Gaza's pain: 'We're bored of this life and want to die'

By Stephen Farrell
The Times
Nov. 04, 2006

HE WAS a small man in a small hospital ward about to hear words that no father ever should. Outside the window, a short drive away, Israeli battle tanks and snipers fought Palestinian gunmen in Beit Hanoun during the fiercest street fights in Gaza for months.

Muhammad Zakout’s 14- year-old son, Alaa, leaked blood on to a hospital pillow as his family gathered around the bed, incredulous that after repeated warnings to stay out of trouble he had been shot while throwing stones at Israeli tanks.

After muttered lies and evasions — to smirks from teenage accomplices — the truth was even more unwelcome.

“I’ll tell you why,” he finally mumbled. “We are just bored of this life and we want to die.”

Silence.

“He doesn’t listen to me,” lamented Mr Zakout, 44, a labourer from the Jabalya refugee camp who vainly hopes that his eldest son’s shoulder wound will jolt sense into him.

“It’s very hard to keep him away. If he’s older and he chooses to join the resistance, I could understand. But not why they throw stones. It is because they don’t have a real life. They are looking for excitement.”

Mr Zakout, a refugee whose family fled the Arab village that is now Ashkelon in 1948, has not worked for seven years and spurns political affiliations. He exists on UN handouts and odd jobs and knows that, as an attraction for the loyalties of his son, this cannot compete with the glamour of armed militants fighting Israel.

Mr Zakout left his house briefly to visit his mother on Thursday and Alaa was missing when he returned. Then teenagers arrived at his home carrying one of the boy’s shoes, saying that he was injured.

Racing around hospitals he eventually found the right ward, rushing in with his wife, Amal, and began venting at everyone in a situation that he cannot control. “It is not easy to raise a child in this society,” he said. “He becomes a young man and all of a sudden you lose him. He promises me he won’t go to these things, and the next day he goes.

“I blame both the Israelis and the big Palestinian politicians. I have nothing against fighting the [Israeli] occupation. They are the terrorists and the ones with the upper hand. If you don’t stop them at a certain point they will carry on and on. If you are occupied, it is your right to resist.

“But older people can make the choice. It is the duty of the mosques and the teachers to tell children that is not their role. And the factions — I don’t support either one.”

Palestinian Qassam rockets fizz through the night air. In between is the whirr of missile-laden drones operated by Israel and the chop-chop of its helicopter gunships.

Inside the hospital, the grandmother and mother of Alaa ask why he wants to die: “Is it to meet the shahids [martyrs]? To see the next life? Has the cat got your tongue?” He looks away, his explaining done.

“Will you do it again?” we ask, before his family leaves.

“No,” he replies.

“Damn liar — of course he will,” snorts his uncle, exiting through a door bearing a picture of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah and a new hero to the Palestinians.

“Yes,” Alaa says as soon as they have gone.

His friends look blank when asked what they want to do if they grow up, envisaging a future without jobs or hope in a sealed-off Gaza Strip.

“We have already grown up,” shrugs Muhammad Abu al- Jidyan, 16. “We have no chance to do anything else. Probably when we grow up a little more we will just carry Kalashnikovs and fight. What else do we have to do? “The resistance don’t ask us to throw stones, they kick our asses for it. But we do it anyway. At least it means the soldiers will not be able to put their heads out of the tank to shoot people, or to move into buildings. We want to become shahids and we want to help the resistance, whether they like it or not.”

THE BLIGHTED CHILDHOODS OF GAZA
# Half the population of Gaza is under the age of 18

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Chronic malnutrition affects nearly 10 per cent of under-5s in the Palestinian territories. The situation is most acute in Gaza, where 50,000 children are malnourished
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In September, health workers in Gaza went on strike after non-payment for months. Storage and transport of vaccines failed, and thousands of children were not immunised
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In Gaza and West Bank, nearly half of students have seen their school besieged by troops; more than 10 per cent have witnessed the killing of a teacher in school
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11 per cent of children in Gaza are stunted and 43 per cent of pregnant women are anaemic
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Levels of violence and dropping-out have increased in Gazan schools over the past year. School activities have been abandoned owing to lack of funding