Raija-Leena PunamäkiCHILDHOOD UNDER CONFLICT

The Attitudes and Emotional Lifeof Israeli and Palestinian Children

published by Tampere Peace Research Institute TAPRIas research report No. 32. First published in Finnish in 1981

to Gideon, Abed, Rachel and SihamCopyright by Raija-Leena Punamäki 1987

ISBN 951-706-080-7ISSN 0355-5550

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CONTENTSFOREWORD1. INTRODUCTION1.1. Background of the Study1.2. The Psychological Atmosphere in Israel and the Occupied West Bank1.3. War and Psychological Research

2. THE EFFECTS OF WAR STRESS ON THE CHILD’S PSYCHE 2.1. Frequency and Nature of Psychological Disturbances Due to War 2.2. Determinants of Psychic Disorders Due to War 2.3. Children’s Attitudes Towards War2.4. Effects of War on the Child’s Emotions2.4.1. Fear and Anxiety2.4.2. Aggression2.5. Summary

3. THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY4. THE RESEARCH METHODS4.1. Construction of the Scales4.1.1. Attitude Scale 4.1.2. Fear Scale4.1.3. Test Measuring Aggression4.2. Conducting the Field Work4.3. Statistical Methods

5. THE RESULTS5.1. Description of the Studied Children 5.1.1. Sex and Age5.1.2. Regional and Social Background5.1.3. Children’s Own Experiences of War and Conflict5.2. Children’s Attitudes Towards War and the Middle East Conflict5.2.1. The Moral Judgement of War and the Struggle of the Child’s Own Nation5.2.2. Loyalty and Feelings of Responsibility in War5.2.3. Prospects of Peace5.2.4. Factors Related to Attitudes5.2.4.1. The Relationship Between Sex, Age and Family Background5.2.4.2. Experiences of War and Violence5.2.5. Examination of Attitudes Towards War and Conflict5.2.6. Comparison Between American and Middle Eastern Children’s Attitudes5.2.7. Children’s Opinions of the Middle East Conflict

5.2.7.1. Defining the Enemy5.2.7.2. Causes and Solution of the Conflict5.3. Children’s Fears5.3.1. Intensity of Fears Among Israeli and Palestinian Children5.3.2. Fears Threatening the Child’s Own Security5.3.3. Fears of War and Conflict5.3.4. Other Fears5.3.5. Factors Connected to Intensity of Fears5.3.5.1. Experiences of War and Conflict5.3.5.2. Relation Between Domicile and Fears5.3.6. Conclusion of Different Fears5.3.7. Comparison of Fears Among Middle Eastern and British Children5.4. Children’s Aggressiveness and Reactions in Frustrating Situations5.4.1. Direction of Aggression5.4.2. Reaction Tendency5.4.3. Factors Connected to the Expression of Aggression5.4.4. Content of the Picture Test5.4.5. Conclusions Regarding Children’s Aggressive Responses5.5. Relations Between Children’s Fears and Attitudes5.6. Summary of the Results

6. DISCUSSION6.1. Israelis and Palestinians6.2. Evaluation of the Methods6.3. Questions Without Answers

BIBLIOGRAPHY

APPENDICES1. Arabic and Hebrew Questionnaires2. The Variable List3. Descriptions of Research Sites and Test Situations4. Construction of Sum Variables Describing Attitudes and Fears5. Construction of Sum Variables of War Experiences6. Answers of Israeli and Palestinian Children to Questions Concerning the Causes of and Possible Solutions to War and Conflict7. Fears Related to Authority and Punishment, and Other Fears

TABLES1. Division by Sex of the Children in the Sample2. Fathers’ Occupation3. Percentages of Favourable Attitudes Towards Some Questions of War and Peace Among American, Israeli and Palestinian Children4. Definition of the Enemy by Palestinian Children from the Occupied West Bank and from Israel5. Intensity of All Fears According to Children’s Nationality6. The Total Amount of Fear Among Israeli and Palestinian Boys and Girls7. Comparison of Different Fears Among Israeli, Palestinian and British Children8. Correlations Between Fear and Attitude Sum Variables in Children’s Groups with Much or Little Suffering Due to War and Conflict

FIGURES1. The Children’s Own Experiences of War and Conflict Amongst Israeli Jews and Palestinian West-Bankers2. Favourable Attitudes Toward War in General and Toward One’s Own Nation’s Fight Among Israeli, Palestinian and ‘Israeli Arab’ Children3. Favourable Attitudes Towards Own Loyalty and Feelings of Responsibility in War Among Israeli, Palestinian and Israeli Arab Children4. Pessimistic Attitudes Towards Prospects of Peace Among Israeli, Palestinian and Israeli Arab Children5. The Frequency of Favourable Attitudes Towards War According to Traumatic Experiences in Palestinian Group6. Mean Values of Fears Related to Security Among Israeli and Palestinian Children7. Mean Values of Fears of War and Conflict Among Israeli and Palestinian Children8. Relations Between Child’s Traumatic Experiences, Fears of War and Conflict, Own Security and the Total Amount of Fearfulness9. Relations Between Single Experiences of War and the Total Amount of Fearfulness Among Israeli and Palestinian Children10. Severity of Various Fears Among Israeli and Palestinian Children11. Direction of Aggression Outward (E), Inward (I) or Denial (M) Among Israeli, Palestinian and Israeli Arab Children12. Reaction Tendencies According to Nationality13. The Relationship Between Attitudes of War and Peace and Fears Connected to War and Conflict, and Total Fearfulness in the Palestinian Group.

FOREWORD

This study on Israeli and Palestinian children would never have been possible without the assistance, support and encouragement of my friends. Thus I want to express my deepest gratitude to Georgette Shehadeh, Sarah Harel, Siham and Abed Asali, Rachel Weiss, Mr. Bakerjian, Salman Massalha, Maha and Zuhair Sabbagh and Suheil Fahoum and his friends. Many thanks also to Auli Mauno, Pirjo Sunila, Marjatta and Ali Bardy, Mia Liikkanen, Jouni Kylmälä, Taina Schakir, Ritva Suuronen, Helja Tarmo and to my sisters, brother and parents.

I am especially grateful to the artist Abed Abdi, who made the drawings for the picture test. Many thanks to Professor O. R. Viitamaki, and to the personnel of the Department of Psychology at Helsinki University, as well as to Dr. Sinikka Ojanen and Maija Rantala for their interest and advice. The Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) awarded me a scholarship for this study, and it is with special joy that I remember the persistent interest and encouragement that was given to me by the head of the institute, Dr. Tapio Varis, and the staff. Warm thanks to all of them.

In the late seventies and eighties I spent two years in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

This study arose as an attempt to answer the many questions evoked by the atmosphere of unresolved conflict, vindictiveness and war-threat. There are still unanswered questions, and this study can only hint at the depth of the human tragedy that inevitably underlies the political facade of war. My study is biased only in one regard: my sympathy is indisputably on the side of the children. In the conditions of the Israeli-Arab conflict it may be difficult to share sympathy with both Israelis and Palestinians. But in the psychological study we must strike a deeper attitude than merely our political sympathies vis-à-vis the struggle between the two nations — Palestinians and Israelis.

Jerusalem 30.03.1981Raija-Leena Punamäki

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background of the Study

Together with a friend, a paediatrician, I visited the maternity ward of a hospital in a northern Israeli town. In a small, dusky room we looked at ten premature babies lying motionless in incubators. On the top of one of them — where a tiny, thin, bluish human being was being kept alive with the help of numerous medical instruments — the blue-and-white Israeli flag was affixed. My friend explained: The baby’s father had come from the frontier to see his son. Pinning on the flag, he had announced: “My son will be a good soldier and a real Israeli fighter.”

In Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, I followed a group of 3-5 year old children returning from kindergarten. They advanced as a joyful and noisy team, jumping, giggling and teasing one another. Suddenly, an Israeli jeep loaded with soldiers and guns pulled up next to them. In an instant the children organized a surprisingly disciplined row, then moved on clapping their hands, marching rhythmically and chanting: “Palestine is our homeland, soldiers are only dogs”, and “No to occupation, yes to Palestine.”

These two pictures of Middle East children led me to ask: What happens to the child during these years when he is expected to grow up to be a fighting soldier? How does a protracted war and constant tension actually affect children’s minds? What kind of adults do the children grow up to be in this atmosphere of constant fear and hatred, both hidden and open, threat and violence?

What kind of a society is it, which considers the present war and violence a normal state of affairs and believes it will persist into the next generation? And further, what kind of children’s environment is it, which leads them to participate in serious political activity and “fight” against heavily armed soldiers?

These are the questions which gave rise to this study.

It is a tragic fact that Israel and the occupied West Bank of the Jordan have become laboratories where childʼs psyche. Wars and battles have been fought uninterruptedly in the region for forty years. None of these wars, however, has brought a solution to the conflict between Jews and Arabs. Todayʼs Israeli and Palestinian children have not known one day of real peace. Because the war area is small, it is difficult to protect children from the sights of destruction, the dangers of war, and insecurity. Many of these children are taking part in their national struggle; if they are not actively fighting on the streets they experience their national fate at an emotional level. War, with its accompanying atmosphere of insecurity, danger, violence and hostility, inevitably leaves scars on the psychological wellbeing of children.

The State of Israel was established in 1948. The aim was to solve the “Jewish problem” by creating a homeland for the landless, homeless and persecuted Jewish people. Following Israel’s independence a bitter war broke out between the Palestinian Arabs who had long been living in the region and the Jewish immigrants. As a result of the war, most of the Palestinians became refugees, in a new Diaspora: landless, homeless and persecuted.

In the background of this protracted conflict, hostility and fighting there still lies the question of Palestinian and Israeli rights to land and nationhood. This dispute often manifests itself in quite tangible form. In the Galilee, or in the occupied territories, women have been known to throw themselves in front of bulldozers in order to prevent the confiscation of their pasturelands or vineyards. In the refugee camps, schoolboys may get into a fight with Israeli settlers, with each insisting that “This land belongs to me”! The total refusal to compromise, given expression in terms of “either you or me”, is familiar throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict, and not only on battlefields.

