Curiosity and Anger Draw Gaza Children to Their Deaths

One moment, Suleyman abu Foul was at the breakfast table, asking his mother for food. The next, the 15-year-old Palestinian had slipped out unnoticed into a neighborhood torn by more than a week of combat.

A short time later Thursday, the grim news came: Suleyman and his 14-year-old nephew had been killed by Israeli fire.

“I asked where he was and [the other children] said, ‘I don’t know,’ ” Suleyman’s mother, Galia, said a few hours after. “Then they came and told me he was killed. I didn’t believe it.”

The boys were the latest youths to die in the Israeli campaign in and around this impoverished camp. More than 20 minors have died and dozens have been wounded, Palestinian hospital officials and human rights groups say.

Israel launched raids in Jabaliya last week after Palestinian militants fired Kassam rockets over the border into the southern Israeli town of Sderot, killing two children, ages 2 and 4.

Thursday’s deadly violence -- plus the death of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy who had been injured earlier -- pushed the toll from the latest fighting to more than 80. Late in the day, an 11-year-old girl was shot in the head in the Beit Hanoun community.

These cases reminded parents of the risks children face when Israeli troops and Palestinian militants clash. Fighting has raged in a cramped, urban setting, causing children to cower under their beds at night and killing nearly as many civilians as combatants.

Parents said they usually tried to keep their youngsters inside during military incursions such as this one. But often they don’t succeed.

Boys, some not yet 10 years old, gather in adoring flocks around the masked Palestinian fighters who move through the narrow streets. Other children are drawn outside by curiosity, the desire to throw rocks at Israeli tanks or -- in a place with big families and small apartments -- simply to escape crowded homes.

Fifteen-year-old Shaban Iskafi, dressed in a black T-shirt with the yellow logo of the militant group Islamic Jihad, said he and friends had ventured out Wednesday to toss firecrackers and rocks at an Israeli bulldozer on a nearby hill. They also tried to hit a tank but it was too far away, he said.

Iskafi said his father strongly opposed such activities and had beaten him for joining rock-throwers in an Israeli incursion last year. But, the youth said, “I want to defend my homeland.”

When the fighting lasts a week or more, keeping children indoors becomes more difficult.

Sitting in a bare room crowded with 20 female mourners, Galia abu Foul said that she had forbidden her children to leave the house and that Suleyman had obeyed -- until Thursday. The previous night, he had said he wanted to see whether his school was reopening.

His nephew and best friend, Raed abu Zaid, also went to his death. Israeli military sources said the two were killed by a missile fired from a helicopter after an airborne drone spotted a pair of suspicious figures who appeared to be launching a Kassam rocket. Relatives told Associated Press that the boys were playing with an empty tube and gasoline-filled bottles, apparently mimicking the militants who fire the homemade rockets.

Israel launched its Jabaliya offensive to halt repeated rocket attacks from the camp -- a militant stronghold of more than 100,000 residents -- and neighboring communities.

The fatal rocket strike against Sderot last week, and a similar attack there in June that killed a man and a 4-year-old boy, underscore how the violence has touched children from both sides during the four years of the conflict. Palestinian youngsters have been killed during Israeli military raids, and Israeli children have died in suicide bus bombings and shooting attacks carried out by militants.

According to B’tselem, an Israeli human rights group, 557 Palestinians younger than 18 have been killed during the intifada. The group said 113 Israeli minors were slain in the period ended Sept. 15.

During the current incursion, the rights group said, 31 of 75 people who had died as of Monday were civilians, including 19 younger than 17.

Israeli officials have long charged that Palestinian fighters hide behind crowds of children and other civilians. They also cite cases in which children as young as 14 have been caught with explosive belts of the type used in suicide bombings.

In interviews, Israeli soldiers taking part in the offensive have said they dread going into refugee camps because children are all over the battle zone.

“Just like we used to play ‘road roulette’ when we were kids, rushing out in front of cars, they play ‘tank roulette’ to see who can run through our fire without being hit,” a member of a tank crew told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot.

Soldiers say they are trained to regard even small children as a potential threat.

“There is always the fear that one of them will come over with a grenade that his father has given him and throw it at us. The whole crew could be killed,” another soldier told the newspaper. “When they get too close and the dilemma is them or us, I say, ‘Us,’ and I fire at the ground near their feet to chase them away.”

Palestinian hospital officials said the wounds suffered by children were worse than in previous incursions. Mahmoud Assali, medical director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, the main hospital in Jabaliya, said children accounted for more than a third of the 60 or so fatalities the hospital has handled. Of more than 175 injured and treated, 40 were minors, he said.

Some of the victims were blown into fragments, Assali said, and many of the injured had grave shrapnel wounds and burns. He said Israeli forces appeared to have relied more heavily on tank and aerial missile strikes than rifle fire.

Among those recovering from injuries was 5-year-old Mohammed Aqel, struck by a bullet from an unknown source when he went out to buy candy. The boy dropped a coin and as he bent to pick it up, a bullet tore into his right thigh, said his mother, Samah.

Surgeons removed the bullet Wednesday night. On Thursday, Mohammed lay in a sparse hospital room, glassy-eyed and wearing a blue T-shirt and Tarzan underpants. Beside him were toy animals and blocks, but he showed no interest in playing.

His mother said the family had fled to her father’s house to escape shooting near their home in another section of the camp.

But, she noted sourly, “the danger came to us.”