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JACQUELINE SFIER

Children of intifada will continue
fight, says Palestinian educator

The intifada in the West Bank and
Gaza, “challenges our view of child-
hood,” a Palestinian educator told a
Vancouver audience April 15.

Dr. Jacqueline Sfier said children
began throwing stones at Israeli patrols
in the occupied territories because “they
decided they couldn’t take it any more.

“The children are coping, they are
adjusting like children throughout the
world. But must they play these games?
It is not fair,” Sfier, director of early
childhood education at the Catholic
University in Bethlehem, declared.

Sfier said the occupying troops have
closed most schools, leaving Palestinian
youth with time to engage the occupiers.

She addressed an audience in the Van-
couver Planetarium in a talk sponsored
by Jews for a Just Peace, Voice of Pales-
tine radio, the Canada-Palestine Associ-
ation, the Near East Cultural and
Educational Foundation of Canada, and
several other organizations.

Sfier, on a speaking tour of Canadian
and US. cities, acknowledged that the
most visible aspect of the 17-month-old
intifada — which means “to shake
off’? — is of children throwing stones.
But the uprising is “not just riots — it is
the climax of 21 years of struggle” since
the territories were taken in the 1967
Middle East war, she said.

The street battles in the territories have
been going on for years. But whereas
they were previously localized, they are

now “generalized,” Sfier said.

Children took things into their own
hands because their parents were power-
less to stop the ravages of the years of
occupation, Sfier stressed.

Sfier emphasized that the intifada
could not happen “‘if the process of des-
truction wasn’t ongoing.”

That occupation destroyed the former
self-sufficient economy of the West Bank
and Gaza by the mid-Seventies. The terri-
tories have 15 hospitals — the same num-
ber as in 1967 — which now must serve a
greater population, meaning there are
6,000 Palestinians to one hospital bed.

Laws prohibit such simple enterprises
as purchasing chickens for farming or
seedlings to plant orchards without writ-
ten permission.

All forms. of education have been
stopped since the intifada, Sfier said.
Schools have been closed by military
order, libraries have been shut down,
youth groups abolished and no one can
volunteer to téach children “because
education is a threat to security.”

Several hundred Palestinians have

‘been killed since the intifada began. But

the Israeli military knows that killing
children brings outrage, so the response
has been to “incapacitate” them.

Sfier’s words were given weight by the
testimony of Dr. Gabor Mate, a Van-
couver physician who has been part of a
visiting delegation of health care workers
to the occupied territories. The meeting

neard a taped interview on the CBC”
radio program, As It Happens, in which }
Mate described the condition of some of |
the young victims of army shootings. _}
“T’ve been crying,” Mate told the CBC ©
interviewer.
Mate also described army provoca= ©

tions, relating that patrol vehicles have }

cruised neighbourhoods broadcasting |
insults, including sexual innuendos, to |
the occupants. 4

Children who have been wounded ©

view themselves not as victims but as}

soldiers, Sfier said. They usually refuse to |
be photographed in hospital beds, insist-
ing on standing up, she related. y
Sfier said the Israeli soldiers “are not }
monsters,” and they are not viewed as J
such by the children of the intifada.
“They have sized the soldiers up pretty |
well, and those children feel safer and ©

stronger than those armed men.”

And the children of the intifada are E |
still children: “They play, they dream, ~
they draw, they hope.” She noted an ©

exhibition of Palestinian children’s draw- |}

ings is currently touring North America. Li

The uprising is limited to the territo- |

ries, “but if Israelis could see what is |
happening, then the intifada wouldn’tbe |
just on the West Bank, it would be in
Israel.”

“Our children will never hate, we will |
not hate, but we are angry and continue
(the intifada) until we have peace and
justice,” Sfier declared.

of Canada

Clubs:

Campbell River
Comox Valiey

Communist Party

B.C. Provincial Committee

Regional Committees:

Fraser Valley, Greater Vancouver,
Okanagan, Vancouver Island

Aubrey Burton North Shore
Bill Bennett Penticton
Burnaby Port Alberni

Prince George
Prince Rupert

Correspondence Richmond
Coquitlam Sunshine Coast
Creston Surrey

Delta Trail

Effie Jones Upper Valley
Kamloops Vancouver East
Kingsway Vernon

Maple Ridge Victoria
Nanaimo Westside

New Westminster White Rock
Nigel Morgan

26 Pacific Tribune, May 1, 1989