Fear, Rage Fester Inside for West Bank Children

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Families and physicians say that, because of the trauma of war and occupation by the Israeli army, some Palestinian children tremble, vomit or urinate on themselves. Others break out in rashes, pull their hair and rub their skin until it's raw. Still more are given to temper tantrums and flashes of defiance.

As suicide bombings proliferate in Israel and as the Israeli army's 24-hour clamp-down and curfews in major Palestinian cities enter their eighth week, Israelis and Palestinians alike are deeply worried about the long-term effects on the region's young.

Both Israeli and Palestinian children are suffering emotionally because of the stress that comes from not knowing when the next Palestinian suicide bomber will strike or how Israel will retaliate. But there is a special concern that even very young Palestinians are so angry and frustrated by the hardships and humiliations of life under army occupation that they are being radicalized.

Israeli officials acknowledge the problem but see no alternative as long as Palestinian attacks continue. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer responded Monday to a new wave of attacks by Palestinians by announcing a "total ban" on Palestinian travel in much of the West Bank and sealing off part of Gaza with tanks.

"What this generation is passing through will bear more hatred, and they will become more and more hostile against the Jews in the future," says Maryan Suleiman, 62, as she sadly watches her giggling 7-year-old twin grandchildren pretend to be terrorists in her living room. "The suiciders now are nothing compared to what will be."

Mental health experts agree. They say a generation of Palestinians could easily surpass adults in the toxicity of their fear and hatred of Israelis and their willingness to act on their feelings – perhaps through terrorism – when they get older.

The many months of warfare, occupation and then curfew "cause them to think radically and become more and more absorbed with how to take revenge and retaliate," says Yousef Nashaf, an Arab-Israeli clinical psychologist.

Their anger causes them to lash out. Thousands get a steady diet of anti-Israeli images on Arab television. One of Suleiman's twin grandchildren, Mohammad, has been immersed in war for the past several months. The 7-year-old spouts his worldview through a gap-toothed grin: "I hate the Israelis," he says. "They shoot the Arabs."

Israel instituted the curfew and reoccupied Palestinian-controlled territory in June, after it was hit by a wave of suicide attacks that killed hundreds of civilians. Much of the time, children remain confined to their homes, except for those who brazenly play outside, watchful for patrolling Israeli troops.

Shafiq Masalha, an Arab-Israeli clinical psychologist who has studied this conflict's impact on Palestinian children, warns, "If the circumstances are not immediately improved, the long-term effects will just be a catastrophe both for the Palestinians and the Israelis."

Israelis say the conflict has been no less severe on them and their children. Fear of shootings and of suicide bombings has left Israelis under a self-imposed kind of curfew, Israeli government spokesman Dan Seaman says. "The press is quick to talk about the poor Palestinians under curfew," he said last week as he stood outside the blasted cafeteria at Hebrew University where seven people died, including five Americans. "Well, at least those people under curfew are alive."

On both sides, children have died. The incident that started the latest wave of unrest – an Israeli airstrike two weeks ago in Gaza City aimed at a militant leader – killed nine children. Since the uprising began two years ago, the violence has claimed the lives of 245 Palestinian and 72 Israeli children, according to figures kept by B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Children represent about 13% of the total killed since September 2000.

Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli defense minister, agrees with Palestinian critics who say Israel's military crackdown helps produce more suicide bombers. But he says the attacks forced the military to take extreme steps to protect Israeli citizens. "If the threats stop, I can lift the curfew tomorrow," he says.

The occupation and curfew, which affect 700,000 Palestinians, have been partially effective in stopping many attacks, Israelis say. "If this is a bad situation for the Palestinian kids, well, that is something I would not like to see," says Boaz Ganor, an Israeli strategic analyst. "But maybe this is the payment I have to make in order to protect the lives of my kids."

Israeli officials say they never intended the reoccupation or the curfew to be more than temporary. The potential harm to children is one motivating factor behind recent efforts by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to reach a cease-fire agreement with the Palestinians that would allow an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

"He understands the occupation is having an impact on the minds and the hearts of the Palestinian children," Peres advisor Yoram Dori says. "That's why he wants to change it."

On the windblown streets of Ramallah, the vacant avenues and shuttered windows downtown give the city a spectral appearance, like the aftermath of some apocalyptic disaster. The emptiness is broken temporarily by the occasional appearance of Palestinian ambulances or Israeli troops on the prowl in jeeps, tanks or armored personnel carriers.

Still, here and there, someone ventures out. A tiny gaggle of children spills into an alleyway or clusters on a sidewalk. A few attempt to launch kites. The green-and-black flags of the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups hang from power lines where they were thrown as acts of defiance.

