Palestinians Again Use Children for Terror Against Israel

11-year-old Abdullah Quraan (center) smiling with his friends hours after being used
as a "human bomb" by Palestinian terrorists. Photo: AP

By Israel News Agency Staff

Jerusalem----March 18......An attempt by Palestinian terrorists to smuggle a bomb through an Israeli security checkpoint with the help of a 11-year-old boy drew widespread attention on both sides of the conflict Tuesday.

But the similarity stopped there.

Israeli authorities said that the boy, sixth-grader Abdullah Quraan, was carrying explosives and that his handlers intended to blow him up near the checkpoint; the boy, and others, disputed this, claiming the bag he was carrying - swiftly blown up by army sappers - contained auto parts.

Beyond the factual dispute lay a psychological chasm: For Israelis, the case was the latest indication that their enemy is ruthless, even barbaric.

Palestinians said the involvement of children in the conflict - two 17-year-olds carried out a twin suicide bombing Sunday - is a result of Israel's occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. And they see Israelis' moralizing as deluded or hypocritical. When Israelis hear the word "occupation" they know that Palestinians are referring beyond Nablus, Rahmallah and Jenin and are speaking about Tel Aviv, Haifa and Afula. All official Palestinian maps and the map patch that Arafat wears on his left coat shoulder illustrates a map of Palestine which covers all of the State of Israel.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi pointed out that hundreds of Palestinian children and teenagers have died in the fighting and that countless others have seen their parents impoverished, humiliated or even killed during the conflict.

"The question of whether Quraan's handlers really intended to blow him up without his knowledge makes absolutely no difference," Israeli commentator Amit Cohen wrote in the daily Ma'ariv. "The man who packed the bomb in a schoolbag must have taken into account the possibility that the child carrying the bomb was liable to get hurt."

Back in school Tuesday, Quraan said he had done nothing wrong. "These people [the Israeli army] are liars, I don't believe them, and if it was a bomb, they would not have let me go so easily," he said at his school.

He said he routinely carries people's belongings across the Hawara checkpoint near his home in the impoverished Balata refugee camp.

The practice is common at the checkpoints across the West Bank, where Palestinians sometimes wait long periods to cross and children are less likely to raise suspicion.

Quraan said he met two men at the checkpoint on Monday. He said he and a friend raced to their vehicle ahead of a crowd of other children to get the business.

"They gave us a small travel bag, a plastic bag, and a bottle of water," Quraan said. The men told him to deliver the goods - described as clothes and auto parts - to a woman on the other side of the checkpoint. He said the men agreed to pay him the equivalent of about $4 to carry the items on a cart.

Alert soldiers confiscated the bags at the checkpoint and cleared the area, Quraan said. A bomb squad came in and blew up the bags. The boy said he was interrogated for several hours and released.

Army spokeswoman Maj. Sharon Feingold said the troops had thwarted a major terror attack and that the boy's life was saved only because a booby-trapped cell phone inside a bag didn't explode. She accused the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a terrorist group affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, of exploiting the boy.

The Israeli human rights group B'tselem, normally highly critical of Israel, called the use of a child to transport explosives a "war crime."

A local leader of Al Aqsa, Hashem Abu Hamdan, denied any connection and suggested the story had been made up by Israel, an opinion expressed by many Palestinians Tuesday.

Abdallah Quran, the 11-year-old Palestinian boy said Tuesday he does not believe the IDF version that the bag he was carrying contained explosives.

"They are lying," he said. "I never saw a bomb. If the bag really contained a bomb, why did they release me?"

Quran's older brother, Muhammad, claimed that Israel staged the incident in an attempt to win the sympathy of international public opinion.
"We have been told many journalists were at the checkpoint before the alleged incident," he said. "This shows that the whole thing was fabricated by Israel in order to defame the Palestinians. They used my brother as a tool in their propaganda machine."

A teacher at Quran's school said the majority of the camp residents is convinced that Israel made up the story.

