Sunday, March 11, 2007
Children of the Palestinian intifada: The lost generation -International Herald Tribune
Violent, radical and short of hope in Palestine
... In Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, in an apartment along the rutted main road unpaved after the halt of American aid to the Palestinian Authority, Najwa and Taher el-Assar brood about their three children, Mustafa, 6, Ahmed, 5, and newborn Salma.
"The boys have become so violent in the way they think," she said. "In a way, they're no longer children." She described how she and Taher watched the news last summer of the shelling on a Gaza beach that left a family dead, a tragedy Israel denied causing but could not explain. "I feel that time stopped," she said. "And then days later, Mustafa says, 'I want to be fat, mommy.' And why? 'Because I want to put on a suicide belt and not have the Israelis see it,' he said."
"I was shocked," Assar said. "But it's in the news, the environment, the Israeli operations, the sound of the Apaches and the F-16s and the cannons. It all affects them, and they get nervous. Ahmed is very violent with his brother, he has no patience, he doesn't like to share, and I have to watch him all the time."
For the Eid festival, the boys asked for toy Kalashnikovs and Uzis. "They classify the weapons, they want a particular gun. And when you think of the violence, and what future will we have here? It will be a very violent future."
Najwa said softly: "I feel there is no way I can protect them or hide them. Normally people are happy with a new baby, but when I delivered Salma I thought, 'Oh my God, a third child in this life.' It haunts me - I think, 'What if? What if? What if a rocket hits the house? What if the Israelis have another "accident"? What if Mustafa is 19 and attracted to a group of militants and I don't know, and I hear on TV that this person went to Israel and exploded himself?' You live with this, 'What if?' But there's no inner peace, you get so nervous you want to scream!"
Taher said: "But we can't give them security and safety. They can't live as normal children. When a kid realizes a parent can't supply security and safety, what is the point of these parents?"
Najwa said: "They understand our anxieties, even when we're silent." She tries to explain Israeli sonic booms to the boys as the flatulence of a plane that eats too much, she said. "Yet I become more scared than they do. And they feel it. I hug them to comfort them and I'm the one taking comfort from them!"
...
Raed, 30, was arrested in the first intifada, when he was 16. ... "I talk about willing my children to be martyrs for Allah, but I honestly wish for them to be safe and healthy, that's all."
...
There is bravado there, but also frustration. None of the fighters, who agreed to talk if their last names were not published, believes a Palestinian state will be established; none can imagine living next to Israel. All of them want to leave and start again, somewhere.
Gaza is a tiny, poor, chaotic place of 1.5 million people, 70 percent of them refugees or their descendants. Younger, more conservative and more religious than the West Bank, Gaza is the heartland of Hamas, and the people of Gaza are even more constrained by Israeli and Egyptian security restrictions on their travel. There are fewer jobs than in the West Bank, and even more weapons.
...
With the economy of Gaza shutting down, much of the work available for young people is either in the swollen and disorganized security forces or in the armed militias or gangs, many of them built on clan loyalties, and some of which engage more in racketeering than in fighting. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with considerable financial help from Iran and Syria, are known at least to pay their people, even if Hamas cannot pay full salaries to all Palestinian Authority employees.
Hassan, 21, ran out of money before finishing university, but can't imagine what he would do in Gaza with a degree. "I look at the graduates here, and their diplomas are useless," he said. "That's why I'm in the resistance."
...
Mirvat Massoud was 18, the first child in her family to go to university, when she decided last November to blow herself up. The Israeli army had taken over Beit Hanun, a town in northern Gaza, and was interrogating its inhabitants, looking for weapons, militants and those who fire Qassam rockets into Israel.
Inspired by a 2004 suicide attack carried out in Ashdod, Israel, by her cousin, Nabil, on behalf of Fatah's Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Mirvat volunteered to become a suicide bomber for the group. She was close to Nabil, who lived upstairs in Jabaliya refugee camp and was only a year older. The group declined her offer, however, saying that one young "martyr" in a family was enough. They told her father, Amin Massoud, a long-time Fatah member, who said he was shocked.
