From the UK Guardian - website:
Cradle for martyrs
The intifada has reached so far into hearts
and minds in Gaza that,
even at eight years old, death is a matter
of national pride
Suzanne Goldenberg
Guardian
Saturday June 16, 2001
A few hours before a Palestinian suicide
bomber wedged himself into a throng of Israeli teenagers waiting to get
into a disco on the
Tel Aviv beachfront on June 1, a small
girl living in a block of flats 30 miles down the Mediterranean coast wrote
a letter, addressed to "My
Beloved Mother", and taped it to the wall
in the kitchen. The letter was composed with care, and copied out - with
impressive neatness
for an eight-and-a-half-year-old - on
lined notebook paper. Alaa abu Shamala wrote: "I would like to be a martyr,
and I would like you to
be safe all the time. I want to go now
to the Zionist checkpoint. I will carry my knife with me, and I am going
to be a martyr and will go to
paradise. I will be a little bird in paradise.
I will have a big palace, with food and water, and rivers of honey and
yoghurt - everything
that I could wish for. I can see it now.
I hope, Mum, that you will agree with my request. Don't be sad. Don't cry,
because I will be very safe."
Then Alaa had second thoughts: "I know
you will cry, but don't be very, very sad because all the people and children
are going to be
martyrs, and I want to be one of them."
Alaa's mother, Halima, saw the letter when she came home from work - she
teaches Arabic and
religion at the UN-run elementary school
in Gaza. "When I first read the letter, I laughed," Halima says. "These
are very abstract ideas
and words, and I did not think my daughter
could have written it. So while I am clearing the dishes, she grabs a kitchen
knife and races
off, saying she is going to the Israeli
army checkpoint. She was halfway down the stairs before I caught up with
her and brought her
back. She told me: 'You better take me
seriously. I am going to do it.' Then I realised it was real; it gave me
an idea of how my children are
suffering."
In Khan Yunis, the second town in the Gaza
Strip, where Alaa lives, there was great bitterness when Yasser Arafat
called a truce
following the Tel Aviv attack. About 500
Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers since last September,
and the bloodshed
has seeped deep in the consciousness of
Palestinians, including children such as Alaa. Although they are mortally
afraid of military
retaliation, people here want Israelis
to go on dying, to feel their pain. In the early days of the fragile ceasefire,
many wanted the
suicide bombs to go on - even eight-year-old
girls.
This row of flats on the main road in Khan
Yunis where the abu Shamala family have their home is called Hayy al-Amal:
Hope
Neighbourhood. Like the rest of Gaza,
Hayy al-Amal is pitifully overcrowded and desperately poor. And these privations
rankle the
more here because Hayy al-Amal has a front
row view of the Israeli occupation of what is supposed to be Palestinian
territory.
The flats are directly opposite the Jewish
settlement block of Gush Katif. Half a mile down the road, three rows of
refugee shanties have
been bulldozed by the Israelis wishing
to destroy potential cover for Palestinian gunmen; two four-storey blocks
of flats have been
abandoned, gutted, the walls peppered
with bullet and tank shell holes. The explosive proximity of the settlements
in Gaza to
Palestinian camps and housing has raised
doubts even among Israelis. The Jewish settlers themselves, unlike the
settlers in the
West Bank, claim no biblical justification
for their presence in Gaza - they just see it as somewhere to live. Israelis
who were looking for
space to spread out were encouraged by
successive Israeli governments to move to Gaza and occupy the land, enticed
by
government grants towards mortgages, reductions
on income tax and cheap houses. Some work in hot-house agriculture on the
Strip;
others commute to jobs inside Israel.
Anita Tucker, a farmer settler who has lived inside Gaza since 1976, says,
"There was nothing
here at all, just empty sand dunes for
miles around. The kids slid down the dunes and played on the beach and
that is why we are
here." They have little sympathy for the
plight of the Palestinians; Tucker claims that Palestinian living standards
have gone up
"tremendously" under Israeli occupation.