The Palestinians and the Arab States — with the exception of Egypt — have refused to accept Israeli policy and its way of governing the area. Israel, for its part, recognizes neither Palestinian national organizations, nor the Palestinians’ right to their own homeland. The political and military positions are entrenched, and attitudes are openly hostile. The repeated bloody encounters, and the persistent failure to resolve their disputes have made both peoples bitter and destroyed all hope of peace. Full-scale wars have been fought in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. At the time of this study (1979) the Israeli army was constantly bombing the refugee camps in southern Lebanon. The Palestinians were trying to respond with their guerrilla war tactics. At that time the Lebanon war, culminating in Sabra and Shatilla, and the destruction of Beirut by the Israelis, was just a foreboding in every Palestinian’s nightmares.

The Israeli occupation of Arab land, which began in 1967, has intensified the atmosphere of conflict and hatred. The Israeli army is using increasingly violent means to suppress the Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The sources of human stress are the insoluble and protracted conflict of national identity and interests, the tense atmosphere, the continual threat of war, the prevailing insecurity and the depressing prospects for the future.

What follows is a survey of the effects of the Middle Eastern conflict on children. I have studied Israeli and Palestinian children’s experiences of war and conflict, and their opinions and attitudes towards war. I have also observed the children’s emotional lives as refracted through their expression of fears and aggression.

1.2. The Psychological Atmosphere in Israel and the Occupied West Bank

Israel

History has left its mark on the Jewish people’s psyche more than on that of most nations. The establishment of the Israeli State followed directly the severe trauma of the Nazi-generated Holocaust. The fate of the concentration camp victims belongs to the collective consciousness of the Israeli population. Reminders of the Holocaust and many memorial rituals form an important part of young people’s education, and cruel memories of sufferings mould present day attitudes and national thinking. “Our annihilation must never be allowed to recur” is a conviction that is often cited as an excuse for military or political moves. Every new threat of war tends to be experienced as an impending holocaust, no matter how strong the Israeli army is, or how self-created the threat may be.

The experiences of the older generation, the profound trauma of the Holocaust and the current war are inter-mixed in the consciousness of the nation and of each individual. People may feel anxiety when they discover signs of weakness and insecurity in themselves or in their

surroundings. Israel’s compulsion to be superior, strong and to rely only on itself and its military strength may be the lesson the country has taken from its historical experiences. In today’s political and military situation, the Israeli embodies an inner conflict: he is at one and the same time a superior, and unconquered Israeli — and the old humiliated Jew. As a Jew he feels that he is a victim and a refugee, but as an Israeli he is the attacker and persecutor. Young people serving in the occupied areas sometimes report feelings of guilt, caused by their treating the civilian Arab population as the Nazis once treated them, the Jews.

“I hate the role of the Gestapo as much as that of the helpless victim. When you are strong and victorious, you feel at the same time cruel and immoral. When you are weak, however, you yourself become the victim of the cruelty” (Lieblich 1977, 80; Rosner et al. 1978, 137).

Israel is an immigrants’ State. The Zionist aim was to create a Jewish State, where Jews from all over the world could live in peace and revivify their own culture. Naturally, the assimilation of Jews coming from different countries, cultures and social backgrounds has not been without problems.

According to official policy, the preservation of national identity is vital to Israel. One easily gets the impression that Israelis are constantly worried about their identity (Mead 1956). The protracted and insoluble political conflict is often seen as having a positive aspect inasmuch as it eases the acute adaptation and identity crises of diverse Jewish individuals. “The real Israeli” is, in many people’s minds, a soldier. The Six Day War of 1967 is often spoken of as a necessary training course for Jewish consciousness and Israeli identity (Rosner et al.1978, 149). Persons who suffer mental health problems and doubts in wartime are often advised to try and identify with the soldiers. Through empathy and identification with the soldiers the civilians can achieve a feeling of security and cohesion; at the same time, the soldiers state that their awareness of strength and military power constitutes a reserve of psychic strength. An immigrant, struggling with an identity crisis is likely to be told that “the only way to become one of us, a real Israeli, is to fight along with us. Even if it is against your previous principles, fighting and going to war are the only way to belong to this country and to put down roots here” (Lieblich 1977, 98; Marcus 1970, 31).

Israel, like every belligerent society, encourages her citizens to be more conformist and more committed to the aims of the nation, than is the case in peaceful countries. If a person cannot identify with the aims he has to fight for, his mental health is in danger.Everyday life in Israel is marked by the fact that it is at war with all its neighbours except Egypt. Israel occupies land whose total area is double that of its own territory, and whose inhabitants are Palestinian Arabs.

The dominant factor in the psychological climate is the emphasis on defense and military security in the life of the nation. Life in Israel resembles a military camp: the atmosphere is tense, aggressive, constantly on the alert and explosive. Handbags of all kinds, and sometimes even clothing, are searched in front of official buildings, heavily armed soldiers are everywhere, and army green provides a most familiar mass of colour. The extreme closeness of the enemy and the strict impenetrability of the borders sometimes create a claustrophobic atmosphere. Israeli architecture and planning contain many features reminiscent of the ghetto and the bomb-shelter. Israelis tend to erect fences and barricades everywhere, even where they are neither necessary nor functional.

Israel consumes a large share of its gross national product on security and defense, the military and armaments industries constitute an important sector of production, and arms are Israel’s major export produce (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 1980).

The generation of the Israeli population, which has grown up during the occupation and wars is sometimes called the ‘bunker’ and sometimes the ‘transistor’ generation. The ‘bunker generation’ spend three years (boys) or two years (girls) of their youth in military service, but even before this they participate in paramilitary training and civil defense tasks, and after their military service they will serve in the reserves for at least one month each year.

The epithet ‘transistor generation’ refers to the way in which Israelis obsessively follow political events. The news is the most popular program on television, the radio is turned on every hour, wherever one may be, in buses, stations, in the street, because it is time for the news. The fact that the news media occupy a central place in Israeli life reflects the insecurity of the people: every moment one is expecting something dreadful or unanticipated to happen. The Israeli society appears to have a strong desire for normality, but under the surface one can sense deep nervousness, anxiety and pent-up hysteria. Israelis have compared their life to living on the slopes of a volcano; every day brings the possibility of a new catastrophe (Lieblich 1977, 8; Marcus-Rosen 1970, 26).

Israel’s isolated position in the world and among other nations has undoubtedly been one of the factors influencing the country’s social atmosphere. The typically Israeli attitude that’ ‘everybody is against us, nobody in the world is willing to understand and accept us, and that’s why we rely solely on ourselves” has been intensified by international disapproval of Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The conviction that ‘everybody hates us’ reached new heights following the Israeli action in Beirut and in the refugee camps in Lebanon. International condemnation, previous experience and the awareness of enemy threats as well as domestic violence and hostility all help to create the deep-rooted suspicion of others — which at times becomes even a paranoid attitude — characteristic of the Israeli society (Rogers 1972).

The June War of 1967 is called by Israelis the Six-Day War. The quick and convincing victory in this war created, psychologically, a ‘new Israeli’: victorious, occupier, hero of a greater nation, an imperialist psyche. During this war children, too, were depicted as heroes: they filled sandbags in the schools, they carried out guard duty, they behaved with great maturity, bravery, fearlessness. In this kind of national atmosphere hardly any child would have had the courage to say: ‘I do not want my father to be a war hero. I want to have him back home’.

The October War of 1973 (which Israelis call the Yom Kippur War) broke out unexpectedly, lasted longer than the June War, and Israel’s casualties and losses were severe. Israeli superiority was not as overwhelming as before.

Psychological disturbances were common among civilians as well as on the battlefield.

One can argue that the stringent standards of heroism and bravery imposed on people made the psychological adaption to the exigencies of war too difficult. A mental breakdown, or just expressing fear — even in situations where it might have been functional for survival — were strictly condemned, in accordance with the heroic norms of the fighting society.

The attempt to conform to these heroic norms has been especially painful for those who have lost relatives in the wars. A man killed in action is considered a hero, and public opinion

expects his relatives to behave like heroes too. A wife whose husband was killed might well conceal all signs of bereavement or sorrow, because mourning one who has given his life for his country could be taken as a sign of weakness. Losses in the October War were so severe that this type of heroic standard broke down.

On the other hand, previously suppressed traumatic feelings emerged in the wake of this new experience. This perhaps accounts for the fact that psychological disorders were more serious during the October War than in June 1967.

Naturally, the concept of war heroism lives on in Israeli society. Yet the last war, cynically called ‘Peace for Galilee’, hardly justifies the Israeli claims to heroic ideals. The victorious six days of fighting have become hundreds of days of hostility, covert and open bitterness, and insecurity, which have cast deep shadows of doubt and hopelessness over the future. The occupation and the military suppression of another people have brought economic, political, social and moral problems, and have generated deep crises and a sense of decline.

Psychiatrists have noted that Israelis have paid a high price in their mental health for their longstanding superiority and strength. For over a generation the people have been more able to make war than to show and express their feelings or to love. The main task has been to fight and survive. In this kind of a cultural atmosphere the problems of mental health are suppressed as cowardly and irrelevant.

The Occupied Palestinian West Bank

It is not easy to provide a description of the psychological climate on the occupied West Bank. One Palestinian educationalist to whom I talked said:

“You will be welcome to study psychological factors in Palestinian life only when we have got our own State and our own Health and Education Ministry. At the moment we live under foreign occupation, and all empirical studies concerning Palestinian culture, social life and psychology are forbidden. Our children have no psychologists. The people humiliated under military occupation do not seem to have the right to their own psyche”.