"We are living in a tragedy," says Abeer Massen, 35. She is sitting in the living room of the apartment she shares here in Ramallah with her husband, Basil, a plumber who is unable to work because of Israel's occupation, and their five children. Her youngest, Razan, 6, lolls nearby in her Pokemon dress. Razan has seen her father shot in the knee by Israeli soldiers and has fled into her building when troops forced children off the street. She has frequent bouts of violence, in which she slaps her mother. And she wets herself.

"She starts shivering, shaking every now and then," Massen says. "This generation, which should be playing like all the other children of the world, is only following up to see (on Palestinian television) how many are killed in this attack or that attack. And this saddens me. Because I want them to have their own innocent childhood."

In their house overlooking the battered compound of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the Abdo brothers – four men and their families share the residence – say fighting here between Israelis and Palestinians was particularly fierce back in March. Amjad Abdo, 33, whose 19-month-old son, Ameen, spouts the Arabic word for tank, dabbabeh, each time a tracked vehicle rolls by, worries that the young children too often see fear in their own parents' faces.

"I can tell it in their eyes when they see one of us. ... We try as hard as we can not to show them our faces," he says. "Because as soon as they feel the fear, they cling to their parents."

The school year had to be extended and graduation exams for 51,000 Palestinian high school seniors rescheduled because of the occupation and curfew. Summer vacation, which children awaited as eagerly here as anywhere else on the globe, has become a seemingly endless string of days with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Suhrook Suleiman, a slender 11-year-old, runs up to visitors in the street during one of the infrequent breaks in the curfew. Nearby lies a sedan crushed by an Israeli tank. Her message is simple, but her voice is trembling. "We were looking forward to going (somewhere) for summer vacation," she explains. "But now, nothing."

Pressed about her experience, she describes her insomnia, the rash that comes whenever she is frightened, how she rubs her skin incessantly. "I try to sleep. But every time I hear a tank or something roll by, I cannot sleep until I look out and I am sure it is gone."

Salah Safi, a dermatologist in Ramallah, says he has seen the incidence of skin rashes and hair loss more than double since the curfew started. "This is all due to mental and psychological stress," he says.

"I feel there is a rock here," says honor student Lina Sewhail, 17, her hands held over her chest. "I want to go out. I can't breathe. I can't stand the house. I hate the house now." She says she has read all her books and is tired of watching television. Lina vows that if she can escape the West Bank to attend college in one of the Persian Gulf states next fall, she will never come back to her native land: "I'm leaving it for the Jews. Let them take it. But just let me be free."

Palestinian television and, for those who have satellite reception, the Lebanon-based extremist Hezbollah group's Al-Manar station now have a captive audience. The broadcasts are filled with dirgelike songs played against a backdrop of video clips showing street fighting, Israeli soldiers ducking for cover and the funerals of young militants and suicide bombers.

Members of the Habash family, who are Christians and live just off Ramallah's central Amanarah Square, sneak a few minutes away from television and the confines of their house to sip Turkish coffee on patio furniture in the alley outside, momentarily defying the curfew.

Abdo Habash, a carpenter who can't work because of Israel's reoccupation, is the father of Simar, 7. Frustrated by his life under curfew, the boy annoys his neighbors with a whistle. He blows it for hours in the street or alley. And he quarrels with his brothers and throws stones at the Israelis. "His whole manner has become hostile and he's more aggressive. It's increasing," the father says. "When a tank passes by, he just grabs a bottle or whatever he chooses, a stone, and throws it. There's no fear."

Experts say that unlike warfare, which has a traumatizing effect mostly on those immediately near the violence, the curfew is broad and systematic in its impact.

The effects have been particularly severe in Nablus, a city of 150,000 and an area the Israeli military says was the home base of two suicide bombers who struck Tel Aviv on July 17 and the gunmen who fired on a bus carrying Israeli settlers in the West Bank on July 16. Thirteen died in the attacks, including three Israeli children.

Until tanks moved into Nablus on Friday, the curfew there was lifted sporadically and for only a few hours so people could shop for supplies and take care of their businesses. Because supplies cannot be brought into the towns under curfew, there has been a shortage of basic staples such as milk and medicine, says Usama Bishtawi, a leading physician there.

"It has never been so urgent to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as it is today," says Eyad Sarraj, a Palestinian psychiatrist in Gaza City. "The curfew is the most damaging thing. You have to be in prison for one day to realize what is a curfew."

In the living room of the Suleiman house, the 7-year-old twins Mohammad and Shada play the game they have made up during the weeks they have been confined to their house. Mohammad is the martyr, the suicide bomber lying sprawled on the carpet, blown apart by his mission. His sister is the martyr's mother. Bent over the tiny figure of her brother, Shada holds her face and rocks back and forth, weeping over her loss.

"It scares me to see them like this," says their mother, Widad Suleiman, 33. "It frightens me that in the future they might even think of doing such acts."