The settlers are determined to stay, and so the standoff continues.
The Gaza Strip, some 40km long and between
6 and 10km wide, was once part of British Mandate Palestine. Since 1948
it has been
inhabited by Palestinian refugees who
washed up here when the Jewish state was created in 1948. The territory
was captured by the
Israelis during the 1967 war and, within
10 years, first Israeli army posts and then civilian settlements were established.
Seven years
ago, the Oslo peace accords awarded a
portion of the Gaza Strip to Palestinian control, and in the heady days
following the installation
of Yasser Arafat in the territory, it
seemed an independent state would soon follow.
Instead, Israel continues to exercise supreme
power over Palestinian lives here. The last, doomed, set of negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians before
the intifada envisaged the total evacuation of Jewish settlements from
Gaza. But as the
talks collapsed last summer, the settlements
remained, and now more than 10,000 Israeli soldiers are deployed to guard
them. In the
Khan Yunis area, a string of army outposts
surrounds the Palestinian town like a horseshoe.
Gaza is now the most densely populated
place on earth: 1.1 million Palestinians live in a mere two-thirds of Gaza's
360 square
kilometres, penned into wretched refugee
camps, or blocks of flats that went up in a hurry - like Hayy al-Amal.
All are hemmed into the
claustrophobic strip by an electric fence
on one side and the settlements on the other. Meanwhile, 6,000 Jewish settlers
and army
installations occupy the rest - a full
one-third - of Gaza. That includes a fair chunk of the coastline, and the
underground aquifers in an
area that is mostly sand dune and hard
scrabble.
The contrast between the communities could
not be crueller. Inside the Jewish settlements, residents live in red-roofed
bungalows,
surrounded by well-watered land. There
are community centres, swimming pools and hothouses, producing cherry tomatoes
and
lettuce. The Palestinian world outside
is bone-dry and dusty, narrow lanes crammed with donkey carts, children
and pushcarts. The
average Israeli earns $17,000 (more than
£12,000) a year; before the intifada, when conditions were far better,
the average Gazan
earned less than $800 (under £600)
a year. Now, with Israel's borders sealed more tightly than ever against
potential suicide
bombers from Gaza and the West Bank, the
tens of thousands of Palestinians who once served as a cheap labour force
within Israel
have lost their work. Unemployment in
Gaza is running at nearly 50%; tens and thousands of people are getting
by on food aid from
the UN.
The poverty and confinement has bred a
generation of radicals. This is Hamas country. Many of the people here
- including Alaa's mother,
Halima - are supporters of the Islamic
militant organisation that despatched the suicide bomber on his journey
to the Tel Aviv disco
on June 1. They say such attacks are the
only way of hurting an immensely more powerful Israeli army. The walls
of Khan Yunis are
emblazoned with the graffiti of combat:
tanks bearing images of the Jewish star crushing lone gunmen, fizzing grenades.
In Hayy al-Amal, none of this passes Alaa
abu Shamala by. The flats where she lives went up in the late 1970s, built
by the Israelis to
relieve the crowding in the nearby refugee
camp, which still stands - row upon row of single-storey shanties with
roofs of corrugated
asbestos: the standard two rooms and a
courtyard built by the UN.
Today, the population of Khan Yunis stands
at about 200,000. It has no central sewage system - human waste is collected
by truck and
dumped a few miles away - and a lot of
dirt roads. About two-thirds of its residents are refugees. Alaa is a third-generation
refugee; the abu
Shamalas arrived in Gaza from villages
around what is now the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon.
This branch of the abu Shamala clan saw
the project as a chance to move up in the world, and now occupy most of
one block of flats.
They passed on their aspirations to Alaa.
A star pupil at the UN school, when she grows up she wants to be a doctor
"to treat people
injured in the intifada", or failing that
an engineer. But definitely a martyr.
