By: Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj
Many questions even after Mecca meeting remain ... what has become of
us? Our people have suffered for 59 years from displacement,
homelessness, discrimination, impoverishment and expatriation, but
they withstood that suffering and never killed each other; so what
happened to us? The late Arafat rejected a plan to kill Abu Nidal,
who had already killed a number of Palestinian leaders, and said, "If
we start this series of killings, we will never stop." So what
happened? I have heard stories about new forms of cold-blooded and
callous murder, and about Palestinians denigrating and holding as
infidel other Palestinians or accusing them of heresy and bigotry as
a prelude to ostracizing or murdering them. I have also heard
numerous stories about children who have been horrified and
traumatized and have fallen victims to nightmares, loss of appetite,
insomnia and fear of street-walking. What is happening to us? How
could things amount to assaulting homes, mosques and universities?
Politics and political difference alone do not provide the answer.
There are several additional social and psychological factors for
what is befalling this society. A safe and stable environment is one
that produces normal children, while the environment we have been
living in since the occupation is one in which violence proliferates
and becomes rampant.
I- Torture
After the 1967 Israeli occupation, a legitimate national armed
resistance movement emerged involving multitudes of freedom fighters.
I can recall that, while I was working at Al-Shifa hospital in the
early seventies, we received several murdered and injured freedom
fighters every day. Reacting to that resistance and in order to
contain and destroy it, Israeli forces arrested tens of thousands of
Palestinians and subjected them to systematic and various forms of
torture as documented by research teams of both Palestinian and
Israeli institutions acting in the area of defending human rights.
The effects of torture extend from the individual to his community.
Research has found that a high percentage of torture victims become
prey of mental illness which transform victims into problems for
their own selves as well as for their own families. The commonest
problem arising from torture is the violence which the victim directs
to women and children, which in its turn makes the home a
battlefield. The reason for such phenomenon is that the torture a
young man is subjected to makes him harbor a desire for revenge by
violent means and subsequently he unconsciously resorts to identify
with the Israeli torturer. This conclusion is supported by the fact
that the methods of torture used in Palestinian prisons are the same
as those used in Israeli prisons; they have at times even been more
atrocious and resulted in deaths among several prisoners in the early
years of the PNA takeover. Indeed, in many instances, the Palestinian
investigator was an ex-victim of Israeli torture. This phenomenon has
created a cycle of internal violence. We note here that many Hams
members were tortured in Palestinian prisons. Feelings of immense
hatred and desire for revenge started to build up and heighten
culminating in accusations of infidelity leveled at leaders of
security organs. All of these factors led to a state of polarization
and division which has aggravated by Hamas coming to power. Now it
seemed that some were willing to retaliate and take revenge from
those who tortured them, a desire which was intensified by the fact
that Hamas government was besieged and there spread a feeling that it
was targeted and conspired against and that some Fatah leaders were
accomplices in such conspiracy.
II- The First Intifada
Despite the glorification we attribute to the "children of the stone"
whom we hold as examples of heroism, we cannot ignore the fact that
they are flesh and blood and that they have been victims of various
forms of violence. In our work at the Gaza Community Mental Health
Program we conducted a research on three thousand Gaza children. The
study has found that those children were subjected to several
traumatic and violent experiences including beating, bone-breaking,
injury, tear gas and acts of killing and injury, all of which
experiences have left indelible effects on their psych. Yet, to many,
the most excruciating experience was seeing their fathers beaten
helpless by Israeli soldiers without resistance. Such an experience
will ultimately transform a whole generation into something different
as the second intifada showed; for the children of the first intifada
are themselves the men of the second intifada. Those young men who
are pursuing revenge and killing and are at times seeking even their
own death are the selfsame children who cherished so many dreams of a
better life but saw them fade away and fall apart the moment they saw
their fathers fall helpless and defenseless victims of arrogant
force incarnated in the Israeli soldier. No wonder then that the
Palestinian child will see his model in that Israeli soldier and that
his language will be the language of force and his toys and games
will be the toys and games of death.
