| Recently, a group of some 20 schoolchildren in
their early teens was in the Saja'iya neighborhood in the eastern part
of Gaza. The children are devoted to the symbolic action of the Intifada:
throwing stones at well-fortified IDF positions or at military jeeps and
settlers' cars on the road connecting Netzarim to the rest of Israel.
While hundreds of these children's friends have
stopped believing in the purpose of this symbolic act and return home at
the end of the school day, this local group continues to look eastward,
to the Karni-Muntar crossing. On February 26, a new IDF position, consisting
of a concrete observation post, an armored personnel carrier (APC) and
occasionally, a military jeep or two, was set up there. The entire area
around the position is open; hundreds of acres of former orchards were
razed and any movement in the area is visible to the soldiers observing
the area. The children from Saja'iya are well aware that the stones they
throw, even if they use a slingshot, will just barely bounce off the post
or the well-protected jeeps. The soldiers fire straight at them from an
APC, the post or a jeep. The children know they may get injured or killed,
that throwing a stone or two will not give them all enough time to hide,
yet they continue to come. The adults around them have noted that recently
these kids have become increasingly devout in their religious observance.
They make sure to attend the funeral of every person killed by IDF fire
and when they come to the cemetery, they rub their faces with earth as
an act of purification before the prayer service. Their devoutness is seen
as a way of coping with the fear, which is the lot of every adult and child
living in the Gaza Strip. Neighborhood activists from each of the two rival
Islamic organizations - Hamas and Islamic Jihad -tried to convince the
group to announce its affiliation with their respective organizations.
The children rejected the idea outright and stressed they were independent.
One member was Mohammed Hilis, 13. On Tuesday,
February 27, he approached the border area where Netzarim residents drive
pass by with their escort of military jeeps. At around 2:30 P.M., witnesses
told an investigator from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, some
30 children moved to about 50 meters away from the border with Israel and
started throwing stones at the jeep leading a convoy of Netzarim residents'
cars. The jeep stopped and a soldier fired two live bullets at the kids.
Hilis was hit on the left side of his head. Witnesses said the soldiers
did not use any non-lethal methods to warn the kids. Hilis died from his
critical injury on March 1.
The stone throwers are not the only ones wounded
by live ammunition. On the same Tuesday when Hilis was fatally injured,
5-year-old Fatma Abu Salah was hit by a bullet. Her family lives in the
village of Absan, east of Khan Yunis, close to the border with Israel.
Her mother told the Palestinian Center for Human Rights investigator that
shooting could be heard in the area starting at 4:30 that morning. At 7:30
A.M., Fatma was at the entrance to her kindergarten, around a kilometer
west of the border, when she was hit by a bullet. Was it a stray bullet
from the area where there was an exchange of fire? In Gaza, they do not
believe in stray bullets. People there believe the IDF has the most advanced
equipment that lets them see every target, day and night, and therefore,
every shot fired, from far away or from nearby, is intentional - even one
that hits an 8-year-old boy.
Unlike Fatma Abu Salah, Mustafa al-Luka, 15, was
shot from close range. A resident of the Brazil refugee quarter in Rafiah,
Luka was sitting in front of the Al Nur mosque on February 26 at about
4:30 P.M., when he heard some shots and an explosion. The mosque is 10
meters away from the Gaza-Egypt border and the adjacent security road controlled
by Israel. He noticed the head of an Israeli soldier sticking out of a
tank driving along the border from west to east and another tank coming
from the east. The two tanks met at a point opposite the mosque, he told
the Palestinian Center for Human Rights investigator.
"I saw an Israeli soldier aiming his machine
gun at me. I heard three shots fired. I felt something hot penetrating
my right elbow and chest. I managed to run away into the neighborhood and
from there I was taken to Jenina hospital (in Rafiah)," the boy said.
So not a day goes by in the Gaza Strip without
a few children being injured by Israeli shooting and not a week goes by
without at least one or two adults, or maybe one, two or three children,
being killed in circumstances similar to those described above. The people
here experience firsthand the reports in the Israeli press about "an easing
up of the open-fire regulations." At first glance, it seems that people
have accepted the fact that their lives are in constant danger, because
wherever they may be, they will be within range of the Israeli weapons.
