Out of the Mouths of Babes

[Annie]

I think 15 qualifies. Funny how you don't find many Israeli youths this extreme.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/08/12/MNGB8E6O2H1.DTL

A TIME OF CHANGE
ISRAELIS, PALESTINIANS AND THE DISENGAGEMENT
Boy ready for martyrdom
- Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005

Netanya, Israel -- The series

Next week, Israel will begin evacuation of nearly 9,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. The series looks closely at the lives of individuals touched by the conflict there.

Today

Fifteen-year-old Abdel Kareem Mohammed Abu Habel sits in an Israeli prison after he tried and failed to martyr himself last year. Would he do it again? Without a doubt, he says.

Abdel Kareem Mohammed Abu Habel agrees with Israeli critics who say that next week's disengagement from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank will do nothing to stop Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel.

Sitting in his jail cell in the Sharon Detention Center in central Israel, he also said he would never accept peace with the Jewish state, even if Israel eventually pulled back to its pre-1967 borders, behind the so-called Green Line. He doesn't even know what the Green Line is.

The only peace he wants "is to get back all our lands," meaning the entire state of Israel.

"We don't want the Jews on this world," he said.

Abdel is 15. He has a baby face that sharply contrasts with the cigarette sticking out of his broken teeth. He sits in a cell, approximately 10 feet by 10 feet, the light from a bright blue sky filtering through an iron grate ceiling in the courtyard outside.

He is in prison for strapping a bomb to his belly in the spring of 2004 and trying to kill Israelis by killing himself.

If he were released today, he said, it would not be long before he tried again.

"One month," he estimated. "I would want to see my family first."

Those who fear the consequences of Israel's disengagement cite teenagers like Abdel, who have been increasingly recruited into the ranks of suicide bombers by extremist anti-Israel groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Palestinian Authority, which will assume control of the evacuated settlements, also has something to fear, if Abdel's opinions are anything to go by.

"I don't like Abu Mazen," he said, referring to the name Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is known by. "Abu Amar (the late Yasser Arafat) didn't want peace. Abu Mazen wants peace."

Abdel was born in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, where into less than one square mile are packed 100,000 people, a number that has been growing for more than 50 years, going back to the time Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip.

Today, children make up more than half the camp's population, and the unemployment rate is around 50 percent. The smell of raw sewage and rotting garbage is everywhere. Jabaliya is a hotbed of Palestinian resistance to the occupation, and everywhere are the sights of homes demolished by Israeli bombs and bulldozers.

It is also where the first stones were thrown in 1987, heralding the first Palestinian intifada (uprising), before Abdel was born.

"When I was a little boy ... I saw people killed become martyrs," Abdel said, fidgeting in a cheap plastic chair in the cellblock classroom. "When I saw that, I started thinking I wanted to do an operation."

Growing up, he heard over and over again the stories -- true or not -- of how his family was driven from its home near Ashkelon during the 1948 Arab- Israeli war, and of a grandfather who died fighting the Jews.

Having dropped out of school, he spent much of his early teens alongside his brothers -- he comes from a family of seven boys and four girls -- throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers.

"It is an honor for us to go and fight and throw stones," he said. "Every stone we throw is another step toward honor from God."

His older brother was shot in the legs, he said, and never walked properly again. Abdel proudly showed the scar on his own leg, where he said he had been shot by an Israeli soldier, and the scar from a bullet he said had grazed his head. He talked about seeing his own blood on his hands after that injury, about being taken to the ambulance as he recited the shahadah, an Islamic prayer: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet," the words a Muslim tries to speak in the final moments before death.

Quickly, Abdel moved beyond stone-throwing in Jabaliya. In one incident, he claimed, he pressed the detonator to set off a bomb that blew up an Israeli tank.

That night, he said, he saw on the news that the explosion had injured three soldiers.

"I was very happy. The other people knew I had done it and were happy for me. And somebody had filmed me!" he said. "My family told me, 'This is what we want. We want mujahedeen.' "

The injured soldiers, or their families, he said, did not enter his mind.

He was arrested and released three times over the next two years, he said. On the last of those occasions, he was held for three months, he said. Israeli laws do not allow the review of juveniles' files, so his account could not be independently confirmed.

A week after he was released, Abdel made plans for martyrdom. He purchased the components -- explosives, belt, detonator -- to make a suicide belt, using money he had earned by making gold bracelets for sale. It cost about 1,000 Israeli shekels -- approximately $250.

Three friends helped him make a video of himself holding an M-16, with the Hamas flag behind him and saying some final words that he has since forgotten. Then, he donned the belt and went to a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers not far from his home.

