Palestinians Use Children as Cannon Fodder

Tulkarm, West Bank - In a rare letter of protest sent in early December to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian women's group demanded that the Palestinian Authority stop using children as cannon fodder.

"Our children are being sent into the streets to face heavily armed Israeli soldiers," said the letter from the Tulkarm Women's Union - a local branch of the Palestinian Women's Union, a trade-union group that promotes the status of women in the Palestinian Authority.

"The Palestinian Authority must put an end to this phenomenon. We urge you to issue instructions to your police force to stop sending innocent children to their death."

The letter adds weight to complaints from parents who are beginning to speak out despite what they say has been months of intimidation by armed gunmen loyal to Arafat.

'We don't want to send our sons to the front line, but they are being taken by the Palestinian Authority," says Aisheh, 43, a mother of six in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. She says she decided to speak out after her 17-year-old son was hit in the head by a rubber bullet. He suffered a concussion.

Like other protesting parents, Aisheh declines to allow her full name to be published for fear of reprisals. A nurse from Gaza who spoke out on Palestinian TV against sending children to the flash points was condemned in the Palestinian media as a traitor. Other individuals who refuse to allow their names to be published say they have been threatened by armed Fatah officials for discouraging their children from participating in the clashes.

Israel has faced international criticism for the deaths of at least 38 youths under the age of 17 in the first two months of conflict in which nearly 300 people have died. Nearly 1,000 children have been injured. The Palestinians consider anyone under the age of 17 a child. But children just entering their teens-and some even younger-have been injured in the region's worst violence in nearly a decade.

Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to Arafat, has accused Israeli troops of "cold-blooded killing." He denies Israeli accusations that the Palestinian Authority has placed children at the front of demonstrations to act as human shields for armed gunmen.

"We don't send children-nobody can send children-and we don't hide behind children," Abu Sharif says.

But Aisheh says the militia of Arafat's Fatah movement and the Palestinian security forces provide transportation and encouragement to children eager to answer the call to combat Israel's continued presence on Arab land. "When school finishes, Palestinian Authority security cars go around collecting children from the streets and sending them to the killing fields," she says. "This is very serious because they are children and they are unarmed."

Israeli army chiefs point out that not all the children killed in the recent clashes have been innocent bystanders. They say their snipers have orders to shoot anyone shooting or throwing Molotov cocktails at them, but some of the attackers have been as young as 12.

Palestinian Authority TV broadcasts constant images of children carrying weapons and staging mock attacks on Israelis. Over the summer, children as young as 12 were trained in the use of Kalshnikov rifles and other weapons at special camps by Fatah officials.

"As the number of those killed rises, the Palestinian media extol and exalt not only those killed, but also their willingness to die as martyrs for Allah, emphasizing that dying a martyr's death was the realization of their hopes," says Itamar Marcus, director of the Palestinian Media Watch monitoring group.

Palestinian Authority TV and newspapers also have come under fire, accused of encouraging children to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at armed Israeli troops.

Aisheh's husband, Abdelghani, says intimidation has kept parents from speaking out. "No one here dares to say publicly that he is against sending his own children to the front line," he says. "Some parents who have tried to protest have been condemned as fifth columnists (traitors) and threatened."