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CounterPunch
December
28, 2002
Occupying Time:
Israeli Soldiers
and Palestinian Youths
by ANNIE C. HIGGINS
Nicole Gaouette recently presented a view of soldiers
seeking healing after serving time in the occupied Palestinian
territories [Where Israeli soldiers go to heal, The Christian
Science Monitor, December 17, 2002]. On very rare occasions,
they make attempts to begin the healing while they are on site
with Palestinians, as happened in Jenin last month, November
2002.
"I am not going to shoot them; I
didn't come here to shoot children," the earnest young
soldier with sensitive eyes told me, as a crowd of schoolchildren
temporarily stopped throwing stones. However, his colleague,
a sniper poised in the window of the house the Army had occupied,
had just shot one child and positioned his M16 rifle for another.
The first soldier had joined a highly
unusual spontaneous coming-together a few days earlier on this
site across from Jenin Refugee Camp: with the accompaniment
of international volunteers, soldiers and children unclutched
guns and stones, and engaged in dialogue. The children listened
to statements like the one above from individual soldiers who
do not want to perpetrate violence against civilians. The soldiers
listened to the children tell why they were reacting against
the Army's presence. One bashful boy showed a picture of his
little brother whom the Army killed during the April invasion.
He spoke softly of how they made his mother bleed to death by
preventing ambulances from reaching her after they shot her.
During the conversation, some of the children and soldiers shook
hands.
Now, a few days later, they were shaking
hands again, as they felt this particular soldier was a friend.
He asked me plaintively why some of them were still throwing
stones. I said it was a reaction to the continual violence of
the occupation, not to his individual outreach. I asked the
children, all of whom were under twelve, if they would like
to be in school. The resounding response was, "YES!"
The Army's tank-enforced curfew had already prevented them from
as many school days as they had attended since the start of
the year. The window sniper began shooting again but the children
left the friendly soldier alone, turned away, and responded
excitedly to my idea of meeting together to perform story-telling
later in the day. We did not know that the Army's activities
would obstruct this little window of creativity.
I had encountered these soldiers a few
days earlier when they chased boys across a field near the same
occupied house, bringing them to the wall encircling the Palestine
Red Crescent Society. Safely inside the wall, I had been making
a phonecall when a shout punctuated the evening calm. "Don't
shoot!" cried out a tall international, jumping onto a
bench to grasp the boy caught in the iron spikes at the top.
Another boy had successfully scaled the wall, but his companion
was caught in a soldier's grip, pulling his shoulder out of
joint. I dashed over, accompanied by ambulance workers, and
a jangle of words spilled over the wall where the boy was balancing
precariously.
One soldier was a human bomb. It seemed
that his white rage alone could destroy all within his range,
including himself. "Don't touch him or I'll shoot!"
he exploded. The international spoke reassuringly, urging him
to hold his fire. The dialoging soldier provided some balance,
but implored the international to let him have just five minutes
with the boy to teach him a lesson. "I want to make him
an example to show the boys that we can catch them. I won't
hurt him. I just want to give an example." The international
took this up, and reminded him of another kind of example,
when the boys and soldiers had been talking together a few days
before. "Yes, I was there, but today they are throwing
stones again. I won't hurt him. I just want to show him and
his friends them we can catch them."
The human bomb had a different idea and
cocked his rifle to shoot. The ambulance worker said he would
talk with the boy. A range of emotions formed a tempestuous
symphony: one soldier's violent rage, another soldier's heartfelt
desire for benign punishment, the third soldier's silent confusion,
and the calmness of those fighting for the boy's safety. The
boy, seeking refuge, leaned back onto the international and
both fell six feet to the ground with a solid thud. I kept
my eye on the soldiers, and moments later was surprised to see
man and boy standing up without harm. Later the man confided
that, considering the fall, he felt it was a miracle that he
got up at all.
Now the sniper was threatening that he
would shoot the ambulance, where the workers had placed the
boy to transport him to the hospital for treatment. With a little
more coaxing, the tempest subsided and the soldiers backed off
as the ambulance closed its doors with the boy safely inside.
That evening, we saw the boy at the hospital, and the international
who saved him greeted him warmly with wishes of peace and health.
The boy stared at him and hardly responded. He was not ungrateful,
just shaken up over the incident. I saw him several weeks later
with his arm still bandaged, and he was exuberant with thanks
for the tall, kind man.
I feel profoundly privileged to have
witnessed these transformations of enmity into dialogue, sparks
of hope that go unreported but that are working changes in hearts.
At the same time, I cannot ignore the
fact that the Israeli Army has continued to kill children at
an unprecedented rate. Since the time of these hopeful dialogues,
the Army has killed sixteen minors in the West Bank and Gaza,
three of them from Jenin.
They killed ten-year-old Muhammad Bilalo
on the same day they killed the UN's Iain Hook, November 22.
They killed Ibrahim Sa`di on November 16, and Mu`tazz `Awde
on December 2. They continue to wound children at their homes,
mosques, and schools, including the boy who spoke shyly with
the soldiers about losing his mother and brother.
Where do soldiers go for healing? Imagine
that the soldiers seeking healing would refrain from shooting
civilians, save the two thousand dollars for trauma treatment,
and donate it to a creative arts program for children in the
areas where their Army has planted violence.
Soldiers and children have already demonstrated
a capacity for dialogue. This pattern has only to be practiced.
Annie Higgins
teaches arabic in Chicago.
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