http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,24722,00.html
FROM SAM KILEY IN QALANDIYA REFUGEE CAMP, WEST BANK
STONE-throwing children at the centre of riots on the West Bank and Gaza have received weeks of training in guerrilla warfare, including mock kidnappings, from Yassir Arafat's Fatah movement.
The children, some as young as 11, took a break yesterday from an often deadly game of cat and mouse with heavily armed Israeli soldiers to boast of their exploits on training camps where they were also indoctrinated with ferocious anti-Israeli sentiments.
Over the past four weeks at least 120 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis. About a third of them were boys as young as 12, some among the 25,000 youngsters trained in 90 different Fatah camps earlier this year.
Two young Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip and West Bank yesterday. A 16-year-old was shot dead at the Erez Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, killed by a bullet in the stomach. A man of 22 died in a confrontation near the West Bank town of Jenin after being shot in the heart.
Israel has repeatedly accused the Palestinian leadership of the "cynical use of children in the front line" for propaganda purposes and has insisted that they often pose a mortal threat to Israeli soldiers. The revelations that thousands of children were given guerrilla training in the months before the explosion of the "al-Aqsa intifada" reinforces this argument. Human rights groups and the United Nations, however, have condemned Israel for excessive use of force in controlling riots, and for the killing of children in particular.
Asked why they were spending their days darting around the concrete maze of Qalandiya Camp firing catapults and throwing stones at soldiers armed with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, some of the youngsters just shrugged and said: "It's fun".
Hosni Samir Inteir, who turned 12 in September, said: "In France the young don't throw stones, they watch TV and use the Internet because they don't have enemies. Here we have enemies so I throw stones and then work on computers in the evening."
An unusually bright child, he referred to recent complex diplomatic and political developments. Standing out of the rain in the shade of a tin hut he explained that he "read a lot of newspapers".
Such a child should be destined for a bright future, but he says he would be happy never to see his adult years: "I want to die as a martyr. I will be straight to paradise if I do that."
Hosni and his friends had all been to the Fatah camps earlier this year. They were taught how to strip an automatic rifle and had a great time tumbling around assault courses and running through fire. Their camp differed from the sort of course they could have done with British Army cadets only in the hate they were taught to feel and in the ways they were told to express it.
Trapped in the Qalandiya Camp with few employment prospects, they had already grown up on stories of how their ancestors were forced out of their homes by the Jews 52 years ago. In a concrete jungle with no playgrounds, they got their kicks by tormenting Israeli servicemen guarding the Qalandiya airport even before they were recruited by Fatah's youth wing, the Tanzim.
Once there, in the bosom of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the boys were told: "We're going to make you men".
What they learnt in the camps was how to direct their hate for the Israelis. Since then, they have returned to the streets with their stone age weapons to fight the Israeli Goliath.
But the training the boys have received should not provide a reason for Israeli soldiers to kill them, human rights groups said yesterday. They said the Israeli use of snipers firing live rounds, and the use of plastic-coated steel bullets which resemble musket balls, against children who posed no lethal threat, were particularly bad abuses verging on war crimes.
"No matter how irritating they might be or how they have been trained, kids throwing stones should not be shot at all according to the Israeli's own rules, never mind international law", said Carlos Cordone, the leader of an investigation team from Amnesty International in Jerusalem.
Yesterday it was clear that Fatah had prepared its young supporters for conflict but also that they would have rushed to the burning barricades anyway. None of the children said they had been ordered to fight. They admitted they were throwing stones against the express orders of their parents and could expect a hiding if they were found out.
Some told of how they had "passed out" from a camp near Nablus where they had staged a mock kidnapping of a senior Israeli officer and pretended to kill seven of his body guards.
Jamie Stopforth
Williams Solution Center
x36343
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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