He continued:

“One of the unique features of the Israeli occupation lies in its duration and completeness. The military occupation has been affecting us, Palestinians, in all aspects of our lives, for fully fifteen years. It seems that for the occupiers it is not enough to control and regulate our economy, our social life, our political activities and our culture and art. The modem occupier considers it to be important to know what people are thinking, what they are dreaming about, with whom they identify themselves, what they are learning at school and what they read at home. It terrifies me sometimes to think that the decades of total, unremitting occupation, the constant fear of reprisals, the control whose tentacles reach everywhere, and the smouldering hostility are already preventing people from thinking, feeling and developing as human beings. All Palestinians must be hyper-conscious of constant danger, alarmed, humiliated, and always afraid of putting their family at risk”.

Many Palestinians are multiple refugees. Most of them were forced to leave their homes and their country after the establishment of the State of Israel; they had to settle in refugee camps in Arab countries. As a result of the 1967 June War some of the inhabitants of the areas occupied by Israel had to leave their homes again and look for shelter in neighbouring countries. The Palestinians have also been made to suffer because of the political instability in Arab countries. Israel’s constant bombing of refugee camps, and the tragedy of Beirut and the Sabra and Shatilla camps have once again shown the Palestinians what their reality and fate will be without a homeland of their own. Most Palestinians now live in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The events of the recent past have deeply moulded the Palestinians’ collective psyche. For them, being a refugee is more than just a political description, it determines their state of mind, identity, level of self-confidence, practical self-image and code of behaviour. Memories of fleeing people, of crying women and men unable to defend themselves will be powerfully evoked during violent confrontations with the occupation soldiers, or when people fall victim to the arbitrary actions of the military authorities. For instance, the collective punishment of the demolition of a family’s house evokes despair not only because of the material damage and loss it entails. This instance of destruction by the occupiers brings to the surface underlying feelings of helplessness, hatred and humiliation, which the Palestinians have of necessity learned to hide in the face of superior forces.

In an interview in 1978, the writer Sahar Khalifeh described how war has changed the Palestinians’ expectations, society, attitudes and indeed their whole way of life. She wrote:

“The 1948 war left deep and painful scars on every Palestinian involved and also on their descendants. Most Palestinians lost their land, possessions, close relatives, even their plans for the future. After this, nothing could be the same any more. The suffering people wandered around the streets, not knowing where to go, where they belonged or where to start their lives again. Many of our traditions lost their meaning: they no longer had any function in the new situation of chaos and despair. The feelings of helplessness and desperation which our nation had to bear rocked the class structure and to some extent increased equality between women and men.”“When the 1967 June War came, it blew our lives apart all over again. We were forced to realize that we didn’t have anything left, we had lost once again. We felt defeated in all areas of our existence. We were an underdeveloped, poor, un-cohesive, scattered, and desperate nation in the hands of a hostile and foreign occupier. Our feelings of humiliation and frustration became intolerable. It grew more and more unbearable to watch our own people’s fate as a victim. When they tried to obliterate Palestine once and for all from the map of the nations, when our children were being forced to leave their own land in order to look for some chance of life elsewhere, and when our husbands and brothers were dragging out their lives in Israeli prisons, the time had come to act, to launch our resistance.”

A more conscious and organized resistance arose among Palestinians in the Sixties, together with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO. The significance of the PLO lies not only in its political and military aims; the PLO also has a very important function in strengthening Palestinian national identity, cohesion and consciousness of belonging together. The international recognition that the PLO has won, and its military exploits, have changed the

Palestinian self-image. A young Palestinian can now see himself as a national freedom fighter and heroic builder of tomorrow’s society, rather than as a frightened refugee like his parents. The young Palestinians have one guiding principle in their struggle: ‘The events and defeats of 1948 and 1967 must never recur in Palestinian history’.

In the occupied West Bank it is difficult to develop and maintain an effective national identity and a healthy psychic self-image. Under occupation, a broad range of national and political activity is forbidden. Military censorship effectively eliminates material referring to Palestinian identity, history and the people’s cultural and national heritage. For example, an entire mathematics textbook was banned because the word ‘Palestine’ was mentioned in one problem — and such cases are not unusual. Anyone who happens to have the colours of the Palestinian flag (green, red, black and white) on his T-shirt may easily find himself in an interrogation centre. To wear this kind of national symbol shows that you pose a threat to Israel.

And yet nationalist feeling is difficult to suppress, especially in conditions of overt foreign violence and injustice. Teachers can be subtle. For example, in biology lessons children spend a lot of time learning the names and characteristics of various plants and flowers. At the same time they learn national legends and stories and the hidden symbolism of the “flowers of Palestine”. Handicraft, too, gives children lessons in their own national heritage and pride, because many of the embroidery patterns tell of old Palestine and Palestinian history. In the schools one can meet sisters whose names are Amal, Awdah and Wattan, which may be taken to mean Hope, Returning Home, and Homeland. Thus there are many ways to instil a sense of national identity.

For the growing child, however, life under occupation is traumatic. Even while children are experiencing their national identity or just learning about their own culture, danger, secrecy and fear of exposure are always present. The same things which are deeply admired and honoured in the unofficial Palestinian society, are scorned and condemned at the level of the occupying authority. It is evident that the Palestinian child, just like the adult, is constantly torn between the demanding ideals of heroism, fearlessness and daring, on the one hand, and the danger and horror of his objective situation, on the other. Even if the children’s group gives any of its members strong support when he demonstrates and fights against Israeli soldiers, a child must face alone the consequence of showing nationalist feeling: pitiless interrogation by the military authorities. Often, children are forced by means of threats, humiliation, beating and torture to inform on their comrades and abandon their national cause (Langer 1976 interview, 1978).

For the Palestinian children the ideal model is, no doubt, the heroic freedom fighter, the unflagging warrior who is ready to give his life for the Palestinian cause. Under occupation, however, heroism is only seldom glorious, romantic or immediately effective. Much more common are the ever-present fear and terror, the suspicion, weariness, and paralysing sense of danger and mental alarm. Yet the norms of the heroic ideal tend to condemn the impulse to flee, however functional it may be in the circumstances of violent and cruel military occupation.

Daily life in the occupied West Bank shows clear characteristics of a state of open war. One cannot forget for a single moment that this is an occupied area and that there is resistance to the Israeli soldiers’ presence. The bitter hostility and aggression between the occupying soldiers or Jewish settlers and the local people is usually suppressed and concealed, but will flare up at the slightest provocation. Traditionally certain dates, such as Israeli Independence Day, the anniversaries of Israeli invasions, or PLO Day, may function as an incitement to demonstrations

by the people or to attacks by the soldiers. Many of the demonstrations by Palestinian citizens, school children and students are the result of the cumulative effects of violence, humiliation and military injustice. Very often the mere presence of Israeli soldiers is perceived as provocation by the Palestinians. Violent confrontations between the population and the occupiers lead invariably to renewed bloodshed, and reprisals are very common. For example, a demonstration against the terrorizing of refugee camps by soldiers or the demolition of homes, is punished by similar acts by the occupying soldiers. Jeeps, armoured cars, soldiers, roadblocks, identity and arms checks, curfews and home searches are daily features of life in the occupied West Bank.

In most towns, villages and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank children have put up active resistance against the presence of Israeli soldiers and policemen in their territory. Children express their opposition by means of demonstrations, school strikes, graffiti, wall-posters, and placards. Sometimes a mere page torn out of an exercise book is enough to express a protest against soldiers patrolling the children’s way home from school. But violent and aggressive methods of struggle against the occupation are becoming increasingly common.

Children may gather on the street with some unspoken plan; they will throw stones, tins and occasionally Molotov cocktails at military vehicles and set fire to tires. The children of the occupied areas have become experts at building barricades and roadblocks, and in designing slogans against the foreign soldiers. The confrontations between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian children resemble real battles. Heavily armed soldiers attack groups of children as though they were an enemy army. Thousands of 10-14 year old children have been imprisoned, tortured, beaten up and brought before military courts to answer for their resistance to occupation.

Why should children have taken the most active role in resisting and fighting the occupation soldiers?

There is no single answer to this question. Education seems to play a very important role in Palestinian society. Having lost their homeland, their self-respect and their standing as a nation, Palestinians seek compensation for their defeat. Often one hears it said that Palestinians have nothing left, except for their mental capital and education. This academic striving is also reflected in statistics, which show that the Palestinians are among the most highly educated people in the world (Unesco 1979). Many Palestinian families are willing to severely restrict their standard of living in order to pay for their children’s education.

Schools and universities are the scenes of political activity and thus objects of military attack. Many educational institutions have been closed down and teachers and pupils detained, on suspicion of anti-Israeli activities or opinions. Further, the continual confrontations between soldiers and young people disrupt schoolwork.

The active role of Palestinian children in their national struggle may be a straightforward reaction to the violence they have suffered. Of course, the children’s fighting enjoys the acceptance and approval of parents and society in general. As compared with adult Palestinians, the more intensive activity of the young people cannot be explained by suggesting that their punishments are lighter and therefore their activities are less dangerous than those of grown-ups. Interrogation methods, torture, fines and even prison sentences have not been considerably lighter for children than for adults on the West Bank (Langer 1979 interview with the author).

The Palestinians’ struggle is marked by the concreteness of its purpose: to return to the homeland and to establish their own nation. It is often tragic to hear a young refugee boy, born under the occupation, twenty years after the dispersal of the Palestinians, describe in very touching detail his ‘home village’. He is talking about a village which is now in Israel; about the olive trees, the number and types of animals, all the plants in the garden, and he can ‘remember’ the layout of the orchard. He has inherited this picture from his grandparents and from his nation’s culture, and it is a very real picture. The current environment of the refugee, which has now existed for 30 years, is regarded by the children as temporary: the final aim is still to return home. The dream picture of the old homeland may serve as an important mental health function, but it has no counterpart in political reality, and for this reason the effects of the dream may involve certain psychological risks.

1.3. War and Psychological Research

There is a great deal of literature dealing with military psychiatry, but the effects of war on civilian psychological reactions have been much more scantily documented. Civilian wellbeing and mental health is apparently not as decisive in wartime as military success, and that is why research is directed to soldiers’ psychic functioning and their military performance.

