The Palestinian Preventive Security Services and Hamas both issued statements calling on teachers, politicians and clergy to prevent children from volunteering for military operations that mean certain death.
Three pupils from schools in the Sheikh Radwan refugee camp, who were killed by Israeli troops when they tried to infiltrate the isolated Jewish settlement of Netzarim, were buried Wednesday.
The three, Yufuf Zaqout, 15, Ismail Abu Nada, 13, and Anwar Hamduna, 13, attended school as usual on Tuesday and told their parents they were going to visit friends. Instead, they left farewell letters to their parents, and took some makeshift explosives made from firecrackers and knives and headed for Netzarim, where they were killed on its outskirts by soldiers defending the settlement.
Last week, another child, Hitham Abu Shaka, was killed in a similar infiltration attempt.
Thousands of Palestinians marched behind the coffins of the three schoolboys to a cemetery in Gaza City. The boys who were killed knew their mission was doomed as all three left suicide notes for their families saying that they were seeking martyrdom and asking forgiveness.
In his farewell note, Zaqout wrote: "Oh mother, please be happy with me. I ask you to pray to God to make my martyrdom operation a success. I am giving my soul for the sake of God and the homeland."
Abu Nada wrote: "Dad, Mum, forgive me. I am going to carry out a martyrdom operation against a settlement."
Zaqout's mother, asked if she understood his motives, said: "Children are tormented by what they see on television. Israel has left all Palestinians, including children, with no choice but to die."
Many parents in Gaza, according to the British newspaper The Guardian, expressed horror that children as young as these had been drawn in and feared for their own children.
Hamas, the Islamic group responsible for sending most of the suicide bombers to attack Israeli targets, expressed horror and described the schoolboys' actions as a "national catastrophe". The boys were not attached to any military group but were acting on their own.
In a statement that blamed "Israeli massacres" for driving the boys to their deaths, Hamas told teenagers to refrain from acts that might "leave many of them dead by settlement fences".
A Palestinian security source said that police had intercepted several youngsters en route to Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip with violence in mind in the past few days.
Palestinian children have suffered disproportionately in the uprising. Many of them have been shot by the Israeli army. But it has been rare for children to attempt to repeat the activities of Hamas and the other Palestinian groups, such as Islamic Jihad and the military wings of Fatah.
Tawfiq Salman, a psychiatrist in Bethlehem who works with children and carried out a survey, told the British paper: "Ninety per cent of Palestinian children suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of the Israeli closures and the shootings."
Fadel Abu Heen, a psychologist, said many children were severely traumatized by seeing and hearing of Palestinians, especially children their own age, being killed by the Israelis. "It is despair, despair and more despair.
Children are unable to cope with the sad reality," he said, adding that child suicide attackers were motivated more by an overwhelming sense of hopelessness than surging nationalism.
Abu Heen blamed graphic televised scenes of burned and dismembered bodies shown repeatedly on Arab television. He urged military leaders and religious leaders to wake up to the risks and work to restrain suicidal adolescent impulses.
"We should not militarize the whole society. A schoolchild must study and a grown-up fighter can fight," he conveyed. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
