Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 2003, pages 15, 95

Special Report

 

Palestinian Children: Caught in the Crossfire

 

By Suraya Dadoo

Three years ago, courageous 13-year-old Fares Odeh faced down an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank on the outskirts of Gaza City. As he defiantly hurled his rock at the menacing tank, Associated Press photographer Laurent Rebours took a photo that has become the defining image of the Palestinian intifada—in much the same manner as the photograph of a fatally injured Hector Peterson during the Soweto uprising in 1976 came to represent the struggle against apartheid. More importantly, these images reflect the role that children have played in their respective liberation struggles. Tragically, Fares was shot in the neck and killed by IDF troops just nine days after his picture was taken.

Fares' weeping mother, Enaam Odeh, 41, told Associated Press reporters that she repeatedly told her son to stay away from the Karmi crossing point between Gaza and Israel, the site of daily confrontations. However, after Israeli soldiers killed his 17-year-old cousin, Shadi Odeh, at the crossing, Fares vowed to keep throwing stones and continued to disobey his mother's plea to stay out of harm's way.

In a recent issue of The Review, the journal of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, Itamar Marcus, the director of the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an NGO which monitors the Palestinian media, presented the results of a study undertaken by the PMW which documents the so-called indoctrination by the Palestinian Authority (PA) through the media, education system, the government and their parents, of Palestinian children to seek martyrdom. For instance, Marcus cited the example of two 11-year-old girls who were interviewed in the PATV studios. Among other topics, they spoke of their personal yearning to achieve martyrdom, and the peace that they will enjoy in the afterlife.

This and other examples used in the study are telling—simply because they demonstrate the despair and hopelessness of young Palestinians. According to the report, polls show that 72 to 80 percent of Palestinian children seek death as shahids (martyrs). Most cannot envision the attainment of peace and equal rights for the Palestinian people, and view the afterlife as a viable alternative. The PMW study lays the blame for this phenomenon of child martyrdom squarely on the PA and its attempts to indoctrinate Palestinian children. The reality, though, is far more complex than mere "brainwashing."

 

The "Lost" Generation

Last October, the UNICEF Special Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pierre Poupard, expressed serious concern over the number of Palestinian children being prevented from attending school by Israel-imposed restrictions. "A generation of Palestinian children is being denied their right to an education," Poupard said in a UNICEF press report. More than 600,000 children have been denied access to schools; over 9,300 teachers are unable to reach their regular classrooms, and at least 580 schools have been closed due to Israeli military curfews, closures and home confinement. With no education, high unemployment, and an economy teetering on the brink of collapse, many Palestinian youth face a bleak future. Their desolation is compounded by the consistent humiliation and violence that they are subjected to by the occupying forces.

Palestinian children, moreover, caught up in the crisis that erupted over two years ago, are not merely bystanders, but targets. On March 2, 2001, Israeli occupation forces shot dead nine-year-old Ubey Darraj in the West Bank town of El-Bireh after opening fire on a group of children playing with cap guns beneath his family's apartment. Shortly afterwards, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Mahmoud Hellis, was hit in the head with a live round while walking home from school near the Karmi crossing point in the Gaza Strip.

According to Dr. Rita Giacaman, associate professor and director of the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University in the West Bank, children and youths have been deeply traumatized by seeing and hearing of Palestinians—especially those their own age—being killed or injured, and are increasingly feeling the need to "do something."

The problem, she says, is partly cumulative, stemming mainly from deprivation and poverty. "Many of the people carrying out the attacks were children during the first Palestinian uprising and were frustrated during the years of the Oslo peace process," she said. Today, these youths feel they have no future, she explained. They see their fathers out of work and believe if they throw stones at an Israeli checkpoint or turn to suicide bombings they "give dignity to their families."

Since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, nearly one-third of the Palestinian population has been left without any means of income. While some helplessly watched the condition of their impoverished families worsen, others chose the risky path of entering Israel in search of jobs without permits. According to Ramzy Baroud, an international journalist and the managing editor of Middle East News Online, working in Israel nowadays is similar to walking through a field of land mines. "But when childrens' lives are on the line, desperate Palestinian workers are willing to take such risks," said Baroud.

In describing a particularly humiliating incident on May 20, 2001 in which Palestinian workers suspected of entering Israel without work permits were severely beaten and forced to mimic animals, Baroud pointed out that "every one of those who were killed left behind children who will grow, and become the strong and determined men and women leading the ongoing Palestinian uprising. [They] will likely take to the streets, attempting to convey their rage by chanting angry words and throwing rocks. Others who might feel that rock throwing is not a sufficient act that would restore the dignity of a dying father who was forced to walk and talk like an animal, might choose a more extreme path to avenge that stolen dignity."

 

Passing the Buck

Arjan El Fassed, a Dutch-Palestinian political scientist, human rights activist and affiliate of the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (Al-Awda), rejects the Israeli notion that the PA and parents send their children to die. He argues that this is a clear attempt to avoid Israeli culpability for the deaths of Palestinian children. This is the reincarnation of a well-known scapegoat strategy known as "blaming the victim"—wherein animosity or suspicion is directed toward the victim, thereby justifying or excusing the original violation the victim suffered.

Mary Robinson, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, after her visit to the region "disgustingly rejected" the Israeli claim that Palestinian parents encourage their children to participate in clashes.

The PMW report concluded that the Palestinian Authority has "created a violent death-seeking reality for their young children." However, the context of this reality must be fully explored: Palestinian children have been robbed of their innocence, not through propaganda and indoctrination—but by an inhumane, brutal occupation that threatens their lives and families. Witnessing such degradation on a daily basis, most Palestinian children, like their apartheid counterparts, would not need to be indoctrinated to fight for the liberation of their land.

It is only by acknowledging and understanding these factors that we can honestly answer the question, "Why do Palestinian children grow up to be suicide bombers?"

Suraya Dadoo is a researcher with the Media Review Network <www.mediareviewnet.com>, an advocacy group based in Pretoria, South Africa.

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