wfn.org | Palestinians fret for rock-tossing youngsters

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Note #6239 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

27-October-2000
00378

Palestinians fret for rock-tossing youngsters

Mothers dread seeing sons and daughters hurt or killed on TV news

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- When Maha Nassar heard that about 2,000 demonstrators
were marching on an Israeli checkpoint in Ramallah a week ago, she knew
where she'd find her two oldest kids.

	One more time, she headed for the checkpoint to look for her teenagers.

	"Up till now, we've (always) found them," she said.

	On that particular day, she met her youngsters on the road, coming home.

	That day about 20 Palestinians were hit. One teenager died of a bullet
wound to the head. Another died the same afternoon in Salfit, also of a head
wound. In Qualquilya, a 16-year-old stone-thrower was killed. In Jenin and
Tulkarem, two 21-year-olds were killed.

	The streets of the West Bank, full of bullet casings, flaming tires, spent
tear-gas canisters and burned cars -- and excitement -- are a mother's
nightmare.

	"I believe in protest, but I don't want my kids hurt," said Nassar, who in
her younger days was arrested for participating in the first Intifada, which
began in 1987. She still joins in the protests on occasion. But nowadays,
when she goes to the checkpoints, she has two reasons: to defy Israeli
opposition to an independent Palestinian state, of course -- and to keep an
eye on her kids, Hanin, 16, and Wadie, 15, who no longer ask her permission
to go.

	"When I hear about someone who is martyred for our liberation ... I go and
I praise him," she said. "But to have your own child be a martyr, that is a
different thing. I can't tell my children, my boy and my girl, not to go
there, not to demonstrate; but inside myself, I fear having them martyred
one day."

	Martyrdom isn't a remote possibility for any young protester. To date, of
the 112 Palestinians killed in what has become a street war, 31 were under
18 years old. Of the 3,200 Palestinians wounded, church officials estimate
that 52 percent are children. They say many of the victims were not
protesting, but were mere bystanders.

	Any mother on the West Bank knows the statistics -- and can easily assign
many names to the numbers: a boy from down the street, a nephew, an old
playmate who visited just the day before but now is dead. Sometimes the
mothers talk about poignant, public killings, like that of 12-year-old
Muhammad Al Dura, who was pinned down in the street with his unarmed father,
Jamal, who futilely tried to protect him from Israeli bullets.

	 It keeps the women, in Nassar's words, "crazy with worry."

	 Her phone rings daily with calls from other mothers trying to locate
teenagers who have gone out into the streets.

	"My sister has kids the same age as mine," she said. "She'll call and say,
‘Did they go out with your children? Or do you know anything about them?'
Other mothers of boys will call me and tell me, ‘Please tell them not to go
to the checkpoint.'"

            But teenagers don't always listen to their mothers, especially
when snipers are picking off people in the streets.  The violence puts
Palestinian mothers in a terrible bind: They're torn between, on the one
hand, backing a cause they believe is necessary to improve their kids'
lives, and on the other, trying to keep their kids' alive.

	 "The conflict is terrible," said 68-year-old Rhema Tarzi of Ramallah, who,
having raised four sons now grown, knows all about the hopelessness that
eats up young Palestinian men who have little choice but to work as day
laborers in the Israeli economy for substandard wages. "You don't want them
to join (the protests), to participate. But ... you have no choice ... but
to raise your voice in protest."

	"Mothers can't control their children," Tarzi went on. "These boys want to
have a future. They know there is no future if they remain under occupation,
being hewers of wood, carriers of water. They're always the laborers,
laborers for Israel."

	Sighing, she added: "This is such an unequal battle. All we have are
stones. They have one of the best armies in the world."

	However, a state-of-the-art army backed by the world's foremost superpower
hasn't stopped the stone-throwers of Palestine, 70 percent of whose
population is under 30 years old. Despite the maimings and deaths of
neighbors and friends, many youth still think they are invincible. The
mothers say many others are so miserable, they don't care if they die or
not.

	"You could lock these boys in the basement if this only happened once a
month or every few years. But this is a daily occurrence," said Cedar
Duaybis of Ramallah, whose son became so depressed by his prospects that he
went off to school in the United States at age 18 and never came back.

	"They have no life," Duaybis said of young male Palestinians. "This
occupation is so brutal, these kids die (a little bit) every day. The
deprivation. The humiliation.

