There was no way Israeli and Palestinian children could escape the past two months of carnage. Unlike the victims of the schoolbus bombing, which apparently was a deliberate attack, many of the casualties have been kids who just strayed into the crossfire, like Mohammed al Dura, the 12-year-old whose horrifying death was caught on videotape at the start of the violence. The Israeli military issued a report on that incident last week, citing evidence that the boy was probably killed by Palestinian gunfire–a finding vehemently rejected by most Palestinians. They say it’s no accident that almost all the dead and injured youngsters have been theirs. Since the uprising began in September, according to the Switzerland-based activist group Defense for Children International, 95 Palestinians under the age of 18 have been killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and more than 2,500 have been injured.
Such statistics don’t begin to measure the emotional cost. “The horror of shelling and bombing at the hands of the Israeli military is everywhere,” says Rona Nashashibi, director of the Palestinian Counseling Center in Jerusalem. “In our schools, our homes, our streets–the effect on our children is devastating.” But Jewish kids are just as afraid of the violence. Tali Hatuel, a senior social worker near Kfar Darom, says she and her colleagues are all but overwhelmed by the job of helping traumatized kids master their fears. “They are all afraid,” she says. “Our job is to both legitimize and ease their fear. It’s not an easy task.”
How can children make sense of such a nightmare? Ghazaleh Garadat, 14, wasn’t looking for trouble when she got shot. A rubber-coated bullet struck the unsuspecting Palestinian girl in the head, fracturing her skull, as she was walking home with a group of schoolmates near Hebron on Nov. 4. She collapsed to the sidewalk, her peppermint-striped school uniform spattered with blood. Doctors at the hospital temporarily removed part of her skull to ease the swelling in her brain, and painstakingly extracted the fragments of black rubber they found. For 15 days she hung between life and death, until she finally woke up last week. She talks with difficulty now and seems to have trouble understanding what people say to her. “This isn’t the Ghazaleh we know,” says Munther Garadat, her uncle. “She has changed.” He peels a date, removes the pit and places the fruit in the girl’s mouth. Her right hand ceaselessly fingers the stitches that crisscross her shaven head. When asked what she wants most, the girl replies in a voice barely audible but utterly determined. “I want long hair,” she whispers.
Kids tend to have tremendous natural resilience. Anas Zatari, 12, was walking hand in hand with his father in downtown Hebron when he felt a sudden pain in his left thigh. “I thought I had been stung,” the Palestinian boy says. “But then I saw a huge hole in my leg.” He had been hit by a soft-nosed bullet. X-rays show about 25 bits of shrapnel still embedded in his upper leg, and the pain continues. Anas insists he’s not afraid to go outside alone. But his father understandably doesn’t want to let him out of sight.
Parents on both sides are living in fear. Chelley Hadad, 8, was sitting beside her friend Tehila Cohen when the bomb went off. Chelley is at home in Kfar Darom now, waiting for the nasty gash in her right leg to heal. “I want to walk again, and I want to go back to school,” she says. “This is my home.” She wants to get on with normal life, like every other child her age. But no one knows when that will ever be possible again.
