September 12, 2001
H. E. Mr. Kofi Annan
Secretary General
United Nations

Ms. Carol Belemy
Executive Director
UNICEF

Mr. Pierre Poupard
Special Representative
UNICEF

West Bank and Gaza

Dear Sir\Madam

We were shocked when we heard the tragic news yesterday; it is a tragedy. We the Palestinian children delegation to the General Assembly Special Session on Children are supposed to go there to discuss children's situation all around the world, we feel deep anger and sorrow since, we are under hard and horrible situation, we understand what it means.

We are against any kind of violence, against death and fear that might face children or civilians, because it is painful and unfair.

We were waiting patiently for our trip. We had so many hopes and dreams to fulfill, and we were holding a massage to the world about our suffering under Israeli occupation, that is why we can feel how hard it must be, for American children to cope with such a scary situation.

And we know the meaning of the real loss of a mother, a father, a brother or a friend, it hurts deep inside, Palestinian children are carrying this pain throughout their life.

That’s why as children, and the future of tomorrow, we have to start spreading peace from now, to seek for a better life, empty of any wars or hatred.

We hope our message can get to as many children as possible, so they can know how hurt and sorry we are, and to make sure we will fight for our rights as children until the end.

And we hope, that after a while, when things turn out better, we could meet again and find together the basis for a better, brighter future.

The Palestinian Children Delegation:

Abdelkareem Abdelkader 14 yrs Jabalya Refugee Camp

Ahmad Khairi 16 Jerusalem

Ala' Daribrahim 17 Direbsi’ Village

Iba Almaghari 15 Ramallah

Lina Musleh 16 Beit Sahour

Reem Hassan 16 Gaza

Tala AbuRahmeh 17 Aboud Village

Dear friends and partners

What happened in US yesterday is horrible , inhuman and cannot serve any just cause.We extend our sympathy to the families of all those who tragically lost their lives.
It is appalling to know that some Western media imply that some Palestinians are not moved by this act of terror. This could never be the case, what should be understood with compassion, is how desperate some Palestinians are, feeling that the world is deaf and blind to the ongoing sufferings inflicted on them by Israeli State Terrorism, in violation to all International Conventions and Laws, with little condemnation or deterrence to stop it !!

PRESS CONFERENCE ON PALESTINIAN CHILDREN

One of four Palestinian children addressing correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today replied to a question about what she felt when she met an Israeli child, "We don't hate the child. We hate the occupation." She said she had no chance to live in peace like other children around the world.

Reem Hassan, a 16 year-old girl from Gaza, was joined by Abdul Abdul Rahaman, 15, also from Gaza, and Jenin Zaal Abu Ruqti, 15, and Ahmad Khari, 16, both from Ramallah. They were introduced by the Director of the Tamer Institute for Community Education (Ramallah) and leader in the Palestinian Children's Rights Coalition, Jehan Helou. Today's press conference was sponsored by the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations.

Ms. Rahaman said they had come here because they believed that children must join every forum and conference that concerned them. That way, the decisions taken would be good for the children.

Mr. Khari said he had come to share the stories of what he was facing in Palestine and to describe what he was hoping could be achieved at the special session. He hoped to be able to share the experiences of Palestinian children with other children from around the world, and to hear theirs, in turn. He wanted to familiarize himself with people from around the world.

Some 10 years after the Convention on the Rights of the Child became operational, children were still being killed, abused, abandoned, denied education and recreation. Every bad thing imaginable was still going on. Many Convention provisions had pledged to honour and protect children, and leave their homes free from conflict, all of which was being destroyed by the Israeli soldiers in his country. He was here to tell the world that that was happening and to ask it what it planned to do about that, to support children.Ms. Hassan said she came here with a voice of peace from all the Palestinian children and with a message that they wished to live in peace on their land, like children around the world. She had hoped to convey the real situation in Palestine. "We love everybody; we don't hate anybody, and we came here, again, with a voice of peace", she said.

[Ms. Ruqti spoke in Arabic. Her remarks were unofficially translated by Ms. Helou].

Ms. Ruqti said it had been extremely difficult to come here because of the closures, the curfews and the long time it took to commute from one area to another. She left her parents and people in a very difficult situation, as they were facing Israeli attacks and destruction. Her brothers and sisters could not reach their schools, the sick could not reach the hospital, but she had wanted to come to carry their message of suffering to the world. She said she had come with three demands: the right to life; the right to education; and the right to protection. As children, they could not defend themselves.