	"‘My son would say, ‘It would be easier to die once, of a bullet.'"

	Duaybis said she remembers the days when Israeli soldiers roamed the
streets of Palestinian towns, free to do as they liked -- to spit on, beat
or otherwise humiliate people, turning them back from the checkpoints at
will, or to commandeer young Palestinians to clean the Israeli barracks. "I
understood him," she said of her absent son. "He wanted out. And there was
no relief in sight. No hope. No hope. These kids are hopeless, in despair. A
desperate person does desperate things."

	Tarzi agreed. "There's lots of pain, lots of desperation, of worry," she
said. "No hope. No light at the end of the tunnel. There's so much pain that
you either become despondent or you rebel."

	Perhaps the deepest desperation can be seen at the refugee camps, where
fathers trudge off to the checkpoints in the mornings looking for day work
and mothers manage large families in one-room houses. The camps are where
the poorest Palestinians live. Most of the children play in the streets;
there's not much room at home, and there are no parks or playgrounds.
Throwing stones at soldiers is a daily pastime.

	"The usual thing is to (throw the stones) and tell the soldiers to go
away," Duaybis said. "But at times like this, the soldiers shoot back. Other
times, it is kids' play, a game.  At times like this the soldiers shoot back
with live ammunition and tear-gas canisters. The boys won't listen to their
mothers.

	"They want to defend their country. And they can't go anywhere," she added,
referring to the Israeli checkpoints that restrict the movement of all
Palestinians, young men in particular. "There's hardly any breathing space."

	A 24-year-old medical student in Jerusalem, Samah Jabr, said she knows
something about the kind of anger that underlies the clashes.  "Our kids are
angry from the very depths of their beings," she told the Presbyterian News
Service. "They've grown up in refugee camps, had their homes demolished,
seen their fathers and older brothers taken to jail, some returning so badly
beaten they cannot walk or speak. ...

	"Our stones are not very effective against Israelis' military might, but
our peaceful, pleading words, prayers or efforts have not been effective
either."

	What worries mothers is how the violence -- physical and emotional -- will
affect their children, including those too young to venture into the
streets.

	"I really am worried about the coming days, not only the economies, but the
psychology of our children," said Nassar, noting that her two youngest kids,
who are eight and 10, are hooked on news programming, worried that they'll
see their sister or brother in the fighting.

	"They are witnessing death, killing, kidnaping, shooting every day. They'll
say, ‘My sister and brother are not here and something is happening at the
Ramallah checkpoint.  We don't know if they are shot or not. Let's see what
happens at the checkpoint. After that we'll watch, ‘Pokemon."'

	Jabr said nothing upsets Palestinian women more than the suggestion that
they do not care whether their children die or not as long as the cause is
served, what she says is a common refrain on Israel television. She quoted
one settler who described Palestinians in a TV interview as "not human ...
animals," while reflecting on the death of 12-year-old Muhammad Al-Durra in
Gaza, claiming that his family had sent him out to "kill or be killed."

	"Evidently she did not know that Muhammad's father had come to usher him
away from violence and to take him as far away from war as possible," Jabr
said. "It was Israeli soldiers who turned their guns toward the man and boy,
neither of which had stones or any weapons at all. Perhaps, this settler had
not heard that the ambulance driver who came to help the injured was killed
too. These medics did not have stones to throw, but they all had mothers,
just like Israeli soldiers and every man, woman or child killed in this
endless catastrophe of ours.

	Jabr has circulated some of her opinions on the Internet in an article
titled The Second Intifada: A Palestinian Perspective.

	Jabr said she remembers that when she was a teenager, she lied to her
mother to get out of the house. She's say she was going to a friend's home
to study, but instead went to demonstrations at the checkpoints, trying to
stay out of the camera's view.

	"Parents are not able to control children, especially during the
demonstrations and clashes," she said.

	As a doctor-in-training, she said, she finds the lack of parental control
especially poignant.

	Last week, at the Maqassed hospital, she was visiting with patients when
she saw a middle-aged woman with a stomach wound.

	"‘How did this happen? Why were you on the street?'" I asked her. ‘I was
protecting my son,' she answered."

	Jabr had good news for her:

	"Then you gave birth to your child twice," she said, "for he is going to
live."

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