"I spoke to her of course," said Massoud, agitated, moving his hands through the empty air. "I said, 'Your education will be jihad. Going to school is jihad. If you become a doctor, that's jihad.' But I don't know what drove her - too much faith inside her, I don't know."
But the wall above Mirvat's desk is still covered with "martyr posters" from the dead of Jabaliya camp, and her parents knew she was becoming more religious and politically obsessed. She was enraged by reports of a van of schoolchildren hit by shrapnel in Beit Hanun and she slipped away.
She volunteered again, successfully this time, for Islamic Jihad. She died, lightly wounding two Israelis.
...
Even the young fighters of the Abu Rish brigade have tried to leave. Muhammad and Saado, both 27, sold their weapons, took bank loans and paid $2,000 for visas and tickets from Cairo to Beijing on Austrian Airlines. They made it out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but the Egyptians put them into a bus, locked the door and drove straight to the airport. For the four days before their departure, they said, the Egyptians then locked them into a crammed airport waiting room.
"A dog wouldn't use the toilet," Muhammad said. "They charged us 150 Egyptian pounds a day ($26.30) to use a seat, even the little kids. One Egyptian said, 'Even a dead body has to pay."' They bribed guards to bring them food and water. The day of their flight, a Friday, they were brought to the departure hall. But an airlines security guard examined their documents and turned them away. Presumably, the visas were fake. "He looked at us as if we were evil," Saado said. "There was no respect for us. I hate the Israelis, but I hate the Egyptians more."
They were returned to the fetid waiting room, and a day later, when there was a busload, they were shipped back, first to El Arish. There they waited for days in an even more disgusting detention area, they said, until the Rafah crossing opened. At Rafah, they said, there was no order or dignity.
"When we finally got back to Gaza, I kissed the soil," Muhammad said, laughing at his humiliation. "We said, 'Gaza is paradise!"' In his own quest to get out, Hussein has contacted the American Consulate in East Jerusalem. But, he said, "I can't get a permit to go to Jerusalem to make an application." ...
Violent, radical and short of hope in Palestine
... In Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, in an apartment along the rutted main road unpaved after the halt of American aid to the Palestinian Authority, Najwa and Taher el-Assar brood about their three children, Mustafa, 6, Ahmed, 5, and newborn Salma.
"The boys have become so violent in the way they think," she said. "In a way, they're no longer children." She described how she and Taher watched the news last summer of the shelling on a Gaza beach that left a family dead, a tragedy Israel denied causing but could not explain. "I feel that time stopped," she said. "And then days later, Mustafa says, 'I want to be fat, mommy.' And why? 'Because I want to put on a suicide belt and not have the Israelis see it,' he said."
"I was shocked," Assar said. "But it's in the news, the environment, the Israeli operations, the sound of the Apaches and the F-16s and the cannons. It all affects them, and they get nervous. Ahmed is very violent with his brother, he has no patience, he doesn't like to share, and I have to watch him all the time."
For the Eid festival, the boys asked for toy Kalashnikovs and Uzis. "They classify the weapons, they want a particular gun. And when you think of the violence, and what future will we have here? It will be a very violent future."
Najwa said softly: "I feel there is no way I can protect them or hide them. Normally people are happy with a new baby, but when I delivered Salma I thought, 'Oh my God, a third child in this life.' It haunts me - I think, 'What if? What if? What if a rocket hits the house? What if the Israelis have another "accident"? What if Mustafa is 19 and attracted to a group of militants and I don't know, and I hear on TV that this person went to Israel and exploded himself?' You live with this, 'What if?' But there's no inner peace, you get so nervous you want to scream!"
Taher said: "But we can't give them security and safety. They can't live as normal children. When a kid realizes a parent can't supply security and safety, what is the point of these parents?"
Najwa said: "They understand our anxieties, even when we're silent." She tries to explain Israeli sonic booms to the boys as the flatulence of a plane that eats too much, she said. "Yet I become more scared than they do. And they feel it. I hug them to comfort them and I'm the one taking comfort from them!"
