Author: Tim Costello,
chief executive of World Vision Australia
Investigating potential war crimes is essential, there is no doubt. But this will not do a thing for the children who are waiting for food and help to arrive, children who have seen things they should never have seen. In tandem with the ceasefire and crime investigations humanitarian agencies like World Vision need safe and open access to reach thousands of traumatised people, many of them children, from the past three weeks of conflict.
What should concern us all is the impact of this conflict and the decisions we are making right now on children. What has been modelled to Palestinian and Israeli children over and over again is that violence is the way to resolve the genuine grievances that each side has. The children of today become the hardliners of tomorrow. What they see and experience shapes their attitudes and future actions.
For the past month children in Palestine and Israel saw their homes bombed, their parents and friends die or flea frightened and angry, and their leaders powerless to make their lives any better.
Life in both nations is far from healthy. In Palestine, where 60 per cent of the population live on $US2 a day, children are malnourished, deprived of education and psychologically traumatised. A UN study showed that 1 in 14 children contemplate death and half the children under 11 suffer bedwetting and nightmares.
On the other side of the border, Israeli children are forced to live in constant fear with rocket attacks. Schools, kindergartens and playgrounds have been shelled. No kinder should have a bomb shelter but in this part of the world it’s essential.
The recent flare up in fighting have left thousands of people including children dead, injured, homeless and the entire Gaza and southern Israeli population deeply traumatised. In Gaza, where nearly half the population are under 18, 1 in 3 casualties are children.
Despite the ceasefire World Vision and many other NGOs have still been unable to reach anyone with even the most basic emergency supplies and support. In addition, our long term work in Gaza, which hundreds of Australians support, has been suspended, children cannot go to school and our staff face incredible challenges to check their wellbeing.
Apart from the bombs, walls have gone up separating all hope of community and destroying homelands, blockades have starved people of basics like food, fuel and medicines, schools and playgrounds have been ruined. Far from retrieving the region from the brink, each move has driven deeper the wedge of hatred between Palestinians and Israelis.
The cyclical nature of hatred was reaffirmed by World Vision research two years ago which shows that children often see violence against themselves or others as a way to end suffering and resist oppression. This should alarm us all.
What we need is a new approach. As World Vision has seen from more than 30 years working in the region, long-term programs that build communities and bring people together are crucial steps towards ending the cycle of violence.
When I was last in Jerusalem the group that moved me most deeply and gave me hope that things could one day be different was the Parents Circle Families Forum, which World Vision funds. I met Israeli and Palestinian parents who could not agree on politics or policy but unanimously agreed on one thing. The killing must stop. They met face to face abandoning positions where they might hate and seek vengeance to share the unspeakable pain that bonded them into a most unlikely group. Each had lost children from violence. Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli Defence Forces and Israelis at the hands of Hamas rockets or suicide bombers.
I was in tears listening to parents speak with a moral clarity borne out of intense suffering:
The killing of children must stop whatever else.
My own personal conclusion is that Hamas is fundamentally wrong to deny the right of Israel to exist. Israel is fundamentally in breach of many international resolutions by continuing to illegally occupy and impoverish Palestinians. Each talk of the wrongs of the other as a justification for what is now a murderous war on children. In this circle of parents, who knew the emotional cost of these justifications, I heard sense.
While right now we need immediate access into Gaza to reach thousands of traumatised people, in the longer-term we need an approach that builds empathy and understanding between people in both regions. This has to be built on similarities between people rather than differences on politics and policy. I believe that groups like the Parents Circle hold the seed for a way forward.