They needed the international community to provide protection. For along time, they had been suffering, but apparently the world had not heard their cry. She wanted to tell the world to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child for Palestinian children.

“We as children –- we don't have playgrounds, we don't have clubs, we were born in a refugee camp and the only place to play are the slums of the camp", she continued. During Ramadan, the children were playing as usual in the slums, and the rockets came. One child was killed and four others were wounded. Their fingers were mangled, and it was a very traumatic experience.
Another very traumatic incident occurred when five children were walking to school and a landmine laid by Israeli occupation soldiers exploded, killing all five children from the same family. Their belongings were scattered; she had seen it happen (she held up pieces of a child's backpack and other scraps of clothing and schoolbooks).

Mr. Khari thanked his friend for sharing her experiences. He had been detained for 29 hours in a car at a checkpoint of the Israeli army, as he moved to another city en route to Egypt for a flight to New York. There was a long cue of cars, approximately 600, in the north of the Gaza strip. Another long line of cars was waiting in the southern end of the strip. When those checkpoints were closed, life stopped in the Gaza strip, preventing teachers and other workers from travelling.

He said he lived in one of the biggest refugee camps, but there were only three or four schools in the camp, with 60 students in the same class. That made it impossible for the teacher to explain the lesson to huge number of students. "We suffer from many problems; that's because we are refugees, and why are we refugees? Because we were occupied in 1948 by the Israeli army", he said.

When you tell your stories, what kind of response do you get from the grown-ups? a correspondent asked. Mr. Khari said he felt the others were "kind of with us". He felt their sympathy at hearing their stories. One boy told them that hearing the stories of the Palestinian children was changing his whole life. He would not complain about silly things anymore, like what he was having for breakfast, or too much noise, because other children were facing things he had never imagined.

"We want peace and we want to live like the other children", added Ms. Hassan. The other children had promised to try to push their governments hard to do something for the Palestinian children.
Directing his question to Mr. Khari, another correspondent asked "what is your position on the use of suicide bombings"? "First of all, we're not with killing innocent people, and that's the main idea", Mr. Khari replied. "But, when you're talking about somebody who has his land occupied, who has his friends being killed every day, being abused, checkpoints, their lands and their homes –- you can't tell somebody who is facing all this, ‘don't defend yourself’. He has the right to defend himself, and if he hasn't any other way to defend himself but that, he'll use it. Again, I'm saying we're not with killing innocent people", he said.

You're saying, in effect, that it was still a useful weapon? the correspondent asked. Mr. Khari said he would say to the Israelis that the main problem was occupation. Let the refugees come back and give the Palestinians all their rights, and there would be no cause for a problem and, therefore, no bombings.

Asked what the international community could do to help, Ms. Ruqti said it should provide international protection for the Palestinian children. She also wanted them to facilitate the return of refugees to their homeland. The main thing was to end Israeli occupation because that violated the rights of Palestinian children.Mr. Khari said all Palestinian homes had been destroyed in some way, and some houses had been totally destroyed, he said to another question. The home just beneath his family's was attacked by Israeli forces and totally destroyed.Ms. Hassan said the whole world could see what had happened at the Jenin Camp. All the houses were destroyed, with children and families inside. A lot of them were pushed out to other camps and villages, so they became refugees all over again. For one month after the attack on the West Bank, school was suspended, Mr. Rahaman added. It was completely closed because it was not even possible to move around. "If you moved for one metre, they will shoot you. How are you going to get to your school." Then, too, some schools were occupied or destroyed. He was supposed to finish school at the end of the month, but now one month of school would be added during the summer.

Since adults on both sides had so far failed to reach any peace agreement, as children, did the panellists have ideas? another correspondent asked.

Ms. Hassan said the first step towards peace was to "have our land back and the refugees back to their land". Peace was supposed to be fair for both sides.

Asked about the role of the United States in the peace process, Mr. Khari said the United States was not going to stop its support of Israelis. It did not want to support the Palestinians in their efforts to get their rights back. They just had to stop supporting Israelis, because they were supporting only the other side and, therefore, could not be neutral.