She and her family can clearly see one
of the army outposts from their living room window: a snug little fortress
perched on a heap of
sand just 50 yards away. Occasionally,
a tank or a military jeep roars up the dune to the post. In the almost
nightly gun battles between
Israeli soldiers protecting the Jewish
settlements, and the militias shooting from nearby neighbourhoods, the
abu Shamalas are
squarely in the crossfire. A few months
ago, a bullet fired from the outpost pierced the glass and drove a small
tunnel in the back of
Alaa's father, Nabil, as he sat typing
on his computer at the desk in the corner.
The living room - its walls pocked by other
bullets - is rarely used now. Like the bedroom next door, it has a second
inner wall of
stacked- up sandbags, nestled among the
carpets and chandeliers. The children and Halima sleep on mattresses at
the rear of the flat.
When the gunfire becomes intense, they
bed down on the kitchen floor.
In Alaa's child's universe, the start of
school holidays means she is allowed to eat breakfast watching cartoons
on television. But
simultaneously she and the other children
of Hayy al-Amal inhabit a very adult world. As evening falls, a gang of
young boys in the street
outside are still playing their new favourite
game: Army vs Arabs, and soon Alaa's brother, Aasem, will wander out to
join them. The
leader is already waiting: Jamil Guffa,
a scrawny 15-year-old, who compensates for his size by having the best
replica M-16 assault rifle
on the street. It has a rusty nail for
a trigger and it gives Jamil kudos. "I decide who gets to be a Jew, and
who gets to be a Palestinian
fighter," he says. "Nobody likes to be
the Army."
Jamil and Aasem both know plenty about
real guns: they boast of how many people they have seen killed by Israeli
soldiers at a
military crossing down the road, called
variously Tufah - after the apple trees grown in the orchards on
the other side - or Martyrs'
Crossing, after the young men who died
there. Aasem has seen three people shot dead in front of him, and attended
more funerals
than he can immediately recall. He is
10 years old. "We call it Death Junction," he says. "If my mother doesn't
stop me, then I go down to
have a look."
On May 29, three days before the attack
on the disco, a neighbour of the abu Shamala family blew himself
up at Death Junction. As the
boys file into the street to play, mourners
are collecting at the home of the Ashour family to offer their respects.
Ismail Ashour, aged 19, was a familiar
figure in Hayy al-Amal. On top of his day job selling live chickens in
the market, he tutored children -
including Jamil - at the local mosque,
and he went door to door, trading audio cassettes of Koranic verses for
popular music. Two
Israeli soldiers were slightly injured
in the grenade attack Ismail carried out with a local engineering student,
Ali al-Asar, also 19.
Their families, both deeply religious,
say they were mystified by the suicide attack, although now as they receive
messages of
condolence and congratulation they say
they are fiercely proud of their sons. "It is hard for a foreigner to understand,
but in our culture,
a martyr will live on long after his brothers,"
says Ismail's older brother, Islam Ashour. "We are not flesh-eating cannibals
who want
to kill Jews, but we are defending our
land, and fighting for our freedom."
Such talk is infectious stuff in Hayy al-Amal,
and eagerly parroted by Alaa and her brother, Aasem. Aasem considers himself
too grown up
for fear. Alaa admits to nightmares. "I
dreamt a rocket was fired on my school, and it landed on my desk and it
burnt my friend, Shamas,
completely, but I was fine," she says.
Of the world outside Hayy al-Amal, they
know little - except for France. Their father, Nabil, is studying in Montpellier,
and they have
a drawerful of photos. "It is very beautiful
with nice cars and beautiful houses," Alaa says. "It has the Eiffel tower,"
Aasem chimes in.
The two children are completely stumped
when asked what Israel looks like. Israel sealed off the territory with
the electric fence before
either was born; neither child has ever
set foot outside the Gaza Strip. Nor are they likely to any time soon.
These days, even travel
inside Gaza involves tortuously long delays
at Israeli checkpoints - two, three, or even four hours waiting for the
soldiers to wave the
long line of cars past their concrete
pillboxes. "Israel has a big military tower, and they use it to spy on
us," Aasem says, finally.