"If the boy really had an explosive belt, why did they release him so easily?" he asked. "The Israelis are trying to justify their daily crimes against our people and the killing of children."
Ja'far al-Masri, a taxi driver from Nablus who claims he was at the checkpoint when the boy was caught, said he finds it hard to believe that a Palestinian group would exploit a small boy to transfer a bomb.

"I was there and I can't believe that they found explosives in the boy's bag," he added. "I think the Israelis planted the bomb there. The Palestinian groups are much more responsible and they would never do such a thing. Besides, they know that had the bomb exploded at the checkpoint, hundreds of Palestinians would have been killed or injured."

The IDF categorically denied the Palestinian accusations and said the terrorists had made cynical use of the child by placing the bomb in his bag. The IDF has no reason to detain children.

Security officials said it is obvious the terrorists don't want to admit they are recruiting Palestinian children.

Quran said two men asked him to deliver the bag to a woman waiting on the other side of the IDF checkpoint at the village of Huwara, south of Nablus.

Quran, who along with many children his age earn a living as porters at IDF checkpoints, said he was unaware that he was carrying a bomb. "Two men in their thirties paid me five shekels (one dollar), and asked me to deliver the bag to a woman who was waiting in a Subaru on the other side of the checkpoint," he said.

"I was with a friend of mine from the village of Kufr Qalil, who uses a cart to transport big bags," he added. "I was carrying three bags. When we arrived at the checkpoint, a female soldier started searching the bags. Suddenly, before she touched the third bag, soldiers came and took me to the side. I didn't know what was happening."
Quran, a sixth-grader at the UNRWA school in the Balata refugee camp, said he did not see any wires hanging out of the bag or anything else arousing suspicion.

"The soldiers gave me some sweets and asked me to calm down," he recalled. "Some of them shouted at me, demanding to know who had given me the bag. I told them that two men asked me to deliver the bag to a woman and that I didn't know anything else."
While the soldiers were still checking the suspicious bag, the two men tried unsuccessfully to detonate it remotely with a mobile phone.

Security sources said the two belonged to Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and that the bomb was intended for a suicide attack inside Israel.

But Quran, who was back in school on Tuesday, told journalists that the men who gave him the travel bag told him it contained clothes and auto parts. "I didn't do anything wrong. This is what I do for a living and to help my family."

Many Balata residents said they believe the story was fabricated by Israel in order to defame the Palestinians and drive a wedge between the people and the armed groups.

However, a Palestinian journalist from Nablus who works with the foreign media said he does not rule out the possibility that the Israeli version is true.

"Some people are asking themselves many questions, and are talking about the possibility that Fatah had indeed used the boy," he said. "There have been cases in which Fatah used women and children to transfer bombs."

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades denied responsibility, saying its members do not use children to carry out attacks against Israel.

"There is no shortage of adult fighters," said a local leader of the group. "The aim of the Israeli army is to defame the Martyrs Brigades. We do not use children, because this is inhuman and contravenes our traditions and morals. They are lying."

The Israeli human rights group B'tselem strongly condemned the attempt to use the 11-year-old to transport explosives as a war crime. "There is no possible justification for attacks targeting civilians," it said in a statement. "Any such attack is illegal and immoral. Taking advantage of Abdallah Quran, age 11, only compounds the violation. Using a child to transport explosives is in and of itself a war crime."

Palestinian human rights organizations refused to comment on the incident. But Ziad Abu Zayyad, a legislator and former minister from Jerusalem, said the PA is looking into the story.

PA deputy minister Sufian Abu Zaydah said that, although he does not accept the Israeli version according to which the bomb was to have been detonated at the checkpoint, he did not rule out the possibility that someone had given the explosives to the boy.

"I don't think the plan was to blow up the bomb at the checkpoint," Abu Zaydah said. "I can't imagine that someone would do such a thing as using children. As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't even use a cat on such a mission."

