topic by
John Calvin
5/14/2002 (20:04) |
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Gaza's Children Worship Martyrdom
By Hamza Hendawi
Associated Press Writing
Tuesday, May 14, 2002; 2:58 AM
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip –– The walls of a Gaza City community center are lined with row after row of drawings by Palestinian children asked to express what's on their minds. The answer is tanks, ambulances, corpses – of 1,500 sketches, only 10 do not depict violent scenes.
Nearly 20 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting and a culture that increasingly glorifies violence have taken a heavy toll on Gaza's children.
'We don't have a single child in Gaza who knows what it's like to be a normal child,' said Abdul-Rahman Bakr, director of Gaza City's psychiatric hospital.
The drawings in the community center's conference room show battle scenes complete with guns, jets, helicopters and many dead bodies.
'We wanted the children to express themselves through the drawings and this is what we got,' said Fadl Abu Hein, a child psychologist. 'Everyone can now see what's really worrying our children.'
Life in the Gaza Strip leaves children with little chance not to think of violence.
Funerals and rallies with gunmen firing in the air are almost daily events. Walls are covered with graffiti glorifying 'martyrs' killed in attacks on Israelis. Their faces stare from tens of thousands of posters, and mosque preachers exhort worshippers to emulate them.
'The climate in Gaza gives the impression that being a martyr wins respect,' said Abu Hein, who, together with other experts, says parents, Palestinian media and mosque preachers are not doing enough to shelter children.
'Parents are too preoccupied with watching the news on television to listen to their own children,' said Abu Hein.
A narrow coastal strip wedged between Egypt and Israel, Gaza is one of the world's most densely populated areas. Its economy has been hit hard by the violence, with many thousands losing their sole income because travel restrictions prevent them from getting to jobs in Israel.
Of its 1.1 million inhabitants, about 70 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees who fled or were forced out of their homes at the time of Israel's creation, in 1948, and now live in some half a dozen refugee camps.
The economic decline, the fighting and the uncertainty have filtered down to children in Gaza with what experts believe to be devastating psychological effect.
Close to 20 percent of the more than 1,600 Palestinians killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since September 2000 were 18 and younger, according to Palestinian health officials. Several thousand minors have been injured.
Most of the deaths and injuries among children occur when they join protests to throw stones, bottles and sometimes firebombs at Israeli army troops, checkpoints or Jewish settlements. Troops often respond with rubber bullets or tear gas, but they also fire live bullets at times.
A March survey of 2,300 children between the ages of six and 13 showed that up to 73 percent in some parts of Gaza have taken part in violence and that 98 percent have witnessed events that frightened them.
In some areas, as many as half of those questioned said they knew another child who died in the violence, according to the survey by the Center for Social Training and Crisis Management, a Palestinian non-governmental organization.
With 'martyrdom' now nearly an obsession among youngsters frustrated by the uncertainty and low quality of life, Gazans have been alarmed in recent weeks by a spate of incidents in which teen-agers, some as young as 11, tried to infiltrate heavily guarded Jewish settlements or attack Israeli army posts.
One such child was Yousef Zaqout, a ninth grader shot dead April 23 with two friends, ages 14 and 13, by Israeli troops as they tried to slip into the settlement of Netzarim in central Gaza.
Zaqout left a heart-wrenching will for his family, saying it was his wish to be a martyr, begging his parents' forgiveness and exhorting his six siblings to pray regularly and fast from dawn to sunset twice a week.
'He was older than his 15 years. Our children are no longer children,' Yousef's father, Bassem Zaqout, said of his son, who took karate lessons and was the goalkeeper of his school's soccer team.
Ahmed, Youssef's 16-year-old brother, said he too wanted to be a martyr. But he added: 'I will do something that's well planned and effective. I might as well, since in these days we can all be sitting here at home and suddenly die from Israeli shelling.'
Gazans have traditionally viewed themselves as leaders of the fight against Israeli occupation. Gazan children – some barely out of diapers – have been used by grown-ups to feed this notion.
In Gaza's funerals for 'shaheeds,' or martyrs, and in rallies by Palestinian factions such as Arafat's Fatah or the militant Islamic group Hamas, children as young as three or four are outfitted with combat fatigues, masks and toy guns. Such occasions routinely attract hundreds of children, all accustomed by now to the deafening noise made by gunmen firing in the air.
Children are sometimes symbolically wrapped in white sheets to suggest their desire for martyrdom – Muslims wrap their dead in white sheets before burying them – with participants around them shouting slogans glorifying martyrdom.
Songs extolling the virtues of martyrdom and praising those already 'martyred' are played on loudspeakers in large tents erected for the families of children killed by Israeli troops to receive condolences.
Hamas, responsible for scores of suicide bombings in Israel, often pays for the funerals.
Izzedine Hilo, a 14-year-old boy killed Friday by Israeli troops in northern Gaza, was declared a 'martyr of Islam' in a Hamas banner hoisted outside his house over the weekend. Two other children who were with him were injured, one seriously.
The violence has also found its way into play time and games mirroring aspects of life in recent months have evolved. One is 'Arabs and Jews,' which is a local version of Cowboys and Indians. There is also 'checkpoints,' a game in which children try to flag down passing cars – as happens to Palestinians crossing checkpoints manned by Israeli troops checking the identity of passengers.
There is also 'shaheed,' a game in which children take turns being carried by friends shouting 'with our blood, our souls we sacrifice you' – as in the funeral processions.
'There isn't a single street or family here that doesn't have someone who died in the fighting,' said Bakr, the hospital director. 'The children are both frightened and rebellious.'
© 2002 The Associated Press
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