...
Raed, 30, was arrested in the first intifada, when he was 16. ... "I talk about willing my children to be martyrs for Allah, but I honestly wish for them to be safe and healthy, that's all."
...
There is bravado there, but also frustration. None of the fighters, who agreed to talk if their last names were not published, believes a Palestinian state will be established; none can imagine living next to Israel. All of them want to leave and start again, somewhere.
Gaza is a tiny, poor, chaotic place of 1.5 million people, 70 percent of them refugees or their descendants. Younger, more conservative and more religious than the West Bank, Gaza is the heartland of Hamas, and the people of Gaza are even more constrained by Israeli and Egyptian security restrictions on their travel. There are fewer jobs than in the West Bank, and even more weapons.
...
With the economy of Gaza shutting down, much of the work available for young people is either in the swollen and disorganized security forces or in the armed militias or gangs, many of them built on clan loyalties, and some of which engage more in racketeering than in fighting. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with considerable financial help from Iran and Syria, are known at least to pay their people, even if Hamas cannot pay full salaries to all Palestinian Authority employees.
Hassan, 21, ran out of money before finishing university, but can't imagine what he would do in Gaza with a degree. "I look at the graduates here, and their diplomas are useless," he said. "That's why I'm in the resistance."
...
Mirvat Massoud was 18, the first child in her family to go to university, when she decided last November to blow herself up. The Israeli army had taken over Beit Hanun, a town in northern Gaza, and was interrogating its inhabitants, looking for weapons, militants and those who fire Qassam rockets into Israel.
Inspired by a 2004 suicide attack carried out in Ashdod, Israel, by her cousin, Nabil, on behalf of Fatah's Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Mirvat volunteered to become a suicide bomber for the group. She was close to Nabil, who lived upstairs in Jabaliya refugee camp and was only a year older. The group declined her offer, however, saying that one young "martyr" in a family was enough. They told her father, Amin Massoud, a long-time Fatah member, who said he was shocked.
"I spoke to her of course," said Massoud, agitated, moving his hands through the empty air. "I said, 'Your education will be jihad. Going to school is jihad. If you become a doctor, that's jihad.' But I don't know what drove her - too much faith inside her, I don't know."
But the wall above Mirvat's desk is still covered with "martyr posters" from the dead of Jabaliya camp, and her parents knew she was becoming more religious and politically obsessed. She was enraged by reports of a van of schoolchildren hit by shrapnel in Beit Hanun and she slipped away.
She volunteered again, successfully this time, for Islamic Jihad. She died, lightly wounding two Israelis.
...
Even the young fighters of the Abu Rish brigade have tried to leave. Muhammad and Saado, both 27, sold their weapons, took bank loans and paid $2,000 for visas and tickets from Cairo to Beijing on Austrian Airlines. They made it out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but the Egyptians put them into a bus, locked the door and drove straight to the airport. For the four days before their departure, they said, the Egyptians then locked them into a crammed airport waiting room.
"A dog wouldn't use the toilet," Muhammad said. "They charged us 150 Egyptian pounds a day ($26.30) to use a seat, even the little kids. One Egyptian said, 'Even a dead body has to pay."' They bribed guards to bring them food and water. The day of their flight, a Friday, they were brought to the departure hall. But an airlines security guard examined their documents and turned them away. Presumably, the visas were fake. "He looked at us as if we were evil," Saado said. "There was no respect for us. I hate the Israelis, but I hate the Egyptians more."
They were returned to the fetid waiting room, and a day later, when there was a busload, they were shipped back, first to El Arish. There they waited for days in an even more disgusting detention area, they said, until the Rafah crossing opened. At Rafah, they said, there was no order or dignity.
"When we finally got back to Gaza, I kissed the soil," Muhammad said, laughing at his humiliation. "We said, 'Gaza is paradise!"' In his own quest to get out, Hussein has contacted the American Consulate in East Jerusalem. But, he said, "I can't get a permit to go to Jerusalem to make an application." ...
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