Already in the First World War psychologists studied and cured soldiers, especially pilots, and their empirical research developed into the theory of war neurosis. For instance, Freud (Freud 1919) studied young men who had suffered mental breakdowns in battle. The psychological knowledge and the results of research on soldiers are used today more and more intensively in military education, in soldiers’ ideological training, in their motivation and rehabilitation as well as in war propaganda.

The peculiar human and ideological atmosphere of a society at war may be one of the reasons for the scantiness of research material on the civilian psyche. Many of the psychological disturbances, such as hysterical reactions, excessive tearfulness, social withdrawal and depression are easily interpreted as signs of weakness, anti-patriotism, and betrayal. A society at war cannot afford to let the world, let alone the enemy, know about their citizens’ possible psychic sufferings and lack of endurance.

War propaganda seeks to create an image of the citizens as brave, heroic and uncompromising fighters who are ready to take mental and physical sacrifices. Many of the psychological disturbances are commonly defined as physical illnesses, which tells a lot about the unsuitability of mental problems to a combat atmosphere (Ginath-Krasilowski 1970; Horowitz 1969; Lieblich 1978, 55; Sohlberg 1976).

The definitions of mental health and mental disturbances differ in a society at war and in a peaceful society. Behaviour which may be seen as “normal and healthy” on the battlefield, is not functional in the home surroundings. Military education teaches the soldiers to behave “functionally indifferently” and demands to some extent the dehumanization of feelings. This means that a soldier is ready to do morally terrifying things without “disturbing” emotional reactions. It guarantees that emotions such as guilt, disgust, shame and fear will not prevent him from carrying out the demands of military life, and that the memory of the act will not haunt him afterwards. We can conclude that the exigencies of a society at war, and the conditions for healthy psychic development and human relationships, will always conflict. A good soldier who

has learned to suppress his normal human reactions and emotions in order to act functionally on the battlefield and to obey uncritically, has difficulties adapting back to peaceful society. It is especially in intimate human relations that the soldier’s psyche encounters difficulties. The unique psychic reactions of wartime always become a part of a person’s psyche, and thus are impossible to distinguish from the whole personality. A person does not shed his wartime reactions the way one discards an old coat (Lieblich 1978, 8; Hazleton 1975, 116).

Vietnam veterans are a painful illustration of the fact that the modes of behaviour that are functional in war are inappropriate to a peaceful situation. In terms of the norms valid in a peaceful society, the behaviour and psychological reactions functional on the battlefield could be defined as illness or as mental disturbance. The home front which supports war activities is always eager to listen to stories about the heroism and superiority of its own soldiers, but shields its consciousness against the facts of how victories are gained in war.

A Vietnam veteran is reported to have said when receiving a medal of honour, “I feel guilty. I’m honoured and appreciated for deeds which I undertook in a state of mind completely out of my control. What would happen if I lost control in Detroit and behaved as I did in Vietnam? I would kill three or thirty women, children and old people without having any feelings and without giving it a thought afterwards” (Lifton 1975).

Given a situation where thorough empirical studies on civilian mental health during war have been scarce, it has been easy to point out the positive effects of war on the human psyche. There are beliefs that war can alleviate or even heal neuroses and other psychic disturbances. It is believed that social isolation, a potent factor in the precipitation of mental illness, becomes a remote possibility in the general atmosphere of banding together in the face of a common enemy, in the united sense of purpose that war engenders. However, these arguments do not bear much empirical evidence, and can be understood mostly as the results of social norms and war propaganda.

The positive attitudes towards war are related mostly to their euphoric outbreaks. The concept of war as a rewarding thing is often an illusion created by the frustrated generation returning home from the front. Whether it has been lost or won, war always seems useless and shameful afterwards. To admit this is an unbreakable taboo in any society. This may be one of the reasons any war is remembered as a nice, socially warm time marked by strong feelings of togetherness. It is a conscious defence in a situation where people’s psyches do not tolerate the reality that they have killed other people.

The following psychological literature has served as a frame of reference in our study of the psychological effects of war on children.

During the Second World War Anna Freud together with her colleagues studied the psychological reactions of children who were in London during the bombardment and those evacuated to the countryside. The research reports of Freud and Burlingham (Freud-Burlingham 1942, 43-44) are based on a psychoanalytical frame of reference and the material is obtained mainly by systematic observation. There are numerous reports by clinical psychologists on children who were taken into treatment because of traumatic war experiences (Freud-Burlingham 1942, 43-44).

The Vietnam War did not affect American civilians directly, and this may be the reason why one can hardly find research on civilian mental health and children’s well being. A rare example is the work by Murphy (Murphy 1977) on the psychological effects of poison gas, terrorism, hunger and other war hardships on Vietnamese civilians. The psychological research concentrated mainly on the problems of American soldiers, and in the aftermath of the war on the rehabilitation of the veterans. There are great many reports on the effects of battle experiences on soldiers’ mental health and on their military performance (Horowitz-Solomon 1975; Lifton 1973, 1975; Strange-Brown 1970; Helmer 1973).

In Israel psychology is widely used for the purposes of defence, ideological education, and soldiers’ training for optimal performance. In particular, the severe psychological damage caused by the October War of 1973 spurred the psychologists to take part in intensive therapy and rehabilitation work, both among soldiers and civilians. Research on the psychological effects of war and tension has become possible recently. Three international conferences on psychological stress and adjustment in time of war and peace have been held in Israel, where research on children’s reactions to war has also been presented.

Amia Lieblich (Lieblich 1978) has described through her therapy experiences, how the long-drawn-out and unsolved national conflict, war threat, violence and fighting mentality have moulded Israeli social life, human relations and even the development of personality. Hers was a pioneering study in Israel, where the psychological consequences of war, combat and heroism are still an emotionally loaded subject.

I failed to find psychological studies on the effects of wars, refugee status and military occupation on the Palestinians’ psyche and mental health. Descriptive reports exist on childrenʼs reactions to Israeli air raids in Lebanon. The universities on the occupied West Bank are under strong control and restrictions by the military authority. The most innocent attempts to survey Palestinians ̓moods or experiences run the risk of eliciting punishment by the occupation authorities. Palestinian poetry and literature may well be a source for gaming knowledge about the effects of exile, loss of oneʼs country, violence and persecution on the Palestinians ̓personality development, identity, mental health and human relationships.

2. THE EFFECTS OF WAR STRESS ON THECHILD’S PSYCHE

2.1. Frequency and Nature of PsychologicalDisturbances Due to War

There is some disagreement among researchers about the effect of war and violence on the mental health of civilians and on the well-being of children.

One of the most widely reported findings concerning civilian reaction to air attacks and other wartime hardships is the low frequency with which obvious psychiatric casualties occurred, among both adults and children. This finding, however, applies only to the major chronic forms of psychopathology: psychoses, traumatic neuroses, prolonged depressive states, and other persistent disorders. But there does seem to be a general consensus among psychiatrists who were working during the Second World War that acute neurotic reactions were very common among children in danger areas. Under conditions of severe bombing there was a marked incidence of temporary emotional shock, apparently even in people who were previously emotionally stable. Such reactions may take the form of excessive anxiety symptoms or of mild depression and apathy. Most patients recovered after several days or perhaps a few weeks.

Anna Freud and her colleagues studied children who survived the London air raids and children who were evacuated to the countryside during the Second World War. The reports by Freud and Burlingham (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 64) are based on a psychoanalytic framework, and their results were obtained through systematic observation of children.

Freud and Burlingham had hypothesized that children would suffer from symptoms similar to those displayed by soldiers at the front. Their results did not, however, confirm this hypothesis. The children studied were afraid of air-raid sirens and continuous bombardment, but their terrifying experiences did not cause chronic psychological damage. Severe emotional disturbances, when they occurred, were bound up with the behaviour of those closest to the children, especially the reactions of the mother. No traumatic shocks were observed in children who enjoyed security provided by the mother or a mother substitute. However, children who had lost their family and experienced bombings alone did suffer severe symptoms of psychic disturbances.

Sigmund Freud suspected that objective danger alone cannot give rise to neurosis or other psychological disturbances without the involvement of deeper unconscious layers of the psyche and that terrifying experiences in childhood cannot as such produce neurosis in adult life (Freud 1919). Studies of the adult population lay emphasis on latent predisposing mechanisms triggered off by the traumatic experience, on old conflicts over which the damaged and intimidated ego has lost control in war, or on a specific emotional vulnerability (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 64).

Freud and Burlingham assert that children possess psychological mechanisms (e.g. creating fantasies) which help them to cope with and recover from painful experiences better than adults. Yet the fact that certain other psychological mechanisms (e.g. defensive mechanisms,

such as isolation or intellectualization) are not fully developed makes children most vulnerable in conditions of tension or war. It is difficult for a child’s developing ego to meet the demands of a traumatic situation.

Studies which claim to show that children do not suffer unduly heavy stresses and traumas of war are open to severe criticism. Social pressures are in part responsible for the results, or the findings may in part be due to inadequate research methods. The observation of immediate reactions after a bombing raid, or the conducting of interview do not provide a complete picture of the effects of war on children’s minds. Further research is, however, available, and a selection follows.

Bodman’s study of English children evacuated to the countryside shows the significance of different methods in war studies. When observed, only 4 % of his sample of 7 000 children appeared to suffer psychological disturbances immediately after bombings. Later, however, Bodman studied the sample of children by interviewing and tests over a period of 3-12 months after the bombings. These results showed that 61 % of the children exhibited signs of deterioration of mental health. Bodman makes reference to children’s Rorschach tests, which revealed in apparently healthy children symptoms of severe anxiety and mental disturbance related to the horrors they had experienced. Bodman’s suggested explanations for the increased psychological disturbances among children were: the children were separated from their mothers, the impact of violent and traumatic experiences of air raids may be gradual, and research methods had been improved (Bodman 1944).

When Dunsdon 1941 obtained reports from school teachers on 8 000 British children, it was found that there were approximately eight times as many cases of psychological disturbances among children who were exposed to heavy air raids as among those who were evacuated to safer country areas. Dunsdon’s research reveals that pronounced apathy is the predominant symptom in the first stage of air-raid shock and this is followed by other symptoms of reactive depression, which set in after a period of ten days to four weeks (Dunsdon 1941).