The expressions on peoples' faces, the jokes they make about the situation
and their ever present smiles do not reveal any fear or panic and indicate
an incredible ability to adapt to every situation, however crazy it may
be.
That is why one Israeli reserve soldier, a psychotherapist
serving at the Tel al-Sultan post, was so surprised to hear from Herve
Landa, a fellow psychotherapist, that the Palestinians are also suffering
emotionally from the long days of fire from machine guns, tanks, helicopters
and rocket launchers that is aimed directly at their homes. "And I was
convinced that the Palestinians don't experience any traumas or anxieties,"
the Israeli soldier-psychotherapist said. "They pass in front of us
at the roadblock and their faces don't show any emotions."
The two psychologists met by chance at one of the
roadblocks in the Gaza Strip. The soldier wanted to know who this Frenchman
was and why he was in such a dangerous place and they started to chat.
Landa works for the French humanitarian organization, Médecins
Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders), which was
founded in 1972 to provide medical aid to places afflicted by wars, disasters
and bloody conflicts. In recent years, after gaining experience in places
like Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo, the organization realized that it is
not enough to send only medical teams to treat physical injuries and that
the emotional pressures and resulting physical symptoms are widespread
and no less paralyzing. In the shadow of the renewed Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, MSF has opened two new branches in the Palestinian territories
- one in the Gaza Strip and one in the Old City of Hebron. Doctors and
psychologists work together there, coordinating with each other, exchanging
information and using similar methods: They do not wait in clinics for
people to come, but make house calls, mainly because of the travel restrictions
Israel has imposed on the Palestinians since October 2000. The interpreters
working with them are Palestinians who spent many years in Algeria.
The families in the Khan Yunis refugee quarter,
which is closed in from the west by the Gush Katif settlements and some
IDF posts, warmly welcome Landa and his interpreter. They are given some
simple chairs to sit on in the courtyard of a building or next to a room
destroyed by missile strikes or a wall pocked with bullet holes, or they
may sit on a mattress in the guest room of a house. Sometimes they talk
to the whole family, parents and children, and sometimes they ask to speak
in private with one family member. As Landa speaks and listens, he looks
straight into peoples' eyes, as if they shared a common language. He remembers
every detail people told him during previous meetings. He remembers who
this child had a fight with after he was injured in the leg by Israeli
shooting, and what was the dream of the girl who caught a bullet near her
heart and whom no expected to survive for long and yet she is still alive.
People are amazed that he remembers every detail and that seems to be part
of the treatment: the sense that someone is so interested in what they
have to tell him, that every detail is so important to him that he does
not forget any of it. Why are the legs trembling? Palestinians are not
used to having intense conversations. No one needs a psychologist from
abroad to know that deaths every day and so many wounded people, ruined
homes and so much shelling and shooting affects people's emotional state;
that because of it, parents have trouble getting out of bed in the morning
and children are more violent at school and wet their beds. But Landa is
a big believer in the power of talking things out and in the importance
of digging underneath their fears and physical symptoms. It seems that
the Palestinian girls agree with him and are a lot more open and eager
to talk, even about deep- rooted emotions and about their bad dreams. It
is a lot harder to get the boys to talk.
He believes that thanks to the talks they have
had, K., who has a bullet lodged near her heart, started getting out of
the bed she had holed up in for many long weeks and smiling. She was injured
while inside her house, by shots fired from a helicopter hovering over
the neighborhood. K. lives in constant fear that the bullet will move and
she will die. A dull pain next to her heart is a constant reminder of the
injury. She is afraid to exert herself. She does not carry textbooks and
notebooks to school; Landa suggests she start off by carrying one book.
She bakes just eight pitas, while her sisters bake dozens and half-jokingly
tell her that she is not doing her share of the family chores the way they
do. Before she met Landa, she did not bake any pitas. "People help themselves
through me," he says. K. relates a dream: The Jews are shooting at
us, half of the people are killed, half live. "Who are you with?"
Landa asks. K. is confused by the question. "Are you among the living
or among the dead?" he asks again, and she remembers that not only
did she remain alive, but also, she helped with the rescue efforts. The
dream is not a good one, she says, and Landa tells her that he thinks it
is a positive dream, because she is active in it and does everything.