III- The Effects of Ongoing Violence
Israel systematically assaulted the Palestinian people in all aspects
of their lives and it even escalated its aggressions during the
second intifada as it resorted to a policy of house demolition;
infrastructure, farm and facilities destruction; extrajudicial
killing and mass detention of activists and systematic torture.
Psychological research worldwide has shown that ongoing armed
conflicts result in what is known as chronic social toxication which
makes people and children less sensitive and more ruthless, less
rational and more impulsive, less conversant and more violent. More
significantly, new groups are formed of individuals who are alien to
the family system and to the social fabric and who are powerful and
violent enough to be capable of heinous killing. Ultimately, those
individuals are viewed as untouchable masters and examples to be
followed by the disadvantaged and vulnerable. The outcome of this is
that brute force, not morality, emerge is the example to be followed.
Another effect of such social toxication is the phenomenon of social
disintegration and disunity which is manifest in the decline of the
father's authority with all the moral values it embodies; and in the
young men's tendency to search for a new identity which they seek to
be assertive and different from that of their vulnerable and
downtrodden parents. There emerged the new form of identity provided
by Islamic organizations and armed militias which in many cases
supplanted national and filial belonging and rendered many persons
alienated from their community.
IV- The PNA Performance
The PNA performance has had a tremendous psychological impact on the
Palestinians. Throughout its term of office, the PNA regime has been
characterized by absence of law and justice, violation of human and
individual rights, contravention against public lands, disrespect for
reason, disregard of accountability and penalty amounting to
rewarding of offenders, spread of favoritism and nepotism which
created heightened feelings of bitterness, exasperation and hatred
among the disadvantaged and destitute. All of these factors made the
Palestinian citizen feel that only force in its different forms is
the only resort.
The PNA added insult to injury as its security organs penetrated
families. This reciprocally allowed families to penetrate security
organs which became controlled by Fatah leaders as well as by heads
of a large Gaza family. This resulted in gross security violations
and social disorder, and culminated in numerous instances of law-
breaking and aggressions against public and individual rights and
property. In all circumstances, aggressors were backed either by
their faction, family or a security organ and sometimes by all of
them, which made power concentrated in the hands of influential
individuals in the large authority apparatus. This eventually
resulted in more disunity and division among those same families, and
new armed and rival groups emerged by virtue of the official
authority support; only to turn against that authority one day and
dauntlessly assault some of its major symbols.
In this regard, it is noticeable that the Palestinian people's
performance in the first intifada was characterized by an
overwhelming sense of solidarity, resilience and commitment to moral
values, all of which seemed to be nonexistent in the second intifada
which has been dominated by chaos, disintegration and division. Some
observers attribute such change to the presence of the PNA and to its
inability to assume a leading role, as well as to its acting as a
barrier between the resistance and occupation. Its corruption and
weakness made it easy for both parties to beat it.
V- Absence of a common enemy and uncontrolled arms
The actual non-presence of a common enemy in Gaza diverted the
furious and enraged feelings of revenge from their natural path and
redirected them into the Palestinian community among individuals,
families and the factions contending for power and their militias.
Under deteriorating social, economic, political and psychological
conditions, it is only natural, as we have already warned that
violence will prevail in the Palestinian society and among its
individuals and groups. This situation further worsened with the
proliferation of arms and plentitude of funds in the hands of
contending parties and militias. Those factors on their own, however,
cannot account for those bizarre acts of revenge, torture and killing
committed in the recent clashes between Fatah and Hamas and which
reflect inveterate grudge and hatred. Therefore, there is need to
consider the other reasons.
Conclusion
The systematized repression and torture that the Palestinian people
was subjected to under the Israeli occupation, the poor performance
of the PNA as embodied in the absence of law and justice and
maladministration all led the youth to seek and cling to a new
identity which is different from that of their helpless parents and
which holds that naked force is the only means to avenge themselves
over the suppression they have long been subjected to.
The formation of those political, partisan and religious identities
and the view that ultimate force is the model of heroism are the
major cause of the status quo of Palestinian armed conflict which
finds its fuel in many causes such as division, hatred, and
vindictiveness of a generation that rebels against the declining
family system and the chaotic PNA.
Please visit our site:
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
www.gcmhp.net