Brander’s report (1941) on Finnish children exposed to air-raids describes their immediate reactions to mortal danger and bombing as a ‘general inhibition’ of all activity. Many children exhibited marked paralytic reactions, severe terror states at night, and other sustained anxiety symptoms (Brander 1941, Janis 1951, 94).

Extreme fear and hysterical crying in the shelters were widespread reactions among German children during heavy air raids, according to statements obtained from doctors and teachers after the Second World War. Their reports state further that children who had to be rescued from wrecked houses often suffered a protracted period of shock, and wept and screamed in their sleep (Janis 1972).

Gillespie studied children in London air raids during the Second World War. Of his sample of 119 children, a third were found to be suffering from some kind of psychological disturbance two or three weeks after experiencing bombing and other traumas. Gillespie described the children’s psychic reactions in this manner (Gillespie 1942, 125-136):

— Immediately after air raids both children and adults showed symptoms of acute panic. Some people lost the sense of time and place and some also lost their memory and didn’t know who they were. The complete inhibition of all actions, paralysis and various physical expressions of fear, such as trembling, staring into space and fits of hysteric

crying were among the most common immediate reactions. — When the terrifying situation was over, it would take some time for people to bring

themselves to think about their experience. Their most common emotion was a bottomless helplessness and fear of the future, and the most common psychological reactions were anxiety, depression, and apathy. Very often war means a complete upheaval in a family’s way of life, which made people lose the normal cues for their daily activities.

— Among children both associative and conditioned reactions connected to war experiences were found. The most common was violent fear and panic reactions, which the children repeatedly experienced whenever they heard a sound resembling an alarm siren. Associative reactions to war experiences may be of a psychosomatic nature. According to Gillespie, children suffered from headaches, evening vomiting, insomnia and abnormal loss of weight, during and after the tense situation. Sleeping difficulties and enuresis in children were related to their traumatic experiences of night air raids.

— The psychological and emotional disturbances of wartime may also be related to the child’s earlier frustrations and traumas. Gillespie found that children from unstable or broken families suffered the most severe psychic symptoms during the war.

Fraser has studied children living in the Northern Ireland riot areas. Relying on observations, case studies and statistics, he attempted to delineate the effects of prolonged violence and tension on mental health. The immediate reaction to violence and traumatic experiences was hysteria, with children being unable to stop crying. Insomnia, nervousness, enuresis and general emotional imbalance were other common symptoms among the children. Most children exhibited abnormal fears over a long period. Some children manifested obsessive behaviour: some, convinced that they were going to be shot, dared not go outside (Fraser 1977). Fraser suggests that scarcely any child living in riot conditions has escaped having at least some symptoms of acute anxiety: sleep disturbances, separation fears, school refusal, loss of appetite, bowel, gastric and urinary upsets or headaches.

Fraser noticed a similarity in the pattern of the children’s symptoms, amounting almost to a clinical syndrome. This took the form of symptoms that were outwardly physical and which persisted for months and, in some cases, years after the onset of the trouble. They were all of an acute, episodic type — examples were vomiting, asthma, rashes, epileptic fits that did not respond to drug control, and fainting fits. In each case these were symptoms which originated at the outbreak of violence, but which later were triggered by cues that in some way resembled the original frightening event (Gillespie 1942, 125-136).

The relation between war and mental disorders is by no means straightforward. It should be noted that the indirect effects on children, especially separation from parents during war, may prove to be by far the most pathogenic feature of wartime conditions. Only seldom is damage to a child’s psyche done primarily by the stress of specific events or situations; it is almost always the result of something larger, the wartime atmosphere and its demands on human conduct (Freud-Burlingham 1944).

Freud and Burlingham stress that war has an all-embracing impact on a child’s emotional development and his attitudes, as well as on his experiences of human relations, moral norms and outlook on life (Freud-Burlingham 1943). War never remains just a situation of external stress that a child can try to cope with; violence and war-making become an integral part of his psyche and mental life. War — battles, vindictiveness, nationalistic attitudes and destruction — is transferred as feelings, symbols and models to a child’s emotional life.

It is important to note that crises, conflicts, anxiety, fear and aggression are part of the child’s normal development in all circumstances. But war disturbs the path of normal development and crisis-solving, while also modifying the context and meaning of children’s emotional lives. Changes can be noted for instance in their language, concept formation, in play, sport and drawing. The enemy becomes the object of a child’s aggression and fear, replacing objects which dominate his emotions in peacetime. In children’s symbolism war has its deep-rooted effects; for an Israeli boy, to be well armed is a sign of healthy and strong self-confidence, and symbolizes relief from fear and threat.

People tend to adapt to the circumstances and demands imposed by war by changing their attitudes, values, behaviour and, as stress continues, even their personality in order to be functional in a beleaguered society.

2.2. Determinants of Psychic Disorders Due to War

When studying war and its psychological effects on children we have to deal with the following basic questions: What external factors affect the severity of psychic disturbances, and what intra-psychic factors might explain the differences between children’s reactions to similar experiences of wartime stress?

It can be shown that children’s psychological reactions in a situation of war and violence depend on the following three groups of factors:

— External events: the nature of the conflict, the type of traumatic experience, its intensity and duration, the symbolic and personal meaning of the event for the particular child concerned, and the extent of his own involvement in the event.

— Relations with other people: the reactions of adults in the child’s vicinity and especially of his parents, the emotional security the child experienced in family relationships both during the war and previously, and the general quality of his human relationships.

— The child’s personality: his ability to cope and his general way of reacting in situationsof stress.

External Events

There is little empirical evidence to show how the nature of a war, its duration and its underlying political causes affect the nature or seriousness of psychic reactions.

One can suggest that a Just cause such as the defense of one’s country, or a struggle for national liberation would produce fewer psychic difficulties among the civilian population than a war of aggression. There is no empirical evidence, however, to support such an argument, and one must bear in mind that usually in war both sides sincerely believe that they are fighting for a just cause. There can be no doubt, however, that personal acceptance of and identification with the goals of a war helps soldiers as well as civilians to cope with the sufferings and losses war causes.

Studies have been made concerning the influence of the intensity, duration, and surprising character of events in war.

Several independent surveys conducted during the Second World War lay emphasis upon the degree of personal involvement as the major determinant of severe psychic reactions, such as fear and anxiety (Janis 1972).

There are reports, however, according to which psychiatric symptoms were more common in reception centres than in areas under direct attack (Vernon 1941). Most of the anxiety states the researchers encountered were in people who had not been bombed at all. Harrison (Harrison 1941) termed the condition of these patients ‘anticipation neurosis’. Psychiatrists believed that the most disturbed cases came from areas that had narrowly escaped bombing, and that uncertainty had been the most potent factor in precipitating their illnesses.

Fraser called the phenomenon ‘invasion complex’. His statistics and observations from Northern Ireland show that in areas where there was a general expectation of troubles but no major experiences of violence, the psychiatric disturbances were more frequent and more severe. Acute emotional shock reactions were seen in people who had been directly exposed to violence and terror. These reactions normally resolved quickly, either when the trouble had ceased or had moved elsewhere, or in response to mild sedation. In contrast, in areas where people expected possible violence to occur and the threat of fighting lasted for a long time though without it really breaking out, the number of psychotic and neurotic illnesses was higher than in the actual fighting areas. Further, the neurotic symptoms were more persistent (Fraser 1977).

It is probable that in a stressful situation, a degree of anxiety, physical signs of fear and various shock reactions (trembling, unconsciousness, staring into space, pallor) are normal and functional psychic reactions. They are signs that adrenalin is being released, muscles tensed, reactions speeded up and the organism is prepared for appropriate evasive or defensive action.

It has been hypothesized that through these physiological reactions the emotional build-up is channelled out to the external world and thus discharged. In a situation of intensive threat without actual fighting, people are unable to discharge their emotions through activity. The suppressed load of emotions damage the person’s psyche and may lead to feelings of helplessness and victimization. There is, however, disagreement on the hypothesis of the ventilation of feelings, and very little empirical work is available to prove this argument.

Not all observations of civilians under war stress confirm the hypothesis of the ‘invasion complex’. It is, however, an interesting hypothesis, that stress productive of psychiatric illness is maximal in areas under threat of attack, rather than where there is active combat, or direct risk to life and property. The ‘invasion complex’ model states that perceived anxiety rather than an actual experience of violence is the outstanding stressor.

Some researchers claim that the long drawn-out, concealed, unresolved and cumulative conflict of contemporary Israeli society is psychologically more damaging than actual war and combat. De Shalit notes that although children were of course distressed when caught up in a combat situation, their distress lasted only for a limited period. They were told that the war would soon be over, that their country was going to win, and then all their sufferings and worries would be over (de Shalit 1970).

Israeli children are still experiencing today the same unresolved conflict, open and suppressed aggression, hostility, and constant threat of new wars. Until now they have learned

only to hate and fear the enemy, and to cope with insecurity by a paranoid reliance on military strength. The prolonged atmosphere of conflict and the indirect effects of war may thus be even more damaging than the physical hardships, which occur in a situation of open warfare. It seems to be more difficult to motivate people to withstand a short and euphoric ‘blitzkrieg’ than a long drawn out, grinding and cruel conflict whose end and final outcome are increasingly unpredictable.

Naturally, there are Israelis who perceive the situation quite differently. For them, war has become the normal way of life, armament is the only trustworthy security, and they tend to emphasize the positive effects of fighting or children’s development.

Relations With the Other

A child’s parents are the source of his emotional security. In a situation of general destruction, hostility and threat, the function of the parents is subject to special demands.

There is a general consensus that the incidence of acute emotional disturbances among young children in a community exposed to the traumatic experiences of war will tend to vary directly with the incidence of overt excitement and emotional upset among the adults in that community.