What did Ms. Hassan think of Graça Machel's response yesterday to her question about when she thought it would end? a correspondent asked. Ms. Hassan said her answer had been that they had nothing to do, because that big Power controlled the situation. But, she and the United Nations would try to get the needs of the Palestinian youth met.

'ON THE RECORD ' Your Electronic Link to the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children

An interview with Jehan Helou by Peter Lippmann from NGO Committee on UNICEF.

'SOMETHING IS MISSING,' said Jehan Helou, dissatisfied as she walked out of a Middle East Caucus session Monday. 'Palestinian children are helpless. The Child Rights Convention gives children in armed conflicts the basic right to protection. So we want the United Nations to protect children’s rights.' Ms. Helou is director of the Tamer Institute for Community Education, based in Ramallah, Palestine.

'What’s going on now is a basic violation of the Child Rights Convention,' she says. 'There are children in detention, children being tortured. This has increased in this Intifada.' As to her hopes for the present PrepCom, she says, 'The Outcome document should highlight the effects of occupation upon children.'

Founded in 1989, in the middle of the first Intifada, the Tamer Institute works to address the urgent needs of Palestinian children suffering from the effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The organization’s principal focus is to devise ways of continuing and improving children’s education in the face of occupation. The present Intifada (uprising) has intensified the challenge of this work.

Ms. Helou described ways that conditions are especially difficult for Palestinian children under the Intifada. The closure of borders creates a series of problems that affect every aspect of children’s life: 'Villages are sealed, and it is very difficult to move. The Israeli army has dug trenches around the villages. If someone is sick, they can’t go to the hospital. Many children can’t reach school.'

The division of Palestinian land into surrounded enclaves has shut down trade and thus heightened poverty, with a particularly harsh impact on the children, Ms. Helou explained. Nor has violence spared them; twenty per cent of the approximately 500 Palestinians who have been killed since last September were children. Over 10,000 people have been hospitalized. Ms. Helou: 'Most bullets are hitting the upper part of the body. Last week a girl from Bir Zeit was hit in the head by a rubber bullet, and needed three stitches. Over 2,000 youths have been disabled.'

The deeper effect of this long-term violence, now stretching into its tenth month, is traumatization of the children: 'If they see a father killed, or a brother or a friend, how can they study? They feel angry.' There is a danger of despair. Ms. Helou says, 'We ask ourselves, will it end? When? Can the Palestinian people go on suffering forever?'

It is here that the Tamer Institute is stepping in to try to rescue
another lost generation of Palestinian youth. Its programs to keep children learning are manifold and impressive. There is an ongoing reading program, in which the Institute collaborates with 60 libraries in both the West Bank and Gaza. Once a year, around International Book Day, Tamer sponsors a 'National Reading Week,' with events taking place simultaneously in cities and towns throughout Palestine. The hundreds of events that week include a book fair, puppet shows, story and poetry readings.

Ms. Helou describes the ongoing activities of the Tamer Institute as psycho-social in nature. The Institute sponsors a theater group in Dheishe refugee camp south of Bethlehem that is currently producing a play. 'Youth teams' set up by the Institute use drama as 'distress-relief,' and hold workshops for children in creative writing, story-telling, and painting. 'We encourage children to learn about their rights and to express themselves through writing,' says Ms. Helou. 'Our culture does not encourage this, but we do. The best way to relieve stress and trauma is to encourage self-expression.'

Under the siege-like conditions of the present repression, the Tamer Institute has had to decentralize. Now the organization relies more on the use of the telephone and e-mail to make continued project coordination possible. To improve communication, a Ramallah-based Tamer Institute youth team has started an electronic newsletter, accessible at www.Tamerinst.org .

Ms. Helou names U.N. resolutions and other international legal
documents that most Palestinians have memorized. On paper, they require the world to provide security for Palestinian children. She calls upon the moral obligation of the United States, the United Nations, and even the Israelis to protect Palestinian children and to stop the process of altering the demographic structure of the Occupied Territories. 'The United Nations is strong about this. U.N. agencies make resolutions on behalf of Palestinians, but you see conflict between the U.N. and the U.N.'

Jehan Helou voices both hope and frustration regarding the outcome of the PrepCom proceedings. She says, 'I cherish this conference because we acquaint ourselves with each other in this global village, but at the same time I see us beating around the bush. There should be more courage to solve dilemmas. The United Nations should be beyond narrow politics.