Rights Group Decries Both Sides in Intifada for Endangering Kids

Two years of conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants have taken a heavy toll on children, the human rights group Amnesty International said Monday in a report that sharply criticized both sides.

In a fresh reminder, Palestinian authorities said two boys were shot to death by Israeli soldiers Monday in clashes in and near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Amnesty said 250 Palestinian children and 72 Israeli children were killed in the conflict from September 2000 until the end of this August. Since the beginning of the current Palestinian intifada, or uprising, the report said, “children have been targeted in an unprecedented manner.”

“The patterns of killings ... show how the right to life of Palestinian and Israeli children has been repeatedly violated as a result of the systematic failure of the Israeli authorities, Palestinian armed groups and the Palestinian Authority to comply with

Israeli officials expressed regret over the deaths of Palestinian children, but they drew a distinction between those deaths, which they said were accidental, and those of Israeli children, who they say are deliberately targeted by suicide bombers and other assailants.

“There’s never been a soldier ... who ever looked with anything but the deepest regret at the death of a child,” said Capt. Jacob Dalal, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces. “I wish the same could be said of the other side.”

Spokesmen for the Palestinian Authority did not return repeated telephone calls. Palestinian officials maintain that Israel’s military occupation has made it impossible for them to control radical groups that have carried out suicide bombings, although they have denounced such attacks.

Amnesty did not accuse Israel of deliberately targeting children, but it said the country has been guilty of “unlawful and excessive use of lethal force” in violation of international law. Most of the deaths of Palestinian children have occurred when Israeli soldiers responded to demonstrations and rock-throwing by opening fire with either rubber-tipped bullets or live ammunition, the report said.

The death of 10-year-old Rami Khalil Barbari on Monday morning was apparently one such death. Palestinian officials said Rami was with other children throwing rocks at soldiers at the Balata refugee camp near Nablus when they were hit with live ammunition. Rami was shot in the head and died; three other boys were wounded.

An Israeli army spokesman said soldiers at the camp exchanged gunfire with Palestinians but were unaware that they had hit anyone.

Later, another boy, Mahmoud Hamze Zaghloul, 11, was killed in Nablus. Hospital officials said he was shot in the chest in another rock-throwing incident. The army said a youth who appeared to be a teenager was shot as he was about to throw a Molotov cocktail at soldiers. The Nablus clashes also left a 21-year-old Israeli soldier, Sgt. Ari Weiss, dead and 38 other people injured, many of them children, officials said.

The Amnesty report said it is improper for Israeli forces to use live ammunition or even rubber-tipped bullets--which can be lethal--in the presence of children.

Dalal, the Israeli military spokesman, said the army’s “general policy” is not to fire at or around children, although he stressed that “a 17-year-old throwing a Molotov cocktail does not fall into that category.” He said children have often been killed in cross-fire or because they were mixed in with adult combatants.

Amnesty defines a child as anyone under 18, and it cited many instances in which Israeli troops have fired on groups composed entirely or primarily of children, often preteens. It also criticized Israel for attacks on residential areas during which children were killed.

“It is not clear what instructions, if any, have been given to IDF soldiers about the targeting of children,” the report said, referring to the Israeli military. However, it added, the sheer number of children killed, and the fact that most of them were hit in the head or upper body, suggests that Israeli forces “have consistently breached international standards regulating the use of force and firearms.”

Amnesty was also harsh in its criticism of Palestinian officials and, especially, the radical groups that have carried out suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Of the Israeli children killed in the conflict, 70% have died in such attacks, the report said.

In the worst of these attacks, in June 2001, a suicide bomber blew himself up among a group of young people waiting outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv, killing 21 people, 12 of them under 18.

Amnesty said the bomber, a member of the radical group Hamas, “must have anticipated that many children would be among the victims.”

In fact, the report concluded, Palestinian armed groups “make no distinction between military objectives and civilians, including children.”

In chiding the Palestinian Authority, Amnesty acknowledged that Israel may have made it difficult for the governing body to exercise control over armed groups. However, the report said, “this does not lessen in any way” the authority’s obligation to prevent attacks on civilians.