Catherine Hunter, Arab News

The continuation of Israel’s Operation Rainbow in Gaza is an absolute travesty of international humanitarian norms, but one which is still failing to attract the publicity and calls for action. The sad fact is that the international community has become inured to these atrocities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The death of at least thirty-five Palestinians in Rafah on Tuesday and Wednesday alone, including at least ten minors, has not aroused the widespread concern of the European, American or Israeli public. All that the US could tell Israel is that “some of their actions don’t create the best atmosphere.”

Meanwhile, the continuing imprisonment of some 5,000 Palestinians, including 373 children, and their ongoing torture and mistreatment has now been verified by numerous independent human rights groups, Physicians for Human Rights, the Red Cross and Defense for Children International among them, but international condemnation is left to the woollier parts of the UN and a few European MPs, with noticeably little impact on Israeli strategy.

The only explanation can be that there is a fundamental worldwide misunderstanding of the Palestinian-Israeli balance of power and what can only be described as willful ignorance over the extent to which Israeli actions have reduced the lives of every Palestinian civilian to a pale shadow of what human life should be, encouraging the development of despair and hopelessness through widespread poverty, violence and humiliation, even amongst the very young.

When 16-year-old children decide to strap themselves into suicide belts, as in the case of Sabih Abu Al-Saoud, who killed himself in an attack on a group of Israeli soldiers in March 2003, the issue of child exploitation by Palestinian political groups is justifiably mentioned, but what of the impulses that push individual children and young adults toward these actions? Despite high-profile cases of forced recruitment, the majority of this small but growing band of youngsters are driven by individual motives, for revenge, for justice, for the sheer heroics of standing up to Israel in a society where the only celebrities are those who challenge the pervasive Israeli presence in words or, with increasing frequency, desperate acts of resistance. But this kamikaze approach to resistance, far from inspiring world respect for the Palestinian cause or (perhaps more properly) sympathy at their desperation, has only exacerbated the US-led division of the world into the West and the Other, while increasing sympathy for Israeli suffering from its multitude of domestic “Osamas” no matter that the causes, personalities and context are different. The result is that when Israeli chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, says that his soldiers have killed “15 Palestinian terrorists” in gun battles and missile strikes, as he did on Tuesday, interest in the specifics of who exactly those “terrorists” are, what evidence has been collected against them, whether there was any legality in their killing and whether Israeli troops went beyond the realms of “self-defense” is slight, whilst more Palestinian families are left destitute and bereft, feeding the desire for further desperate measures.

This is a lose-lose scenario for the Palestinian side, whichever way you look at it, and one that only promises to get worse, as the US and coalition experience in Iraq toughens the West’s stance to all matters Arab, and frightens the European herds into silence over Israeli atrocities. Whatever their problems, it is essential that the Palestinians start to look over the parapet and take heed of this unfavorable world situation.

In a world where violence seems to have become the favored currency, only the cessation of violence and the adoption of civilian protest stands a chance of increasing the value of the Palestinian cause, and giving it a chance to improve its standing within the international mainstream. This approach would call on new levels of Palestinian sacrifice and restraint beyond anything that the population has been asked to forfeit so far. Without it, there is a strong chance that the hopes of a new generation of Palestinian children will be stifled in infancy, increasing the flow of those willing to follow in the footsteps of Sabih Abu Al-Saoud.

— Catherine Hunter is Middle East consultant for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (www.child-soldiers.org) and a Middle East Analyst.