Humiliation can scar a boy for life
By Ruth Sinai
Haaretz, December 1, 2003
Israel refuses to allow international monitoring
in the territories but the signs are clear that
children are suffering Prof. Mohammed Haj-Yahia,
a senior lecturer in social work at the Hebrew University, lives in Shuafat. A few months ago he noticed, not far from his home, a boy of about seven, with a knapsack on his back standing and crying. Haj-Yahia stopped and asked the boy why he was crying The boy pointed to a Border Police jeep standing at the bottom of the road and said that when he passed by the soldiers, they told him to stop and made him sing "Hummus, ful, ahla,
Mishmar, Hagvul" (hummus, beans, way to go,
Border Police).
Haj-Yahia, who studies the effects of the two
intifadas in the last 15 years, among other
things, on the mental health of Palestinian
children, is convinced that the boy's encounter
with the Border Policemen will scar him for
life. "
Palestinian children repeatedly refer to the
feelings of humiliation," he says, "their own
humiliation and especially the humiliation of
their parents in front of them, which is an
even more difficult experience for them, which
only intensifies their sense of helplessness."
Haj-Yahia described the psychological effects of
living in a war zone on Palestinian children at
an international symposium 10 days ago in
Vienna called: "Born Into Conflict - Children's
Human Rights in Palestine and Israel." The
Israel-Palestine Project (IPP), an organization
devoted to bringing Israelis and Palestinians
together, and the Bruno Kreisky Forum for
International Dialogue arranged the event.
At the different sessions, representatives of
international organizations, Palestinian and
Israeli researchers, and human rights activists
told of the damage caused to Palestinian
children by the frequent disruptions of their
studies due to closures and encirclements,
children forced to quit school and go to work
in order to help support their families, young
women who are pushed into marriages at the age
of 15 by parents concerned about protecting
their daughters' honor at a time of increasing
crime and the breakdown of social frameworks,
and especially the emotional trauma experienced
by children from an early age due to the
violence they are witness to almost daily.
The researchers noted that teenagers who were
born during the first intifada experienced many
years of violence during their young lives, and
there is no way of knowing how this exposure
will affect their adult lives. One finding is
already clear: in his studies, Haj-Yahia has
found that the exposure of children and their
parents to political violence is the strongest
predictor of violence in the family - between
spouses, against the children and among
siblings.
The involvement of children in a bloody conflict
is not unique to Israelis and Palestinians, as
most of the fighting in the world in the years
since World War II is taking place within
countries and not between countries, and most
of those involved and most of the casualties in
them are civilians and not soldiers. According
to UNICEF data, in the last decade, two million
children were killed in wars, six million were
injured and 20 million were uprooted from their
homes and became refugees.
Young population
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the number
of injuries to children is especially high
because more than 50 percent of the
Palestinians are children, a particularly high
percentage.
The UN emissary for children in areas of
conflict, Henrik Hagstrom, told symposium
participants that his office has instituted a
policy of "outing" countries that exploit
children to fight in conflicts involving rebels
or rival groups. This happens despite an
impressive series of international conventions
and laws meant to ensure the welfare of
children and protect them in combat zones.
"The international community has tools that it
had never had before, but the situation on the
ground isn't improving," says Hagstrom. "Now
the question is do we have the political will
to use these tools." Hagstrom noted that his
office launched an international campaign to
require countries to implement the standards
set by law to protect children and said that
international monitoring of the conditions of
children in conflict areas must be a top
priority.
In the same context, many of the conference
participants noted Israel's refusal to allow
international monitoring in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. One of the tools that Hagstrom pins
great hopes on is the International Court for
War Crimes. At the moment, his office is
working on gathering material in order to try
those responsible among the rebel groups in the
Democratic Republic of Congo who drafted
children aged nine to 17 into their war against
government forces. He hopes the trials of those
responsible for war crimes against children
will have a deterrent effect and does not rule
out the possibility in the future of trying
Israelis who may have been responsible for war
crimes against Palestinian children during the
intifada. However, at this stage, Israeli
soldiers have no cause for worry. The United
Nations cannot sue subjects of countries that
have not approved the protocols appended to the
Geneva Convention - agreements from 1977 that
relate to protection of civilians in
international and local conflicts - and Israel
is among the small group of countries that is
careful not to approve them.
Human rights experts noted at the conference
that the report Israel submitted to the UN two
years ago as required by its commitment to
uphold the International Convention on
Children's Rights - which Israel did ratify -
did not include a report on the situation of
Palestinian children in the territories. Israel
disputed the UN's claim that it is responsible
for protecting these children, on the ground
that it disputes its definition of the
territories as an occupied area where it is
bound by the obligations of the Geneva
Convention. Israel also did not ratify an
international agreement signed last year by 22
countries and intended specifically to prevent
the involvement of children in armed
conflicts.
Handball championships
In the absence of a political solution on the
horizon, and given the ongoing damage incurred
by Palestinian children, the international
organizations are focusing primarily on efforts
to protect children as much as possible. The
main activity is run by the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), whose objective is to
supply the children with alternate occupations
so that they do not roam the streets of areas
of conflict and in so doing, reduces their
exposure to violence and emotional and physical
blows. "The goal is also to provide them with
as much communal educational activities as
possible, to imbue their childhood with as much
of a sense of normality as possible," says the
UNICEF official responsible for developing and
implementing programs for the protection of
children in the territories, Sally Aires, of
Australia.
"In an environment of arrests, violence,
funerals, closures and humiliations, the
opportunities for children to play and grow up
like normal children are very limited. The
elementary right of children to play as it is
entrenched in the convention on children's
rights is forgotten at times of intense
violence," says Aires.
The main activities during the summer months
were concentrated in 300 day camps with some
40,000 campers. The camps were run in
conjunction with the Palestinian Education
Ministry and adhered to principles of equal
representation for boys and girls and
preventing violence. In all the camps, the
participants signed a convention in this spirit
and local and international monitors for the
camps visited each camp to ensure these
principles were being implemented, says Aires.
In many schools, UNICEF has set up sports
committees comprised of students aged 12-18 who
will themselves coordinate sports activities in
their schools. In four cities - Jenin, Jericho,
Gaza and Rafiah - a youth council was
established to function alongside the city
council. Teenagers chose peers from their city
for each of these councils. Thus far more than
9,000 youths have participated in the
elections. In Gaza, for example, the
municipality accepted a program to build sports
fields submitted by the youth council.
The organization also supplies poor children
with school bags and supplies so that they can
go to school instead of roaming the streets.
Lucy Nusseibeh, the director of Middle East
Center for Nonviolence and Democracy (MEND) and
the wife of Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh,
explained that "when a curfew is lifted for two
hours, it's hard to know what to do first - go
buy some food? Visit your ailing grandmother?
Take the kids for a walk or visit friends? Go
to the doctor?" Nusseibeh, a mother of four,
said, "The main characteristics of the
occupation are humiliation and intentional
provocation. The soldiers call to the children,
annoy them until they get angry and are pushed
to throwing stones, and then the soldiers have
a reason to arrest them or shoot at them. The
prevailing emotion in this conflict is not
hatred, it is fear."
Anemia and poor behavior
l 584 children were killed in the three years of the intifada, among them 480 Palestinians and 104 Israelis
l 9,000 Palestinian children have been injured during this period.
l Two thirds of Palestinian children live below the poverty line ($2 a day).
l 38 percent of Palestinian children are anemic.
l 23 percent of students and 36 percent of teachers are unable to get to school on any given day.
l 80 percent of parents report their kids have health and behavioral problems - sleep disorders, aggression, aches and pains.
Source: UNICEF
