Violence harms kids

By Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH, West Bank (IPS/GIN) — Palestinian children continue to be victims of indiscriminate violence, due to the Israeli occupation and Palestinian infighting in the occupied territories. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs expressed concern in its August report for the inadequate protection afforded Palestinian children.
"In July, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy … was shot in the head with live ammunition and killed by the Israeli border police following an anti-barrier demonstration in Ni'lin village in the central West Bank," the report said. The next day, a 15-year-old was declared brain dead after he, too, was shot in the head at close range with rubber-coated metal bullets by Israel's paramilitary border police.
"Another 44 children were injured this month, all but one in the West Bank. Two children were killed and seven injured in Palestinian internal fighting in the Gaza Strip in July. All these incidents bring the number of child fatalities to 95 Palestinians and four Israelis; the number of child injuries has reached 386 for Palestinians and eight for Israelis since the beginning of the year," the report added.
IPS (Inter Press Service) spoke to Muhammad Ayman, 18, from a West Bank village near Ramallah. Ayman watched a close friend bleed to death after being shot in the head by an Israeli settler during a demonstration to protest Israel's offensive into Gaza several months ago. "The settler started shooting toward us before we even reached the settlement. He got out of the bus and … shot from 50 meters away," Ayman said. The teens took their friend to a hospital, but he was dead on arrival. An Israeli police investigation ruled the shooting "self-defense."
Marwan Diab, a psychologist from the Gaza Community Health Program that counsels traumatized children, said the psychological impact of the endemic violence on Palestine's future leaders and adults is dire. "A generation of Palestinian children face the danger of being psychologically damaged beyond repair unless there is sufficient urgent psychological intervention and an improvement in the political, social and economic conditions in the Gaza Strip," he said.
Patricia McPhillips, a special representative of the United Nations Children's Fund in the occupied Palestinian Territories, spoke of the thousands participating in counseling and parenting sessions offered by the Fund. She and Diab report a positive response to their interventions but said long-term results are still unknown.
Palestinian children also battle discrimination, poverty, lack of recreational and educational facilities, and a political horizon devoid of hope for their precarious existence. John Ging, Gaza director of the U.N. Refugees and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) said 50 to 60 percent of Gazan children at UNRWA schools had failed their math exams, while 40 percent failed their Arabic exams at the beginning of the year. "School attendance has been seriously disrupted due to inter-factional fighting, repeated Israeli military raids, and unprecedented poverty, where children come to school hungry and unable to concentrate," he said. UNRWA provides free schooling for Palestinian refugee children from grades 1 through 9 and offers limited secondary education. Schools must operate double shifts to overcome the shortage of places. UNICEF says 70 percent of Gaza's children are refugees.
Many Palestinian infants die from congenital malformation, low birth weight, premature birth, and acute respiratory infection in the camps, the UNRWA says. This is compounded by high rates of malnutrition, economic privation, and unemployment exacerbated by the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Israel regularly jails Palestinian children in facilities with adult criminals and gives them almost none of the rights given to Israeli minors who are jailed. A report by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the Israeli army arrested around 700 Palestinian children in 2007 and detained 30 without trial. "The total number of Palestinian children arrested by Israel since the beginning of the second Intifadah in September 2000 [is] approximately 5,900," the Office says.
The report also described humiliating treatment and physical and psychological abuse. Many children were arrested at checkpoints, in the streets, or at home in the middle of the night following raids by the Israeli military. Stone-throwing can earn a 10 to 20 year sentence; damage to an Israeli Defense Force facility carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment; and harming, insulting, or threatening the Force carries a 10-year sentence — five years less than the average murder sentence in Israel, according to Defense of Children International.
"There is no question whatsoever that the plight of Palestinian children is inextricably intertwined with politics. My reason for cautious optimism is the amazing resilience I have witnessed amongst these youngsters, despite the extraordinary difficulties they face," Diab said.