Children of the Intifada

International Women's Peace Service from Hares
17 August 2002

At first glance the boys playing in the swimming pool of Bidia appear no different from the children at summer camps in many other countries at this time of year. However, Bidia is not a holiday location in some safe rural idyll but a small village in Palestine next to some of the biggest and most important Israeli settlements in the West Bank and it has been more than two years since these young lads have been able to go for a swim. Most of the time the swimming pool is closed anyway - people are unable to reach it from the nearby villages (Palestinians are not allowed to use the 'settler-only roads) and can't afford to spend money on such a luxury (unemployment is high and those lucky enough to retain jobs often cannot reach them because of curfews and closures).

In Palestine even the most ordinary daily activities become a form of 'resistance' and are the outcome of a struggle for basic human rights. If one wants to go to university, one's office, the doctor or just visit some relatives a few kilome! ters away, one has to pass road-blocks, risk confrontations with Israeli soldiers, police or settlers who control the Palestinians, trying to keep them inside the borders of their villages that have been turned into large 'prisons'. Every Palestinian we meet tells us they are in prison and 'For what?' they ask.

Going to a swimming pool thus becomes an act of civil disobedience and the boys are aware of it. On their way they are chanting freedom songs that grow even stronger at the sight of an army jeep keeping watch from inside the town of Bidia. The boys gleefully wave their towels and march together to the swimming pool. Their delight and high spirits are a joy to witness as they become ordinary children enjoying the water in the baking heat. While going back over the Bidia roadblocks, the soldiers keeping watch over the pile of rubble and stones, get nervous at the sight of 50 boys aged from 5 to 12 and point their machine guns at them from the hill. The adu! lts supervising the boys notice and shout at the boys to hide under the olive trees trying to get them out of reach of the soldiers as soon as possible. The vans for transporting the boys are a bit late and they have to wait, everyone is nervous. We two internationals (Maren and Angie) make our cameras conspicuous and place ourselves between the boys and the soldiers. Luckily the vans soon arrive and the boys all get back safely to their village.

Summer camps are nothing new to Palestinian children, they have always been part of the social work that countless volunteers have supervised for decades. Local groups and later the PNA organized them knowing how important it is to guarantee Palestinian boys and girls at least a little fun and pleasure. As it is these children have a very troubled childhood and are forced to grow up too fast. So even this year, in spite of the many problems arising from the last months of Israeli military attacks, the destruction of towns! , continuous military incursions, and the damage to essential infrastructure like electricity and telephone lines, water and sewage pipes in the villages, Palestinian society has made it possible everywhere in the Occupied Territories for boys and girls to be offered the possibility of enjoying at least a week or two of summer camps together with their friends.

Fatima, one of the organizers and volunteers of the summer camps in the Salfit area near Nablus, told us of the twofold aims the camps have this year. "We want to give the children a place where they can enjoy themselves and have fun but we want to provide them as well with the possibility to talk about the traumatic experiences they have had in the last months", she says. In the summer camp organized in Salfit, two days of the one week program were dedicated to telling the events that had happened to the children in the last months, games that helped them to talk about their experiences and to share them with ! their class mates.

The traumas these children have suffered are the results of the Israeli occupation of their homes and lands. It may be the tear gas thrown into the courtyard of the elementary school in Hares, the witnessing of the soldiers beating up friends or parents in front of them, small boys threatened with death or being beaten up themselves or hours of waiting at a checkpoint in an ambulance in order to get medical treatment. The children react in many ways. The mothers tell about their boys losing control of their legs at the sight of Israeli soldiers and being unable to stand up, another little boy literally loses his capacity of hearing in the presence of the soldiers. Others suffer from less evident but just as debilitating symptoms of trauma.

The celebrations at the end of the camps are not only a great event but are also fun for parents and children. There is singing, dancing, somersaulting through hoops of fire - but interwoven through it ! all are scenes from the daily terror and humiliation of the brutal Israeli military occupation. A little play shows a scene of land confiscation, an arbitrary execution by soldiers and imprisonment - and amazingly it draws a huge amount of laughter and applause. The tumblers climbing up on each others shoulders take up the Palestinian flag with them and the songs are about freedom and their land. But at the end of the performance Fatima tells us that she is especially proud of the "free drawing" session on the last day of the camp: almost no weapons, tanks or soldiers can be seen, but trees, flowers and good wishes for the future.

Another important part of these summer camps is the transmission of Palestinian culture the mere existence of which is so often denied. Many of the older generations have gone to prison for having put Palestinian flags up or having asserted their existence as a separate and distinct People. Nevertheless, the songs and the dances, the sto! ries and the handicrafts have survived and are taught on these occasions to the younger generations.

Inevitably, the songs of the Palestinians are full of pain and suffering, of lost lands and homes, of oppression and humiliation, of losing their loved ones. But they also express the hopes that they will one day be able to live in a free country and they show the determination of Palestinians to continue their struggle for their rights and to overcome the occupation one day.

17 August 2002

(to read this report in German see this link)

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