He insisted the plan was his own idea, although Israeli officials have accused extremist groups in the West Bank and Gaza of recruiting young men like Abdel for terrorist acts.

"I was going to be dead," he said. "I was going to see God and defend Jerusalem. I was happy." He was 14.

He thought about his family -- about how his brothers would be interrogated, his family home demolished.

"They would be honored," he said confidently. "It's worth it. The most important thing is that the operation succeeds."

But there were problems. Somehow, the soldiers had a picture of Abdel. They ordered him to halt and disrobe. Surrounded, he said, by fellow vulnerable Palestinians, he removed the belt, watching in fury as an Israeli Defense Force robot dragged it away. Then, he was taken into custody.

Neither the 18 months in an Israeli prison, nor the pursuit of peace by current Palestinian leaders and a temporary truce pronounced by Hamas and Islamic Jihad has changed his mind, or his family's situation.

His parents, brothers and sisters still live in Jabaliya in the same concrete home, built by the United Nations -- several simple rooms up four flights of graffiti-marred concrete stairs. It is filled with photos of Hamas leaders and shaheed (martyrs) -- dead men with guns -- and a few photos of Abdel.

The resemblance to his 48-year-old mother -- the same big laugh, wide smile, and gap between the front teeth -- is startling.

"He was born on Black Sunday," said Besma Mohammed Abu Habel -- May 20, 1990, the day a deranged Israeli murdered seven Palestinian field laborers in Gaza, she recalls.

His father worked in a slaughterhouse inside Israel for a Jewish boss who treated him well and paid him enough to provide for the family. Her son was full of energy.

"Smart. He always worked hard," she said.

But the boy changed around his 10th year, she said, when he was hit in the knee by an Israeli bullet. He spent four months in the hospital, two more before he could walk on his own. He missed examinations, then refused to return to school, she said. He was angry. He wanted revenge.

"His father insisted he stay here, away from the soldiers and away from the kids who were throwing stones at the soldiers," she said. "The first time, he was hit in the knee. The second time, he might be hit in the head."

Abdel turned a deaf ear to the entreaties. He would reply, Besma said: "It's too bad that bullet hit me in the knee and not in the head. I would have been a martyr."

During an interview with The Chronicle, she first said her son's attempted suicide bombing was an Israeli fiction created in interrogation. Or a frame-up by older boys. But when told by a reporter that the story came from his own lips, she said something different.

"All the youngsters these days, this is what they talk about. Anywhere you go in this area. This is what they think about, the little kids. To blow themselves up," she said. "If you take the youngest kid, he'll say this is what he wants to do. Kill Jews."

"Of course I was proud that my son was fighting back. Not only him -- most kids his age," she said. "The parents are proud because the children are engaged in resistance. But we didn't think it would get to the point of suicide belts."

Had her son succeeded in his mission, Besma said, her feelings would have been mixed.

"Of course, yes, I would have been happy," she said. And proud. Even though it would be very sad for me to lose my son. But I would be very proud," she said.

"But of course, not when he was 14. This is for somebody older that him .. . 18 and up to 20 ... somebody this age, it would be OK," she said. "The first thing is to get them to higher education -- become doctors, teachers, educators. Then joining moqawama (resistance)."

As she spoke, Besma was surrounded by small boys, her sons and grandsons, ranging from toddlers to teens. Asked whether they wanted to become martyrs, the boys universally nodded yes. Besma smiled with a mix of pride and resignation.

"I'm still a mother. Of course this is hard for me," she said. "But when I think about the history of Palestinians, we got kicked from our land. We are even chased here. We are restricted from moving. ... It's obvious who started the attacks and who is the enemy. That's why they grow up learning revenge. Each martyr has a son or a brother or a daughter who misses them when they die. And they grow up wanting revenge."

Israel should release her son, and the other child prisoners, Besma said.

But if she were an Israeli Jew, she conceded, she would not feel safe with Abdel on the streets. However, she sees glimmers of a different future.

"When the occupation ends and the Jews leave us, they will relax. They will regain their childhood."

His mother has visited Abdel four times in jail, he said, bringing news from home -- his brother lost a leg fighting Israelis, another brother was wounded in the shoulder.

Abdel was pleased to hear that the fighting goes on. "Alhamdulillah!" he cried. Thank God, yes.

"I will not give up on one meter of Palestinian land," he said, dismissing any kind of road map or peace process. "If God helps us, we will destroy Israel."

And he went back to the Israeli cell he shares with another teenage prisoner to wait for the dubbed Japanese cartoons to end and hope to see one of his favorite action films on the television set he has in his cell.

Except he doesn't call them action films.

He calls them "killing movies."