Freud and Burlingham describe a number of cases in which nervousness bedwetting and different anxiety symptoms persisted after air raids were associated with manifestations of extreme anxiety by the mother. If a mother showed signs of panic or intense anxiety, her children were seen to be trembling with fear (Freud-Burlingham 1942, 27).

Geleerd distinguished four factors which are likely to disturb the mental health of children: the father being called up for military service or sent into an area of danger; the mother having to go out to work if she had been at home previously; the child itself witnessing bombing and destruction; and evacuation of the child and separation from the family. She concludes that children tend to withstand mental strain much better when united with their family (Geleerd 1942).

Drawing on the experience of the Second World War, some psychologists have argued that the evacuation of children, and thus separation from mother and home, was a more traumatic and psychologically disturbing experience than actual exposure to the physical dangers of war (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 1944; Dunsdon 1941).

Fraser showed that in the family of each disturbed child one parent was either absent or seriously emotionally disturbed. The parents’ inadequacy in providing emotional support had been evident long before the precipitating event, but when it came they broke down completely. The effect was that the child, perceiving his parents’ vulnerability, felt inhibited from expressing his anxiety, which later communicated itself as a psychiatric symptom (Fraser 1977).

It has been claimed that a young child does not suffer emotionally from his war experiences at all, if the parents, and especially the mother are able to maintain a stable relationship with the child, and if the secure structure of family life is not shaken (Freud-Burlingham 1942, 28; 1943, 33). This statement is utterly unrealistic because war, by its very nature, disturbs and breaks

up family life, the normal rhythm and dynamics of human relations, and the child’s primary secure environment. It is often precisely the demands which war makes on families that produce disturbing effects in the child’s psyche.

Although acute reactions of anxiety or depression in children may be mediated to some extent by ‘contagion’ from adults, it is likely that other factors also play a major role, particularly when there has been prolonged exposure to heavy air raids.

The Israeli researchers Baider and Rosenfeld, argue that the adults’ suppressed feelings of anxiety and terror were especially traumatic for children. A mental attitude of bravery and of hiding negative and frightening feelings was much encouraged during the Israeli wars. In order to protect their children, adults would deny the actual existence of war and danger, and try to hide their feelings of unhappiness and fear by insisting that ‘everything is OK, all is under control’. Parents use the mechanism of denial as one way to avoid facing up to the painful situation of war. It seems that a common feeling among wartime parents is that of guilt. A parent may consider himself personally responsible for the fact that things have been allowed to reach this stage and for bringing up yet another generation to war (Baider-Rosenfeld 1974).

Parents who express helplessness seem to evoke the greatest degree child anxiety in stress situations (Fraser 1977, 77; Freud-Burlingham 1943, 28; de Shalit 1970). Children need to be helped to comprehend events which affect their lives, otherwise the child is thrown back on his own resources for an explanation of what is really going on and what his own role and place is in the disruptive events of wartime. Children will always seek explanations and causes for events in their own environments. If they fail to get them from their parents, they make them up themselves. Younger children often tend to explain events in the external world as being caused by their own actions. Freud and Burlingham noted how children would sometimes say after a heavy air raid, ‘Yesterday we made such a noise that Hitler bombed us’. The child’s uncertainty, insecurity and inexperience, and the resulting feeling of guilt and of being left alone with his own imaginings may cause deep anxiety in the child. The child may wonder, ‘Perhaps I have done something bad or wrong, for Mummy is so unhappy and Daddy never comes home’ (Baider-Rosenfeld 1974).

The Child’s Personality

Few studies exist of the effects of personality factors on stress reactions general, and virtually none on personality and its relation to wartime stress reactions.

Two different types of reactions have been observed in children living in conditions of violence and war. The well-known reaction is the aggressive one, consisting of active and heroic exploits by children; for example, the young Palestinian or Irish boy who throws a Molotov cocktail at heavily-armed soldiers, or Israeli children who lay an ambush for the enemy.

The other group of children suffer severe and persistent emotional disturbances. These may be termed the passive reaction to external violence. The most common symptoms of these children are irrational fears, psychosomatic symptoms, deep anxiety states and total withdrawal: often they are unable to engage in any activity (Fraser 1977, 32).

As we observe from the Palestinian children, when confrontation and battles take place

between children and soldiers, the children’s reaction is usually collective. The social and political climate is probably the main factor in determining what kind of response children make to a crisis. Fraser has observed in Northern Ireland that when there is a riot in the street, there are only two choices: one can either opt out or join in; and it is very much the same for the young Palestinian ‘freedom fighters’ as well. The tense and provocative atmosphere of military occupation probably inspires all children to fight and demonstrate as a collective, where the frightened and introverted children are drawn to participate.

It has been suggested that active, extroverted and aggressive behaviour might help children to get through a situation of war and conflict. Passive, withdrawn and introverted children, on the other hand, would tend to adopt a victim’s position and thus be more vulnerable to the sufferings of war.

Gillespie claimed that people who face danger tend to feel less fearful if they are able to engage in some form of useful overt activity. He cites a study in which a large number of cases were observed who did not develop neurotic symptoms until two or three weeks after bombing took place; the symptoms appeared only when the individuals concerned had finished re-establishing themselves and their affairs, and had time to sit down and consider the situation. There is, however, little evidence to show that activity would salvage people’s mental health. Being active seems only to delay the outbreak of psychiatric symptoms (Gillespie 1942).

Vernon emphasized one particular type of activity as being effective in reducing wartime anxiety and other neurotic symptoms, namely tasks which involve taking responsibility for others (Vernon 1941). Although there may be a gain in self-confidence, and motivation to control one’s own emotional responses among people who are assigned a socially responsible task, there are others for whom the conflicts engendered by such responsibilities may increase the chances of neurotic breakdown. Children are generally observed to take greater responsibility for siblings and for the family’s economic needs during wartime.

2.3. Children’s Attitudes Towards War

Children’s attitudes toward war were studied inter alia by Eliot, Bender and Frosch and Preston during the Second World War, and by Cornell and Tolley during the Vietnam War. Droba developed a Pacifism-Militarism scale, and studied youngsters’ attitudes toward war and peace in the Thirties (Eliot 1942; Bender-Frosch 1942; Preston 1942; Cornell 1971; Tolley 1973; Droba 1931).

Cooper, Hess and Easton and Hess and Torney have studied children’s political development and their opinions and attitudes toward war-related issues in peaceful societies (Cooper 1965; Hess-Easton 1961; Hess-Torney 1967). Escalona studied the effects of the nuclear war threat on children’s attitudes and personal development (Escalona 1962). Spielman studied the impact of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty on Israeli children’s concepts of war and peace (Spielman 1979).

Most of the researchers considered the development of war-related attitudes to be the result of the socialization process. By socialization we mean a process of development in which a child adopts through imitation, identification and internalization the rules, ideas, values and norms, modes of behaviour and beliefs, moral codes and attitudes of the family and gradually

those of the whole society (Freud 1965,145). Attitudes are here defined as emotive ways of comprehension and approach, which manifest themselves by a disposition towards certain kind of behaviour (Eskola 1971).

Researchers studying children’s attitudes toward war and peace have tried, among other things to answer the following questions: How and when do children adopt their opinions and attitudes toward war? Are these attitudes positively or negatively inclined toward war in general and toward an ongoing war in particular? From what sources do children obtain their knowledge and attitudes concerning war? What are the factors that determine their sympathy or antipathy to the components of a conflict?

Adopting Attitudes

Cooper surveyed 250 English children of different ages with respect to their concepts of and their attitudes toward war and peace. According to his findings, children speak about war and peace as early as at the age of six. Up to the age of eight, war is, however, a mere collection of concrete events, heroes, anti-heroes and stories of horror and excitement. After the age of eight a child gradually starts to understand the phenomenon and concept of war. According to Cooper, children are at this age deeply concerned with problems of killing, death and defense, as well as with questions of heroism and patriotism from a broad, humanistic and moralistic point of view. Children like to ask about the results and consequences of wars and about the alternatives to fighting (Cooper 1965).

Unfortunately, corresponding studies concerning the development of the concept of war and peace in children living in conditions of war could not be found.

Cornell interviewed two hundred Australian children during the Vietnam War. He concluded that two-thirds of the studied children aged 5-8 knew something about the ongoing war. The children related many detailed stories about events during the war (Cornell 1971).

At the age of twelve the perception of war assumes a new dimension: children are familiar with the causes of war and with the discrepancies between the demands of the participants in the war.

According to Cornell, at the age of twelve children tend to take a strong stand vis-à-vis a conflict. (Most of the Australian children unequivocally supported the Americans in Vietnam.) Both Droba and Preston confirmed that under the age of twelve a child’s understanding and knowledge of the nature of war and of the political factors behind it are relatively weak. Nevertheless, in spite of their scant knowledge and information, children did not hesitate to express strong attitudes toward war and its participants. The researchers further noted that the less knowledge children actually had of a war, the more eager they were to take either a sympathetic or antagonistic stand toward the respective sides (Hess-Easton 1961).

According to a few longitudinal studies, the attitudes a child forms between the ages of six and ten reliably predict his subsequent political behaviour. A child’s predilections in relating to questions of war and peace may last until adolescence, and part of the attitudes may remain valid until adulthood.

At this age a child adopts basic affective attitudes towards social questions, a process which is strongly affected by the opinions and attitudes of the parents as well as the parent-child relationship.

The cognitive attitudes, which a child acquires later, are based on knowledge and beliefs, which he learns in school from peer groups and through the media.The early affective basic attitudes may determine his adoption of cognitive attitudes by selecting the information provided by the school and the media so that it is consistent and compatible with the child’s earlier values and ways of thinking. Later in the child’s life, his latent affective basic tendencies may emerge in his attitudes toward and opinions of daily politics as well as questions of war and peace.

Content of Attitudes

There are discrepancies in the results obtained from studies on the effect of age on the direction of war attitudes. According to Preston and Hess and Easton older children expressed more negative attitudes toward war than younger children. Machiavellian, aggressive and idealistic attitudes toward war became less intensive, and children grew more critical of war, as they grew older and acquired more information (Preston 1942; Hess-Easton 1961).

