Jerusalem: Children are paying a high price on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the point where psychologists fear a whole generation could lose faith in any real peace.

In almost two years of intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation, more than 300 Palestinian and around 30 Israeli children have paid with their lives. Countless others are scarred for life, physically or mentally.

In the West Bank, a little girl tells of her terror that the Israeli Army could come and take away her father, who is on the wanted list, while another saw her mother interrogated for several days.

In Jerusalem, Israeli girls in a park have invented a suicide attack game, while a seven-year-old boy keeps away from TV screens to avoid footage of suicide bombings, said child psychologist Michal Preminger.

Kites have reappeared in the skies of Ramallah over the past few weeks, since the West Bank town came under Israeli Army siege and curfew.

"What a symbol! The sky is the only space left to be creative or move around," said Sarah Mareshal, who is in charge of mental health programmes in the territories for Medecins du Monde (MDM), a Paris-based doctors' organisation (NGO).

Since Israel launched its offensives in the West Bank at the end of March, Palestinian children have been reduced to watching TV, confined indoors, or playing football near home.

Among the Israelis, some children don't even want to step outside the front door anymore. And parents on both sides do their best to keep their offspring indoors, especially adolescents.

"In Gaza, the most alarming thing is this obsession to become a 'martyr', as if it was the ultimate mark of self-worth," said Eyad Sarraj, director of a pioneer mental health programme in Gaza City.

"Palestinian children draw paintings of tanks under a hail of stones or (Jerusalem's) al-Aqsa mosque waiting to be liberated," said Marie Reveillaud, who works in Ramallah for MDM.

"They feel they are the only ones in the world to be so unhappy, and they express this by vowing revenge against the Jews and the Americans," she said.

While young Israelis can count on institutions, most of them at school, which can provide some form of therapy, the plight of Palestinian children is more alarming.

"We are about to lose this generation which carried our hopes. The suicide bombers of today are the children of the first intifada (1987-1993), so imagine what will become of the children of this second intifada," said Sarraj.

"They need to play, to go to the swimming pool, to sports clubs. But resources are limited and the Palestinian Authority has to concentrate on its own survival," he said.

Recreational activities and support from the NGOs have become impossible under the constant curfews.

More than 30 NGOs, including MDM, issued a call at the start of July for Israel to allow their employees to deliver aid to the Palestinians of the besieged West Bank.