Israeli brute force against Palestinian resistance is doomed to failure

Gaza schools open but young minds closed to peace

Reuters
Published: January 24, 2009

By Douglas Hamilton

Schools reopened in Gaza on Saturday after Israel's devastating three-week war, and peaceful coexistence seemed further than ever from the traumatised minds of young Palestinians.

"Good morning! Still alive?" excited teenage girls asked each other as their class, all in white headscarves, lined up in the yard shortly after dawn at Beach Preparatory School.

School starts early in the Gaza Strip because there is not enough classroom space for all the children, so there must be two shifts a day.

The pupils were seeing their teachers for the first time since Israel bombs began falling on Gaza on December 27. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed, over half of them civilians.

Critics warn that the violence of Israel's offensive, which followed the collapse of a six-month truce, can only reap a harvest of greater militancy from a newly radicalised generation. According to one Gaza website, 3,500 Palestinians were born during the 22-day war.

"Israel hates Palestinians, hates Arabs, hates Muslims, hates Islam," said one girl in Nuha Abdulati's English class, as her schoolmates nodded in agreement.

Israel lost 10 soldiers in the fighting and three civilians killed by rockets or mortars fired from Gaza by the Islamist Hamas militants who control the enclave.

The girls did not seem to be aware, or to take seriously, that it was Hamas which declared an end to the truce in late December, and that Israel's stated reason for attacking was to eradicate the threat of rockets which began to pepper southern towns. Scores exploded in one day before its forces struck.

Older Gazans who want compromise with Israel regret the high price of this "resistance." But in the classrooms at Beach Prep, any suggestion of making peace now was dismissed.

Asked if the current cease-fire would endure, most girls said they did not think so. Asked if there could be peace with Israel one day, most said there could not. None said it was possible.

WAR FOREVER?

The girls seemed delighted to be back in class together, although the stories they had to swap were grim tales of dead cousins, wounded neighbors, close escapes, days without power or water, camping in the homes of relatives.

"In my dreams I saw blood," said one. "Our house was demolished," said another. "I saved my clothes and schoolbag."

Asked why they were smiling, the girls said they were happy to be alive and safe, because during the bombing they had gone to sleep each night afraid they would never wake up again.

They got their information about the war from Arabic language broadcasters: Al Jazeera and al-Arabiya television from the Gulf, al Quds, al-Aqsa and Shehab, of Hamas, here in Gaza.

The West is seen as callous, uncaring, and pro-Israeli.

"They cry for Israelis because they lose a fingernail. They don't care if Palestinians get their heads blown off," said teacher Susan Mosleh.

"Israel attacked at the time of our exams because it wants to destroy our education," said a 15-year-old in her class. "It is not Hamas they want to kill. It is all Palestinians and their resistance."

"Israel had its own reasons," said another pupil. "They are to have an election. Our blood is the ink on the voting papers."

Some wanted freedom to travel instead of the tight Israeli blockade that suffocates the meagre economy and bars access to the outside world. But they saw no way of achieving it through compromise with the Jewish state.

"The chances of peace are zero. No peace is possible," said one girl categorically.

Hamas is not ready to recognise Israel's right to exist. But it is prepared to make a long-term truce, of up to 15 years, and to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, if Israel ends its occupation.

Hamas does not tolerate public dissent, and there is undoubtedly peer pressure in a crowded classroom to rally to the cause without reservation.

But no one objected when a girl said there should be "war with Israel for the rest of our days," until all Palestine was reclaimed from the Jews.

"Remember these are young people, they have been shocked," Abdulati cautioned. "They are still afraid. They are sometimes just repeating what they hear."

The teacher personally favoured peace with Israel and a separate Palestinian state, with mutual recognition.

"But we need the siege to end," she said. "We need the borders to open. We can take care of ourselves then. We are not begging."

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)