There is cause for optimism for those monitoring progress in the Middle East. A new era led by a movement toward democracy is gripping the region, and we should all approach this new era with a profound sense of hope.
Entrenched in this optimism, however, lingers some of the skepticism of the past. Years of indoctrinating children to hate, instructing children toward violence and exploiting children into war has created a generation that has been brainwashed to act as a veto against any real peace. This state-sponsored, systemic indoctrination continues today, and children continue to be exploited and abused into violence.
This must end. For peace to prevail the Palestinian Authority must begin to teach its children peace.
The Palestinian Authority has been rejuvenated with a leadership that seems committed to resolving the bitter feuds that have plagued our peoples for so many years. However, for this commitment to be seen as a real pledge for peace, the government must begin dismantling its infrastructure of hate that under Yasser Arafat was so rigidly constructed.
The Palestinian Authority administers military-style summer camps for children with the implicit aim of preparing them for battle. Children are taught that war is the way of the future, leaving little room for ambitions of peace. While Israeli children attend summer camps that teach skills such as swimming, art and other positive life skills, Palestinian children attending Palestinian Authority-administered camps learn the basics of violence, hatred and combat. State-sponsored military training for children is nothing less than child abuse.
No peace agreement alone will dispel the deeply entrenched hatred that has so tenaciously been programmed into these children. A generation of children has been forced to endure a level of hateful propaganda that has left them ready to fight and die, entirely unaware that they are being used as pawns in a corrupt game of death.
Too often we have seen children ranging from 14 to 16 years of age strap themselves to a bomb and blow themselves up. On Nov. 1, 2004, a 16-year-old Palestinian blew himself up in the Carmel market in Jerusalem, killing three Israelis and himself. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility. But what does it mean when a terrorist organization claims responsibility for a terrorist attack? What does it mean when the terrorist was 16 years old? It means that organizations are taking the Palestinian youth out of their homes, their schools and their nightclubs, and bringing them into a sinister, manufactured world and teaching them to kill.
Unfortunately, however, these terrorist organizations are not limited to fringe groups and sidelined by the government. The government itself promotes this behavior and acts as a resource in preparing children to pursue this activity. In fact, the Web site of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the military wing of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, displays pictures of children training in uniform with weapons. In most Western countries it is considered child abuse for a parent to teach his or her child to use a gun when he or she is 5 years old. Where is the condemnation when the Palestinian Authority commits the same abuse against an entire generation?
Between January 2002 and January 2004, there were at least eight terrorist attacks committed by children. Children do not naturally aspire to blow themselves up. This attitude is taught and learned; now is the time to stop it.
With this new hopeful era that has emerged in the region must also come a commitment to teaching the children peace. Children are not soldiers, they are not weapons, and they should be taught love and compassion, not hatred and intolerance. The world must demand an end to the exploitation and abuse of Palestinian children. The future of Middle East peace depends on it.
Gregg Roman is a sophomore in the School of International Service.
