JERUSALEM — The Palestinian Authority, in a rare admission
of failed policy, has condemned the use of children on
suicide missions.
A statement carried this week on the official Palestinian
news agency WAFA said the Palestinian leadership had
displayed "narrow-minded mistaken thinking" during
the present uprising when it had "not opposed the
participation of children in the struggle."
Now that the suicide activities of children had expanded
into a phenomenon, it said, "it is time we should
strongly object, we have to be courageous enough to admit
that sending boys to be slaughtered is an unforgivable
mistake and even a crime."
It added that those who plan and dispatch children on
suicide missions should be put on trial.
The declaration, in the form of a sharp comment by
WAFA's political editor, came soon after three youths
were fatally shot as they tried to blast their way into a
Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
There were also reports that in Jenin, boys as young as 10
were used to lure Israeli soldiers into booby-trapped houses
and into ambushes, and at least one was reportedly caught
with explosive devices strapped to his body.
A 17-year-old girl and an 18-year-old youth, each belonging
to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement,
were given bombs and killed themselves and 16 Israelis in
two recent suicide attacks in Jerusalem.
[Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip have
intercepted about 20 youngsters planning copycat assaults on
Israeli settlements since the deaths of three boys Tuesday,
Reuters news agency reported yesterday, quoting Amin Hindi,
chief of Palestinian General Intelligence.]
The WAFA statement said that using children as suicide
killers was damaging the Palestinians' image in the
world, and was also unpopular in Palestinian society.
About two-thirds of Palestinians in a recent survey
supported suicide bombings against Israelis.
Another survey showed the same proportion of children
supported these killings, according to the official
Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam.
Itamar Marcus, head of the Israeli-based Palestinian Media
Watch, called the statement "propaganda for
international public consumption."
He said Palestinian television coverage and recent school
textbooks had been used to nurture feelings within children
that "martyrdom" and suicide killing were noble and
beneficial to the young person's family and his future
in heaven.
"It is impossible to have a society reverse itself in
one day," Mr. Marcus said.
Ghassan Khattab, founder of the Jerusalem Media and
Communication Center, said the statement is significant but
not unexpected.
"There has been serious debate within Palestinian
leadership over children as bombers," he said.
He said that a spokesman for the hard-line Islamic movement
Hamas, on Al Jazeera television, had also proposed halting
the use of children in such attacks.
As evidence of the level of Palestinian indoctrination of
children to undertake suicide missions, Mr. Marcus pointed
out that a "martyr's" poem in praise of suicide
killers has been published in the newest Palestinians
textbooks for grades five and six, accompanied by a drawing
of a dead child being carried aloft by a crowd at a funeral.
"I will take my soul in my hand and toss it into the
abyss of death," said one line, which also was printed
on Fatah leaflets handed out in praise of an 18-year-old
suicide bomber the day after he had killed nine persons.
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This article was mailed from The Washington Times
(http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020427-67379451.htm)
For more great articles, visit us at
http://www.washtimes.com
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