A., who was hit in his leg and hip by live ammunition
while he was part of a group throwing stones at soldiers, noted that since
he was wounded, he is prone to outbursts, goes wild and scares people away
from him. When he hears the sounds of shots being fired, the area of his
wound throbs and irritates him. By talking to Landa, he learns not to be
afraid of pain, to accept himself even when he has outbursts, to admit
that it is not his friends' fault so that next time he will count quietly
to himself for a bit before letting loose.
Landa tries to talk to the adults and the children
about the fear they feel. If the fear strikes when they hear shots fired,
that is only natural; if the fear also strikes when there is no shooting,
they try together to identify causes that spark such fear. Many people
told him that they are especially afraid at night: In the refugees' homes,
the bathroom is located in the courtyard. The houses sit in full view of
the Israeli observers. They are afraid that if they move in the courtyard
or turn on a light, they will be shot at immediately. The parents, he notices,
have trouble getting up in the morning because it is hard to find hope
and a reason to get up for. They are short-tempered with their children
to cover up the helplessness they feel: Without any income, they cannot
provide for their children and cannot protect them from the shooting. In
the evenings, when the shooting starts, the great flight away from the
houses begins. Entire neighborhoods are emptied of their residents at night.
During the flight, someone always stays behind or gets lost and the trauma
will affect the family for days afterward. The most serious symptom of
anxiety is physical pain in the legs. People discovered that their legs
were trembling and could not carry them. Talking with Landa helps them
understand that these are real, logical pains, and not the result of some
mysterious bodily injury and therefore they are not incurable.
In February, MSF's doctors and psychologist dealt
with a particularly difficult case involving a mixture of physical and
emotional injuries. On February 12-13, the IDF used tear gas to disperse
Palestinian rioters near the Tufah gate, at the end of the seaside road
linking the center of Khan Yunis to its refugee camp, which continues to
the sea (near Gush Katif). Instead of the grayish white clouds, which the
neighborhood residents were familiar with from the past, a yellow and black
gas spread through the neighborhood. People initially thought that something
was on fire and instead of running away from the smoke, they moved closer
to it and were then injured even more. People vomited for several days,
suffered stomach pains, had tremors in their hands and legs and were unable
to move. A storm arose when some Palestinians, led by Yasser Arafat, claimed
that Israel was using a banned type of poisonous gas. The IDF quickly denied
the charge.
Helen Briso, one of MSF's doctors, spent several
days in the Khan Yunis hospital checking the patients. Contrary to the
Israeli claims that the tremors and other reactions were staged, she confirmed
that all the ailments were genuine. MSF representatives concluded that
the gas used by the IDF was indeed in very high concentrations, which the
people were not used to. Most of the Palestinian doctors reached the same
conclusion and some of them also readily acknowledged that the ongoing
physical reactions were a kind of hysteria caused by the unfamiliar gas.
Landa encountered people who were convinced the
gas would cause cancer. M., K.'s older sister, was hospitalized for several
days, unable to move. "I'd rather be injured by gunfire, just as long
as I don't inhale any tear gas," she says repeatedly. At the schools,
there are guidance counselors who talk with the children; teachers are
told to listen to the problems. Nevertheless, K., a teacher at a school
in Rafiah, wonders whether the heart-to-heart conversations can help, when
the circumstances around them - the reason for the traumas - are not changing.
K.'s oldest son, 12-year-old Basel, thinks every day about his friend who
was killed; every corner of the crowded refugee camp reminds him of when
they played together. When he fights with his mother, he says: "I'll
go to the border, a Jew will shoot at me and I'll die." And K. asks
- just as many Palestinian parents and teachers are asking - what can she
do, what can possibly be changed when every day, children continue to be
wounded and killed.
According to many Palestinians, everyone simply
adapts or gets used to the fear or else they stop being afraid. K. has
a hard time answering her students' questions. One girl in her class who
lives near the border fence - a place that attracts IDF fire - was hit
in her back by live ammunition. "Didn't the soldier know that I just
went to bring some bread home," she asks her teacher again and again.
And another boy who was wounded asks the adults in his neighborhood repeatedly
if the Jews have no children and if that is why "they shoot at us indiscriminately".
(c) copyright 2001 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved. |
UPDATE:
JANUARY 12, 2002