Young pawns in old Mideast conflict

By PHIL REEVES

JERUSALEM - The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has sunk to appalling new depths with several days of intensified violence in which children on both sides formed the bulk of the dead.

After launching helicopter missile strikes against the Palestinians amid a wave of national revulsion over the killing of their children, the Israeli armed forces yesterday followed up the assault by shooting dead two Arab teenagers.

The deaths of yet more children - seven this week alone - came as tensions between the sides reached breaking point, inflamed by a rash of Palestinian bombings, the continuing Israeli siege of the West Bank and Gaza and Thursday's air attacks.

There were fears of an explosion of violence today, when thousands of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip were due to take to the streets for mass demonstrations to mark Land Day.

A massive Israeli security operation involving the police and Army was expected for the event, which is an annual protest against land expropriation by Israel.

This year tensions are higher because of the six-month conflict, and "Black October" - the term used by Palestinians for the killing by Israeli police of 13 Israeli Arabs at the start of the intifada.

Yesterday's young victims, aged 13 and 17, were shot dead close to the Erez Junction in the Gaza Strip. A spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said he had no information about their deaths. He did, however, have detailed comments on the "clashes" that led up to it. "They [the rioters] got close to the IDF post and we shot at them, using some real bullets, in the direction of their legs. We know that we injured some, but we don't know if they died."

Asked if the rioters fired weapons at the post, he said: "They were not firing at us, but they know perfectly well that there is a no-man's land, and that they should not cross it." He then added that the crowd threw Molotov cocktails and a grenade.

Also this week, a Hamas suicide bomber killed two Jewish boys, aged 16 and 14, whose only offence was to be waiting for a bus to take them to school. A Palestinian boy, aged about 12, was killed in the south Gaza Strip. It seems that his crime was to have tried to play with an interesting-looking object that - tragically - turned out to be a shell, which blew up in his face.

Also, an 11-year-old Arab boy was shot dead by the Army in the West Bank city of Hebron. And the day before that, 10-month-old Shalhevet Pas, the daughter of Jewish settlers, was shot through the head by a Palestinian gunman as she sat in her push-chair at the entrance to a Jewish enclave, also in Hebron.

The violence of the past four days has been shocking in its callous brutality, even by the numbing standards of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In Israel, the deaths of Jewish children played a key part in the build-up of public pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to retaliate against the Palestinians, and fulfil his election promise of providing the embattled and fearful country with security. He has responded with the helicopter and tank assaults on the Gaza Strip and Ramallah.

The killing, maiming, and psychological wounds now being inflicted on youngsters is nothing new to this conflict. At the start of the intifada, the world was genuinely appalled by TV footage which showed the last terrifying moments of 12-year-old Mohammad al-Durra as he crouched at his father's side at a flashpoint in the Gaza Strip while bullets thumped into the wall behind him.

But international attention now only tunes in only when the circumstances are exceptionally horrifying. A bomb this week near Kfar Saba, on the 1967 Green Line which separates Israel from the West Bank, fell into this category. A suicide bomber walked up to a group of youngsters, tried to talk to several of them, and blew himself up. Apart from the two dead, three others - again, schoolchildren aged between 12 and 15 - were seriously injured. It was the third bomb against Israelis in 48 hours, following two in Jerusalem which injured 30 people, including a 2-year-old Israeli child.

Both sides in the conflict have shown no compunction in milking the deaths of children for the propaganda value, brandishing them as evidence of the ruthless criminality of their opponents.

From the start, the Palestinians have been lionising their dead youths. After the baby's death this week, the Israeli Government feverishly circulated the little girl's picture to the world's press. According to Ha'aretz newspaper, Israel's Foreign Ministry instructed its diplomats abroad to convince foreign opinion-makers that this was an example of the Palestinians' "cynical and cruel" response to Israeli moves to ease the siege of the occupied territories. No mention, or course, was made of the Army's massive contribution to the juvenile death list.

The Palestinians have tried to counter the widely felt revulsion at the baby's death, by accusing Israeli troops of killing the boy in Gaza by deliberately planting a booby-trap (a charge denied by Israel).

Yet the world has grown indifferent, despite the horrifying statistics - the fact that more than 150 of the more than 450 deaths during the intifada have been people under the age of 18.

Yitzhak Kadman, director of Israel's National Council for the Child, has renewed an earlier heartfelt call for both sides to remove children from the conflict. "Children are children, whatever side of the conflict they belong to. They cannot be part of any fighting or any war.

"Even if the two sides cannot agree on anything else, they should have one point in common - an agreement, written or oral, gentleman's or otherwise, to get the children out the conflict.

"I know this is easier said than done, but this is a terrible situation into which we cannot and should not put our children."

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