Remember these children

Deheusheh refugee camp drawing entitled "Siege and curfew"
 

http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/

Introduction

IN ANY CONFLICT, the death of innocent noncombatants is deplorable, and lamented by all. It is the death of children, however, that troubles us the most, for children are seen to be innocent in a way adults are not.

Since September 29, 2000, when the current Palestinian intifada erupted, through October 21st, 2005, at least 715 Palestinian and 123 Israeli youth under the age of 18 have become victims of the violence in Israel and the occupied territories.

Remember These Children lists each of these 821 deaths. Arranged chronologically by date of death, each entry includes the child’s name, hometown, how the child was killed, and, where available, the location of the fatal injury. The documentation, though painful, conveys the personal reality of these terrible statistics. The waste in human life—of hope and future promise—is almost too great to contemplate.

Too many of these children died in the course of what should have been normal childhood pleasures—playing soccer, eating pizza, shopping for candy, or going to or from school. Others were at home, looking out their window, eating dinner or playing in their front yard.

Even infants and the unborn have not been spared. In two days in February 2002, three pregnant women were shot: two Palestinians trying to pass Israeli roadblocks to reach the hospital in Nablus, and an Israeli settler in Sour Bethlehem traveling on a West Bank road. Twelve Palestinian mothers were stopped at Israeli-manned checkpoints and prevented from reaching hospitals to deliver their babies.

Tragically, the violence that took these lives has not abated. According to the Associated Press, 115 unarmed Palestinians under 18 years of age were killed in 2002—an increase of more than 50 percent from the year before. In the first two days of March 2003 alone, Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinian children. Because peace has not been realized, Israeli children find themselves vulnerable to random acts of Palestinian violence.

None of the children on these pages presented a danger to their killers, whether they were Israeli soldiers or Palestinian militants. We extend our deepest sympathy to the families of every child who has been killed.

While it is not possible to reclaim these lives lost to their families and to the world, it is all the more imperative to ensure that no more Israeli and Palestinian children meet a similar fate. Nor is it sufficient simply to keep these imperiled children alive. Many are suffering psychological trauma, and, according to Shafik Masalha, a clinical psychologist at Tel Aviv University, some 15 percent of Palestinian children say they want to become “martyrs.” “I believe that the motives are the terrible lives that the children live daily,” Masalha said. “This should be a warning not only to Israeli but also to Palestinian society [about] what they are doing to the next generation.”

We ask you to add your voice to the call for an end to the killing of children, for a just peace in the region, for a fair resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. You might wish to call for an end to Israel’s 37-year illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Or you might invoke international law, U.N.
resolutions, or the Geneva Conventions. At the very least you might wish to support the deployment of international observers in the region. We are confident that, in your own way, you will want to save these children whom the world appears to have forsaken.