MIDDLE EAST: It is a massacre of innocents that the human rights group Amnesty International recounts in "Killing the Future: Children in the Line of Fire", issued today.
Since the second intifada started two years ago, Amnesty reports, 72 Israeli children and more than 250 Palestinian children under the age of 18 have been killed. More than two-thirds of the Israeli children were murdered by Palestinian suicide bombers. In the first months, Palestinian children were usually killed when the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) opened fire on demonstrators or boys throwing stones. But this year, the majority died because the IDF randomly opened fire, or shelled or bombarded residential neighbourhoods.
The human rights group is painstakingly even-handed. "The killing of children is the most irredeemable form of human rights abuse," says Mr Seán Love, the director of Amnesty Ireland. "The number of children killed in Israel and the Occupied Territories is absolutely unacceptable on both sides."
Yet as the intifada continues, Palestinian children are being killed more frequently, and younger. In 2000, children under the age of 12 accounted for 13 per cent of Palestinian child fatalities; this year, 48 per cent. More than 20 children have been murdered during Israeli assassinations of Palestinian activists. Others died when their houses were bulldozed or blown-up on top of them, because they were denied medical care, or were shot dead by Israeli settlers.
Two UN workers witnessed the slaying of 15-year-old Muhammad Musbah Ismai'il Abu Ghali in Khan Yunis, the Gaza Strip, on November 8th, 2000. "There was a group of children standing around the rubble of the demolished houses by the Tuffah checkpoint, but they were not throwing stones or demonstrating," a UN worker told Amnesty.
"Two IDF jeeps arrived and after a moment a soldier fired a single shot which hit Muhammad in the chest and he fell. I knew the boy and I approached him and he said, 'My bicycle key is in my pocket'. I asked him if he was OK and he didn't reply and pulled from his pocket the key, three photos and three shekels and then slumped back. The ambulance arrived to take him to hospital and he died on the way." The report tells of a boy shot in the head by the IDF as he was playing in the Gaza Strip, of a girl killed when shrapnel pierced her heart in her classroom in Jenin. It would be easy to draw parallels between the infant daughter of settlers, shot dead by a Palestinian sniper in Hebron last year, and a baby girl killed by Israeli shellfire two months later. Or between the seven Israeli children killed when a suicide bomber attacked women waiting with baby carriages outside a synagogue, and a Palestinian boy killed on the way to mosque with his father.
"These killings are equally reprehensible for both communities," says Mr Love of Amnesty Ireland. "But the underlying issue of the suppression of a society is having a phenomenal impact on Palestinians. The children of that society are being absolutely crushed. Their access to any sort of normal life is non-existent." Some 7,000 Palestinian children have been injured in Israeli attacks, and several hundred Israeli children have been wounded by Palestinians.
"The IDF feels it can act with impunity," Mr Love continues. "There are no investigations. There are no prosecutions. Nobody is held to account and that sends a strong message that it's okay to do this." The report notes that the Palestinian Authority has not punished those responsible for the deaths of Israeli civilians, adding that "no violations by the Israeli army . . . can ever justify the targeting and killing of Israeli children". Amnesty calls on states who provide military equipment to Israel to ensure that it is not used against children.
Last year, Amnesty revealed that DDC Ireland manufactures data bus components - the electronic transmission system - of the Apache helicopter. But, says Mr Jim Loughran of Amnesty Ireland, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has not kept its promise of transparency and accountability regarding what he calls "the hub of a very efficient killing machine". Amnesty reiterates past appeals to Israel to allow a UN special rapporteur and international monitors to visit Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Israel has repeatedly rejected both. Their presence might have saved the lives of Israeli and Palestinian children, Amnesty says.
