total of more than 2,000 flight hours.

Bissam’s mother, Rim, said she struggles to calm her children when the drones fly overhead because she fears an Israeli airstrike could follow, even when there is no active conflict.

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

The noise above the family’s home is particularly loud given its proximity to a base of the Al-Qassam Brigades — the armed wing of Hamas who rule the Gaza Strip — but drones can also be heard over busy shopping streets.

“The children sleep at times. We wake up, we sleep, then we wake up,” Rim said again.

In the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, psychiatrist Iman Hijjo treats Palestinians whose conflict trauma is triggered by the noise of Israeli drones.

Israel and Hamas have fought four wars in the past 15 years.

“If an insect moves around you, you can hit it, but not the drone,” Hijjo said, adding that the situation leads to a “feeling of powerlessness.”

“The drones keep Gaza’s skies closed, with no horizon or hope,” she said.

Children suffer “fear and anxiety” as a direct result of the drones, Hijjo said, lamenting a lack of scientific research to determine longer-term effects.

“Children need to feel safe in order to develop,” said psychiatrist Sami Oweida. “But with the presence of drones in the sky, those feelings can’t thrive.”

The unmanned aircraft are so ubiquitous that artists have even mentioned them in their works.

The “sound of drones flying over my family and friends brings an end to the games, the chatter and the laughter,” wrote Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha in his recent English-language collection Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear.

He told AFP that “the hum of the drones and the intermittent ambush of the F16s (fighter jets) have become a regular part of our lives.”

“I write about the sky, the sea, the clouds, the setting sun, my children, my neighbors,” he added. “But the drone is always there. It never leaves us.”