Gaza: Where Being a Palestinian Child is Punishable by Death

By Stephen Sosebee

"I was walking home from my sister's house when the soldiers shot me. There was a demonstration, but I was going home and not part of it,'' 14-year-old Hamdi explained from his bed in Gaza's Shifa Hospital at the end of January.

Such an account by a boy in his rock-throwing prime might be taken with a grain of salt, particularly since he is from the squalid Maghazi refugee camp, where nearly all male teenagers clash with soldiers. Hamdi, however, doesn't have hands to throw stones. Due to a congenital birth defect, the boy's right hand is missing completely, while his left consists of a gnarled finger and palm.

On this sunny winter day, when Shifa's wards are full of children and other civilians suffering gunshot or beating injuries inflicted by the Israel Defense Forces, a doctor shows me Hamdi's X-ray.

"On January 26, this boy was shot with two live rounds in his left femur, one dumdum bullet that exploded in his right leg, he has a plastic bullet in his knee and also he was hit with two rubber bullets," the doctor explains, pointing to the bullet fragments and wounds so clearly visible on the film. Then, after a long look at the boy without hands lying in such pain in the hospital bed, the doctor simply shakes his head and walks away.

A boy without hands shot with four different types of bullets from at least four different IDF guns should consider himself lucky. At least he is alive. Eleven other Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed by Israeli gunfire in the two months since Dec. 1, 1992.

The shooting deaths of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli occupation soldiers and of Jewish ''settlers'' is hardly new. Well over 200 have been killed since the intifada began in December 1987. In the seven months since Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister last July, 25 Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied territories. Most were shot in the chest or head with high-velocity live ammunition.

''It defies common sense that a party seriously involved in the peace process would engage in such repressive measures,'' Dr. Haidar Abdul Shafi, head of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks, charged at a Jan. 26 press conference in Jerusalem. "Israeli soldiers are not only shooting to kill; they are shooting to kill children. "

From the start of December to Jan. 21, 1993, no fewer than 197 children were injured in Gaza by IDF gunfire. That figure does not include Hamdi, the boy born without hands, or an 11-month-old child in Breij camp who was shot and injured on Jan. 23. Nor does it include the 13 children shot and injured on one day, Jan. 25, at Jebalya refugee camp. The list grows every day.

On Jan. 16, 11-year-old Shireen Hussein was shot in the abdomen and killed as she played in the street in the Jebalya refugee camp. The following day in the nearby Shati refugee camp, 14-year-old Mazen Dababish was shot in the back of the head and killed as he returned from school. Two other teenagers were killed in Shati camp in the clashes that erupted following Mazen's death.

Shati camp is under curfew two days after the killings, but members of the Dababish family greet mourners outside their home at the edge of the camp in the traditional Palestinian manner. Coffee is served for every visitor and dates are passed in memory of Mazen.

"The military commander came and told me that he doesn't want any problems and that we have three days to finish the funeral. As you see, my house is full of people from all the camps in Gaza, 24 hours a day,'' explains Mazen's father, a thin man who manages a welcoming smile. His gentle courtesy, despite his realization that I come from the country that makes the oppression of Palestinians possible, embarrasses me.

"Crying Will Not Bring Him Back"

"We are a people, we are not aggressive and we feel pain,'' he says simply. "We are from flesh and bone. My son is a martyr, and his death is for his people and nation. Crying will not bring him back." Mazen's friends stare coldly at me as his father provides details about their friend's death. These boys from Gaza's refugee camps know only occupation and intifada.

They have endured since birth a situation unique in the history of the world. Their persecution is slow, systematic and blatant, yet they still resist.

The day after Mazen's killing, 13-yearold Lwa'a Bacroun was walking to his home on the settlers' road that passes the edge of the Shujiya slum in Gaza city when an Israeli car was stoned. A thin bearded man in a skull cap got out and calmly shot Lwa'a in the heart from across the road. As the boy died in the sandy ditch, the religious settler got back into his car and drove away.

Two days after Lwa'a's murder, an Israeli military patrol lazily sits across the road from his home, eyeing mourners who stop to pay condolences. Unlike Abu Mazen, Lwa'a's father is too distraught to answer questions about his son's killing.

"An Israeli captain came last night and said that a settler from Gush Qatif settlement turned himself in,'' the boy's uncle explains in fluent English. "The man told police he shot at the ground. The oldest boy of this poor family returns from school and is killed in cold blood. What are we supposed to think of them when they keep killing our children? Do they really want peace?''

As we leave, two yellow-plated Israeli cars full of bearded men in skull caps pass the house. They are settlers heading south to Gush Qatif, where their neighbor and co-religionist remains free of any charge in connection with killing a 13-year-old. It is a typical Israeli reaction to the killing of Palestinian children. Still claiming moral superiority to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the Israeli government's behavior in Gaza is criminally hypocritical. Listen to the best among them:

"Too many kids are getting killed," said member of the Knesset Yossi Sarid, a cabinet minister in the current government and outspoken dove, on Jan. 17. "It is not enough to say that this is being investigated. The cabinet must be informed on what has happened to these investigations. A young girl who was not involved in any kind of demonstration was just killed. I think the cabinet should hold a special discussion when a child is killed."

Prime Minister Rabin refused to respond directly to this complaint. After all, it is not as if they are children of Israel.

Nor is there much to be learned from an investigation that cannot be learned from the most casual reading of the Israeli press: "If you see someone holding a cinderblock, Molotov cocktail or an iron bar, you shoot him without making any bones about the matter," an Israeli border police officer in Khan Younis was quoted as saying in an Israeli newspaper at the end of January. "There is no longer a procedure for apprehending a suspect."

A boy without hands cannot hold a cinderblock, however. Nor do little girls in Jebalya throw Molotov cocktails. If a 14-year-old boy is shot in the back of the head, how much danger could anything he might have held in his hand have been to any soldier or settler? Until members of the current Israeli government value equally the lives of both Arab and Jewish children, the killing of Palestinian children will continue, and the government of Israel, and all of its people, will be morally responsible. And so, I read in the tear-filled eyes of bereaved parents, and the angry eyes of surviving brothers and sisters, am I and all of my countrymen, who shield and support the systematic slaughter of the children of Gaza and the West Bank.

Steve Sosebee is a free-lance writer from Ohio.