Over 950 Israelis have been murdered in terror attacks over the past three years. During this period PA Chairman Yassar Arafat has called upon Palestinian children to march into Jerusalem as suicide bombers. It has been common practice by Arafat's Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah to use children as human shields during terror attacks. In many cases, Palestinian terrorists have used ambulances to transport explosives through IDF checkpoints.

If one wants to know what's really at the heart of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, don't ask politicians or diplomats. Go to Palestinian children.

Unlike the rest of the world, they've been paying close attention to what their leaders and educators have been teaching. And they are ready to practice what they've been taught.

For instance, children interviewed on PA TV last week state without reservation that Israel has no right to exist, and that the goal for which they're willing to sacrifice their lives is Israel's destruction.

"They [the Jews] came to take Palestine, that is, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramle. All these cities belong to Palestine," one youth explains in a December 25 broadcast, echoing years of standard Palestinian Authority indoctrination.

And because he is convinced that Israel has no right to exist: "We hope, hope, hope and I emphasize these things, that the Arab countries and the foreign countries – all the countries of the world – will support the Palestinians and will expel the Israelis.

"We must expel all Israelis from Palestine. Because Israel – there is nothing called 'Israel' in the world. The Israelis [came] from Holland, America, Iran."

Throwing rocks? Not quite. Photo: AP
Palestinian teenagers throw concrete blocks down onto Israeli anti-terror units. These children,
raised on hate, will die as Israeli IDF snipers defend their operations to protect Israel's civilian population.

The children are seen promising they will keep fighting, generation after generation, until they liberate Palestine.

Furthermore, they say they don't fear death in the struggle because it is shahada – death for Allah. "Even if all the Palestinian children, Palestinian youth, Palestinian women, and Palestinian men die, we will not surrender!"

None of this is surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to what does on in the PA educational system. Israel is erased from PA maps, schoolbooks and historians deny Israel's right to exist, and educators at all levels teach that Israel is a foreign colonial implant.

Despite PA claims to the contrary, its textbooks continue to delegitimize Israel and dismiss it as a foreign occupier: "Palestine faced the British occupation after the First World War in 1917, and the Israeli occupation in 1948."

Children are taught that all of Israel is part of Palestine. For example, "Among the famous rocks of southern Palestine are the rocks of Beersheba and the Negev..."

About Palestine's water sources, children are taught: "The most important is the Sea of Galilee."

Such messages of delegitimization have been affirmed by Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei. He is on record as rejecting the idea of Israel as a Jewish state. "President Bush said that Israel is a Jewish state, which is a cause for our concern. This should not have been said," he told Al-Nahar and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on June 15, 2003.

PA-affiliated historians appear on educational TV to reinforce this message. On December 28 Dr. Isam Sisalem reiterated what he has said on numerous broadcasts. Jews "have no history or connection to this land" and are nothing but a "cancer" planted by Britain to control the Middle East.

In the same educational broadcast last week, another historian resurrected The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, citing it as one of the foundations of the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

"The Zionist movement began at the Basel Congress to plan the exploitation of the powers' struggle, and the struggle of Europe over the Middle East," said Dr. Riad Al-Astal, a history lecturer at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

Palestinian children are indoctrinated with racist hatred
which knows no compromise for borders or peace.

Consequently, when we view children on PA TV who say they want to destroy Israel, to liberate Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, and Ramle, and to expel the Jews, we are seeing children who are accurately regurgitating the sentiments inculcated and reinforced throughout PA society.

Indeed, years of anti-Israel indoctrination have been alarmingly effective in teaching Palestinian youth that the Jews have no link to Israel, that Israel has no right to exist and that the overriding goal of the next generation – even at the cost of their lives – should be to eliminate Israel.

The essence of the conflict is Israel's very right to exist – not the question of borders or refugees. Peace negotiations that do not address the PA's system of indoctrination will be short-term paper agreements doomed to failure.

Palestinian children have already figured this out. Perhaps the rest of us need to stay after school.

With AP and Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch.

ISRAEL NEWS AGENCY