Defy Israelis, Parents : Children of the Intifada: ‘Our Battle’

TULKARM, Israeli-Occupied West Bank —  Suddenly, it is becoming an uprising of mere boys and girls, some barely old enough to spell the word intifada.

In Nablus, a hard-core center of anti-Israeli protest on the West Bank, street captains in their 20s have organized younger followers, some as young as 8, in units that parade in the streets. They sometimes wear makeshift uniforms: trash bags pulled over their clothing, along with the traditional checkered Arab headdress.

As comical as the baggy brigades might seem, they can be as menacing as their elders. One recent visitor to Nablus’ market area was accosted by a group of youngsters who waved clubs in his face as they demanded all sorts of identification.

‘No, Absolutely Not’

Here in Tulkarm, 14-year-olds standing on a street corner laugh out loud when asked if they would give in to parents who ordered them to stay indoors. “No, absolutely not,” says Walid, a skinny boy in jeans. “This is our battle. The older people should not stand in our way.”

The Arab revolt in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, from the start spearheaded by teen-agers and young men in their 20s, increasingly is in the hands of children.

Nowhere is that more starkly apparent than in casualty figures: Of 26 Palestinians shot and killed by Israeli soldiers since the first of the year, nine have been younger than 16. The youngest was 11. Two were girls, ages 12 and 15. Of the rest, only four have been out of their teens.

On the surface, the ever-more-youthful rebellion reflects a hand-me-down fervor passed on by older brothers, sisters and cousins who have been the backbone of the intifada since it began 14 months ago. As older activists have been killed, jailed or gone into hiding, the younger ones have eagerly stepped forward to take their places.

Spurred by Organizers

Encouraged by protest organizers who romanticize them as “children of the stone” and see them as a means of keeping the revolt going through rough times, they often join the rebellion without their parents’ blessing.

“As the young people challenge authority on the street, it is not surprising they challenge it elsewhere,” notes Jacqueline Safer, a psychologist and child development expert. “The youngsters become unruly and hard to cope with.”

But beneath the surface, some Palestinian experts see a broader breakdown in authority--one with implications both for Israeli policy and for traditional Arab family structure. Some also worry about the long-term effects on children’s emotional health.

Parents, especially fathers, neither have exercised nor, in many cases, want to exercise a clear role as the enforcer of rules and protector of the family.

“There is a revolution within the revolution,” Palestinian educator Assia Habash says. “The erosion of Israeli authority in the streets is extended to authority at home. If a soldier with a rifle cannot scare a young person, what can his parent threaten him with?”

Already, the apparent lack of control over young people throws into doubt the hope Israel places in a new policy of penalizing parents, with punishment ranging from heavy fines to demolition of houses, to persuade them to restrain their children.

Habash, who is studying the effects of the intifada on children and young adolescents, expects it to have a lasting imprint. “This is not just a struggle against the Israelis,” she says. “It is a social struggle. Who will be able to dictate to this generation in the future?”

In Nablus, one organizer describes the children’s brigades as a kind of Boy Scouts for the intifada. Besides instilling a sense of hierarchy--each unit has a recognized leader--the groups perform routine tasks, like delivering bread to needy families during days when protest strikes close bakeries.

“They are learning to organize, to take risks,” the organizer said. “They are the next generation of struggle.”

Walid, the teen-ager in Tulkarm, puts on his best “Aw, shucks” smile when asked if he were not frightened. “You cannot say the children must stay indoors,” he said. “Anyway, the soldiers do not discriminate about who they shoot.”

Girls, too, have taken to the streets, a breach of the usually passive role designated to them by traditional Islam, the dominant religion in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We are like the boys--no difference,” said Bana Saeh, 14, a student who lives in Jerusalem. “We have to learn to do things like the boys, and they treat us the same as they do each other.”

Confined to a Convent

Saeh is confined to the Rosary Sisters convent in the city under an agreement with an Israeli court. She and two fellow classmates are accused of throwing stones at a public bus. Their case does not come to trial until July; Israeli prisons were full, so the three are housed at the convent as an expedient.

The girls deny hurling the stones, although not for lack of rebellious intentions. Saeh says she is prepared to go to jail if necessary.

“I’m not scared. Other Palestinians have gone to prison,” she says. “Maybe we have to experience it to know the Israelis.”

Among parents, this emergence of children as key elements of the intifada is viewed with a mixture of helplessness and pride.

Ahmed Salam, 37, remembers clearly the days before the death of his son, Ahmed Abdul, 11, who was killed Jan. 12 by a soldier’s bullet to the chest.

“He came in one day with a scorched knee--he had been out burning tires in the street. I told him he should be careful, there was danger,” Salam recalled on a walk to the spot where his son was shot.

A few days later, the boy’s mother sent him out for tomatoes, telling him to hurry back because she was preparing breakfast. There was a demonstration just around the corner.