According to the study by Hess and Easton, six-year-old children showed hostile and stereotypic attitudes toward foreigners and deviant groups. These views were accompanied by a positive attitude toward war. The young children admired war because of the excitement, heroic stories and colourful uniforms. Older children, such as ten-year-olds, express understanding and empathy towards foreigners, and in the same way they tend to condemn war as an immoral and damaging phenomenon.

Cooper and Tolley did not find clear evidence that the acceptance of war and other positive attitudes toward it would decline as a child grew older. They remark that when children learn to analyze and understand the nature and character of war, they adopt the adult view that wars are a legitimate way to solve problems and thus a necessary or inevitable state of affairs. As they get older children cease, however, to idealize war and come to dislike it emotionally (Cooper 1965; Tolley 1973).

Tolley explains the influence of the stages of a child’s development on attitudes toward war in the following way. After the age of six, childhood hostility, impulsive aggression and omnipotent greed for power diminish gradually. In his study of American school children, it was the group of ten-year-olds who condemned war most strongly. The ages of 11-14 are very central to cognitive as well as social development, and in this stage of development the attitudes and opinions of the peer group and other reference groups assume the central role in moulding the child’s attitudes (Tolley 1973).

According to Tolley’s study, children had before reaching their teens adopted the attitude of accepting war as a necessary and justified means to solve the Vietnamese question.

Inconsistency between abstract human values and the actual practice of war by the society may explain the results according to which children do not tend to condemn war and prefer peace when growing up in society of war. The real values of society are reflected in children’s attitudes.

Children’s socialization creates problems in wartime, because in a society at war principles and moral codes and the practical conduct of things are always in conflict. Children are taught to feel solidarity and love toward people close to them, to appreciate human values and to be considerate of others. Children must learn to restrain their aggressive and destructive impulses. But at the same time children are expected to hate the enemy, direct aggressivity toward opponents, and show willingness to fight for the national cause. The inhuman treatment of the enemy is legitimized by his dehumanization. This means that children must learn to deny the enemy’s human character and the possibility that the enemy could in any way remind them of themselves.

Thus the violent, hostile and ignorant atmosphere of wartime is not consistent with norms and human ideals presented in children’s education and socialization. Children cannot be successfully socialized to love and solidarity in a period when the behaviour of their whole society is based on hate and retaliation and the denial of human values. Children tend to learn from their experiences and through their perception of reality, not from abstract moral principles and norms.

According to both Cornell’s and Tolley’s studies there was no correlation between children’s moral evaluation of war (is war a good or bad thing) and their attitude toward their own nation’s fight. Children tend to condemn war in general, but at the same time they defend their own nation’s war as a necessary and idealistic act and are ready to join in the struggle (Cornell 1971; Tolley 1973).

Israeli researchers have concluded that people who live under conditions of war experience a constant dilemma between the demands of basic human values and political reality. The antagonistic discrepancy reaches its peak on the battlefield where one has to decide between self-defense or humane treatment of enemy (Rosner et al. 1972).

Cornell uses the concept of threat scheme in attempting to explain the inconsistency between the moral and practical attitudes of children living in a society at war. Every children’s culture has its own scapegoat and anti-hero figure, whose ugliness and immorality is reinforced for educational reasons at school and at home. Usually the anti-hero is the image of a profoundly bad, threatening and unreal creature, based on fairy tales and tradition: monsters, trolls, ogres and ghosts. Children tend to project all their deficiencies, fears, guilt, hate and bad behaviour onto these symbols of basic evil, in order to release their inner tensions and conflicts (Cornell 1971).

In times of war children replace the “old bogeyman” by the enemy, who now becomes the target for projection, and the embodiment of all vindictiveness and evil. Even in a peaceful society, when children start to build their picture of political organizations, they transfer the threatening characters, already familiar to them, into the image of opponents and rivals.

It should be noted that children under the age of ten do not differentiate between political reality and their own imagined world. Further, the external tension and threat situation of war is known to become part of the child’s own fantasy and emotional inner world (Bender-Frosch 1942). The general phenomenon in wartime among all age groups is that the boundary between the fantasy world and reality fades.

The existence of trolls and witches in peacetime, and the enemy with his hideous soldiers in war, is a subjective fear to the child suggesting that he may lose all that is familiar, secure and comforting. For a child the threat stemming from war and the enemy is always very real by nature: The enemy is super-naturally horrible, an external, unknown group which is going to destroy the child’s home, to take his dearest playthings and cause him to lose his peers and friends. It is the enemy who endangers his father at the front and makes his mother cry at home. For the younger children the enemy is a monster straight out of fairy tales, while for older children he takes the form of the stereotypical and inhuman image created by the media and school, onto which they can project their hate and disgust and fear.

The threat-scheme reflects partly individual fears and anxiety but it contains social elements as well. Teachers, national leaders, parents and the media mould children’s threat-schemes according to actual political and moral needs. In wartime a child feels helpless and insecure in the face of both inner and outside threats. According to Cornell, the double anxiety of inner and outer enemy and threat is somewhat relieved by a strong identification with one’s own national army and by attitudes that incite fighting and the idealization of war. For children, their nation’s soldiers fight not only against the political enemy but also against children’s own inner enemies, such as feelings of shame and guilt, which have taken the form of the external enemy (Cornell 1971).

Source of Attitudes

The major point of agreement to emerge from studies of the Second World War is the central role of parents and relatives in providing information, influencing a child’s attitudes and coping with anxiety. According to the study conducted by Preston, the parents’ social class, attitudes and opinions determined significantly children’s attitudes towards war and peace (Preston 1942).

Tolley’s findings point to the trend in Western countries in which home and parents are losing their central role as socializers of children. According to Tolley, television and other media have partly replaced parents as the determining figures influencing children’s attitudes toward war and peace. The key influence formerly exerted by parents with respect to children’s views of war and politics is today increasingly wielded by peer groups and the media (Tolley 1973).

2.4. Effects of War on the Child’s Emotions

Psychoanalytic researchers have concluded that war has an effect on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural levels of the child’s development. The damage caused by the war conditions can be profound when traumatic experiences and the stresses and strains of war disturb the child’s natural shift from one stage of development to the next.

Freud and Burlingham stress that in all surroundings and under any conditions a child’s development involves crises, conflicts and anxiety, fears and aggression. The shift from one developmental stage to the next requires a great deal of energy in any situation. In war a child undergoes a double pressure when he has to cope both with his inner conflicts and the demands of his development stages, and with the conflicts of external reality. The reality of war alters the context and direction of the child’s emotional development. The experience of destruction, and

human losses, and the atmosphere of hate, vindictiveness and violence, confront a child with problems and obstacles as he tries to solve the problems entailed in his development (Freud-Burlingham 1942, 1943).

Freud and Burlingham claim that in young children especially — who have not yet reached the stage of inhibiting aggressive impulses — the destruction and killing prevalent in wartime society do not evoke anxiety, as they normally would, but give rise to serious character disorders due to their interference with the process in which the child learns to control aggressive impulses (Freud-Burlingham 1942, 1943).

According to psychoanalytic thinking, the events in the social sphere serve as unconscious channels for the displacement of inner and intra-familial conflicts. Therefore there is inevitably a resonance in every individual to the events of a major war. It has been observed that in a crisis people tend to treat the leading personalities in the country as parental figures (Glover 1942). The national leader almost always represents a father figure for the citizens, and in nationalistic symbolism the home country (in some languages “fatherland”, in others “motherland”) evokes very strong, emotional sentiments which were previously associated with the family.

War never remains only an external stress situation with which a child tries to cope; it becomes an integral part of his psychic world and inner reality. The war, its battles, heroes, and enemies, as well as its bloody attitudes, aggressions, hostility and violence are transferred as feelings, symbols and associations — and as modes of behaviour — to become part of the child’s emotional life. On the other hand the children have a tendency to weave their inner conflicts into war situations.

The literature contains descriptions of children who have intermixed their inner feelings and conflicts with the war situation, and of how war has found expression in children’s vocabulary, play activities and drawings.

In Bender and Frosch we find a boy whose intense interest in war events was interpreted as the displacement of aggressive and hostile tendencies. His fantasies were studded with war events, and when he became angry with somebody he would say that he was going to put him between the fire of the Germans and the Russians (Bender-Frosch 1942).

Children in the Middle East, when they fly into a rage in the playground, abuse one another with the names of the enemy. In any war, the enemy comes to occupy the place of earlier objects of fear, horror, disgust, and aggression. For example, a child who has been extremely afraid of his stern father, could later show hysterical reactions when even imagining an enemy soldier.

Identifying with someone and at the same time forming a sense of one’s own identity is a central mechanism in the child’s development and socialization. It is known that identification may arise following any perception of a common quality shared with some other person. Soldiers seem to have the Qualities which every fearful, victimized and helpless civilian, whether adult or child, needs: soldiers carry guns and can fire them; they can kill without guilt. Soldiers, indeed the entire war machine, thus become the practical and often unconscious symbol of security under war conditions.

According to Ginath and Krasilowsky the thwarted anger of civilians demands emotional channelling, which is made possible by the mechanism of identification with the armed forces. They claim that such identification is a necessary element in preserving civilian mental health. This kind of process is very much favoured and encouraged by a war society. People try to adapt to a war situation by changing their attitudes, values, norms, behaviour, and gradually even their personality, to conform to war conditions (Ginath-Krasilowsky 1970).

Towle considers identification with the constituents of war to be a disturbance in a child’s normal development. As children, along with their parents, identify with the warriors and accept killing and wholesale destruction, it seems that the inhibition and sublimation of destructive drives and hostile impulses becomes more difficult. A warlike and aggressive behaviour and manner of dealing with frustrations will remain the principal feature of the child’s personality (Towle 1943).