“We heard shots, but did not think much of it. The boy was going for tomatoes, after all. His eggs were waiting,” Salam said. “His mother was putting pepper on them, I remember, and someone came in and said Ahmed Abdul was wounded.

“We ran out. Ahmed Abdul staggered from the street into the alleyway, here,” he said, pointing to a clump of makeshift wreaths on the ground. “And fell.

“You know, it is hard to control the children,” the father added. “You can never control them now. If you say no, it doesn’t matter. The other kids encourage them.”

A Sign of Pride

As if to show that despite tragedy and exasperation, he did not disavow his dead son’s activities, Salam turned to the youngest of his three surviving sons, a 4-year-old.

“Who was here?” the father asked the little boy.

“Ahmed Abdul,” the child answered with a smile.

“And what happened to him?”

“The Jews killed him.”

“Do you hate the Jews?”

“Yes.”

In a refugee camp that adjoins Tulkarm just a few blocks from the Salam home, Ibrahim abu Sharif pondered a similar death. His son, Ali, 14, was shot dead Jan. 21 in a clash with soldiers. Abu Sharif said he was unable to keep his son indoors, and that even if he could have done so, he did not want to.

“Here, no one can control at what age a boy goes out and joins the intifada. Whenever there is trouble in the street, everyone goes out,” he said.

“Anyway, if I could control them, I would not. They should do what they want. The situation requires that parents not interfere with children. We are in this together, and we do not stop anyone who wants from participating.”

But is a boy of 14 or even younger capable of understanding and making decisions in the confusing and dangerous circumstances of a popular revolt?

“Whoever is capable of differentiating between right and wrong, then he is capable of deciding to join the intifada ,” Abu Sharif said. These youngsters have seen their schools broken into and tear-gassed, have seen their neighbors beaten and taken away. They have seen a lot that we, when we were young, never saw.”

Some Palestinians offer an optimistic view of the intifada’s long-range effect on children and teen-agers. Habash, for example, thinks that the early independence of the intifada generation will break down rigid, authoritarian norms of Arab life.

“I am optimistic. This interaction can produce a break in the usual top-to-bottom hierarchy of this society. A year ago, I felt the children were misusing their authority sometimes. Now, I think they have grown more responsible,” she said.

Young adolescents and children also are acting as police in suppressing crime in their neighborhoods as well as enforcing commercial strikes by reluctant store owners, Habash noted.

But Safer, the child psychologist, is less certain about the repercussions of such early and aggressive expressions of childhood independence.

“Much of what the children experience--the killings, the deprivation, the arrests--creates a lot of tension for them. It shows up in anger. How it will be channeled will depend on what meaning is placed on their problems.

“Yes, if it is a message of democracy, perhaps democracy will emerge,” she concluded. “But suppose it is just a message of hate?”

Safer observed that children as young as 8 or 9 are forced to deal with disruptions of family life.

“They are left unprotected at a much earlier age than usual,” she said. “Parents, the normal protectors, are not capable of stopping outsiders from invading the household. The children are forced to begin to figure out how to solve problems themselves.”

Games played by children inevitably take on plot lines drawn from the uprising.

“When children play house, some take on the role of mother, father, children. And then there is the role of soldier. Mother wants to go to shop. The soldier stops her. She then tries a different route. The game continues until she does or does not complete her chore,” Safer said.

At the same time, drawings sometimes express the fears of children witnessing scenes beyond their comprehension.

“I have seen drawings of coffins and flowers, of soldiers hitting a door with rifles,” Safer said. “Once, I saw a little girl drawing what looked like two scribbles. I asked her what it was. She said it was a child running around in circles until her head fell off.”

Dreams and nightmares also focus more on the intifada and the fright children get from it, according to a Bethlehem University study by Dr. Shafiq Masalha for Save the Children, an international relief organization.

Of 75 dreams that related to the intifada , the study found, 58 had to do with a feeling of helplessness--the father was unable to save his family from the army.

Masalha said that in one common dream, a child will say: “The army entered our house and tied up my father in front of my eyes. I screamed, ‘God help us, our lives are in danger!’ Then I woke up.”

The Israeli government, which is under fire at home and abroad for its handling of the intifada , has recoiled both at the increase in youthful participation and in fatalities. In defense of its policies of firing on protesters, Israeli officials have accused organizers of the intifada of putting children in harm’s way in order to win international sympathy.

During a recent meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, an Israeli delegate asserted that children, along with women, have been dragged out of their classrooms and homes and forced to participate in the intifada .

“Could there be a more blatant violation of human rights than sending women and children to attack soldiers?” he asked.

But Palestinians consider such statements to be a mistaken perception of the anti-Israeli enthusiasm of youngsters.

Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian leader who lives in Jerusalem, said: “I might have felt the way the youths feel now when I was young. But I got my information from books; they have known nothing else but Israeli occupation.

“They consider the occupation a daily problem in their lives, and no one can tell them they should not fight it.”