Human beings naturally believe in their own invulnerability. The subjective confidence that “nothing bad can happen to me” breaks down painfully when a person falls victim to traumatic events. A child who undergoes traumatic experiences of prolonged stress is not able to develop a healthy and functioning sense of invulnerability. A sense of invulnerability means an ability to control one’s fate and master the events of one’s life (Janis 1968).

Since war is basically a situation in which one is at the mercy of uncontrollable external forces, it evokes deep hidden feelings of helplessness and memories of rejection in both children and adults. Feelings of alienation from and helplessness in the face of one’s own life have been found to be the most common symptoms in Holocaust survivors (Wolfenstein 1957).

It has been found that soldiers try to shed their traumatic battle experiences through dreaming, daydreaming and the evocation of constant fantasies which repeat their memories. Traumatized people often tend unconsciously to revive painful situation, in consonance with the repetition compulsion (Freud 1923). In the same manner children tend to live through and repeat their experiences by means of play, fairytales and fantasies. Thus they attempt to master and control painful emotions related to the war.

However, the conditions of war disturb the development of the child’s fantasy world, thus disrupting the balancing function of fantasies. The boundary between the child’s fantasy world and outside reality fades, which often makes the fantasies unbearable. For instance, the child encounters intolerable difficulties in coping with his own aggressive fantasies in a hostile, violent and aggressive social situation. Freud and Burlingham observed that sometimes children rejected and denied their fantasy world and refused to listen to stories about fairies and witches because the attendant excitement made the children’s own painful experience too real again; they could not bear the images (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 67).

Most researchers agree that the most severe problem that arises among children exposed to war is not an overly strong expression of emotions, but rather a lack or scarcity of such feelings (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 28, 73).

Sometimes children do not even mention the horrors and shocks they have experienced, nor is there any hint of them in their plays, stories or drawings.Adults may believe that the traumatic experience have not affected the child’s psyche and that the child does not even remember the events, until one day, perhaps years later, the child may

tell in great detail about the painful incident. Meanwhile the child had to cope with the deep feelings evoked by the event.

The most important means by which a child can deal with the shocks, deprivations and upsets of life are indeed fantasies, plays, dreams and repetitions. The actual damage war does to the child’s psyche may well be its disruption of the natural function of the child’s coping mechanism, thus rendering him extremely defenseless and vulnerable in situations of strain. Similarly, war distorts the development of healthy psychic processes for coping with outside reality. Studies show that various forms of prolonged psychic numbing and suppression of feelings are the most common symptoms among war veterans and survivors — an indication of unhealthy coping with an unbearable reality (Lifton 1973).

2.4.1. Fear and Anxiety

Feelings of fear and anxiety are considered to be central in people’s wartime psyche and behaviour. The usual reaction to air raids is acute fear combined with somatic symptoms of emotional tension.

The difference between fear and anxiety lies in the specificity of the stimulus. Fear is a short-lived reaction to a specific stimulus, whereas in the anxiety state no specific stimulus is necessarily found. In war, strong anxiety states are in effect, intense emotional reactions which present a psychiatric problem because they persist after the danger has subsided and affect a person’s entire life adjustment. The “normal” fear reaction is characterized by a high degree of appropriateness to the danger situation (Janis 1968).

According to Freud and Burlingham the fears, which children expressed were mostly connected to the external reality of war. The sources of anxiety, on the other hand, were more often the children’s inner conflicts. In wartime, fear and anxiety are clearly connected in that children tend to transfer outside dangers and threats into their own fantasies and mix them with their inner conflicts, and anxiety then follows. On the other hand children tend to project their inner conflicts and feelings of anxiety into war events (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 24; 1944, 31).

Various causes and motives underlie children’s wartime fears and anxieties: — So-called real anxiety is evoked as an appropriate and immediate reaction to danger and horror. It is a sensible fear in a situation where the child is in danger and his safety is threatened. The absence of any sign of fear in a danger situation may in part refer to psychic disturbances. Thus, fearless behaviour may indicate suicidal tendencies. Many studies have shown that a child’s fear always, in essence, is about losing the elements that make for their physical and emotional security. Children dread the possibility of separation from their parents as much, if not more, than they fear bodily harm to themselves. Generally children are more fearful and worried about their parents than about themselves (Mira 1939).— Another source of wartime anxiety in children is the arousal of intra-psychic conflicts as a result of witnessing destruction, injuries, and death. This form of reaction was noted mainly in young children (of around four years old) who had just recently learned to abhor destruction and to curb their own aggressive impulses. The child confronts a serious discrepancy between the norms and demands of socialization and education, and the reality of war. This leads to deep anxiety in children, who try to conceal their

own aggressive impulses. The discrepancy between human morality and the conduct of war may pose an intellectual problem for adults, but for developing children it leads to a deep and insoluble anxiety. Children are afraid that their recently suppressed impulses of aggression and destruction may return. They may begin to live with the fear of their possible reversion to earlier stages of development, causing them to lose the acceptance and love of their parents.— The deep anxiety of children living under war conditions may be explained by the fact that children’s symbolic fear-objects are identified with actual threats and dangers due to war. Even in peacetime, a child’s world is replete with fear elements. Some of these fear-objects are created by the parents’ education (witches, trolls, Santa Claus), others originate in television and the society (police, murderer, thief), or in religion (devils, God’s punishment).

Real peace means that there is nothing for the children to fear but their own ghosts and bogeymen. Children “at peace” can be terrified by these monsters and witches, but whenever they wish they can return to mother’s arms and to their own safe reality (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 25-28). The happy end in fairy tales and adventure films provide the child with a guarantee that he is able to master and understand the exciting events and emotions connected to them. In a situation of war and violence children must live constantly without the security of a happy end. The boundary between children’s fantasy fears and real dangers no longer exists. For example, in his imagination an Israeli child may be terrified of “terrorists taking me with them because I didn’t obey my mother”. Mother’s forgiveness and consolation do not alleviate a child’s fears if he learns that there is actually an attack going on nearby. In times of war, children take on, in addition to the different normal fears of every age, the collective fears of the whole society. In every war, the enemy occupies the central place in the child’s fear ‘collection’, and the image of the enemy mixes with their earlier peacetime fears.

— One particular form of anxiety among children derives from their parents’, especially the mother’s, fear and anxiety.

Freud and Burlingham (Freud-Burlingham 1943) note that children whose mothers react hysterically tremble with terror, whereas the children of calm mothers do not exhibit a great deal of anxiety.

— Children who have lost a family member through natural death, or through combat at the front, experience a special kind of anxiety and fear. The loss of a close and dear person is always accompanied by feelings of guilt. A child may behave that he has done something bad because his father has rejected him and left for the front; he may even imagine that he has caused the death of the family member. A child may expend all his mental energy in forgetting and suppressing the traumatic loss of his parent. Even older children may find a refuge in daydreaming, constantly repeating, “When father returns from the front...”

Every hint referring to the traumatic experience contains a strong potential for fear and anxiety. A child’s fear may be generalized to everything that is connected to the cause of anxiety, such as ambulances, alarm sirens, hospitals or the green colour of army uniforms.

In Israel, for example, civilians sometimes prefer the risk of a surprise attack, rather than the fears and anxiety associated with the alarm. On the occupied West Bank, most of the

cases of school phobia are connected with the fact that the painful and traumatic experience of confronting Israeli soldiers usually occurs on the way to school or in the school building.

Perhaps a special kind of anxiety prevails among the wives and children of war heroes. The norms of heroism are very strong in both Israeli and Palestinian society, for example. The wife and children of a hero “inherit” his image and fame: they may avoid showing grief, longing, fear or despair. Often they are expected not only to be proud of the family hero, but to behave heroically as well. Those who have suffered grave losses are thus left without real social support and empathy, even if they are admired for their toughness. These social norms of heroism may give rise to deep anxiety in a child who is afraid he will not have the strength to meet such demands, due to the traumas and losses he has suffered (Lieblich 1977, 86; Hazleton 1973, 5).

Israeli children are reported to behave fearlessly and to adapt without any major problems to air raids, especially during the June war 1972. The general absence of expressions of fear may be partly explained by the Israeli atmosphere of heroism and toughness. Some parents took pride in saying that their children had absolutely no fear of the dangers of war.

Psychologists doubt, however, whether the inner fears generated by objective threat, and the danger and anxiety bound up with painful experiences, really disappear. By admiring the fearlessness of their children, parents are not only denying their own feelings of anxiety and fear, they are also blocking their children’s use of fear and horror as a ventilation of feelings. A child has to react in some way to the overwhelming demands of war reality. De Shalit hypothesizes that if children are unable to express and ventilate their inner fears, they become aggressive (de Shalit 1970).

It has been assumed that strong reactions of fear and anxiety may function as means of emotional adaptation. Persons who behave in a very controlled and emotionless manner in a dangerous situation may subsequently suffer more intensive fear and panic reactions than those who react immediately to danger (Janis 1951, 98).

On the other hand, a general phenomenon exists of delay of emotions of fear in extreme stress situations. People fear that the feelings and memories of painful event might overwhelm their consciousness and thus become uncontrollable. Often survivors like to “ration” the sentiments connected to the trauma, according to what they believe they can bear. Intense reactions of terror and fear often occur only some days after the traumatic experience. The victim uses the delay between the event and his emotional reaction to prepare himself to meet the reality of what has happened (Janis 1951, 45; Lifton 1967).

Children, too, have a tendency to deny or ‘ ‘forget’’ the dangers and fear objects in a war situation. Freud and Burlingham regard the “indifferent’’ attitude of children toward the horrors of war as an example of how children of a certain age deal with reality which appears to be unpleasant or difficult to master.Suppression of emotions and disregard of the danger are among the means employed to cope and adapt in war (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 27).

2.4.2. Aggression

Aggressivity is broadly defined as an activity whose aim is to harm or punish other living things.

An aggressive state of mind is usually a consequence of feelings of anger. When anger is intense, aggression takes the forms of attack, destruction or sadistic violence. In daily life, aggression is usually expressed in symbolic forms of hostility (Lagerspetz 1977, 11-13).

The frustration-aggression theory developed by Dollard et al. claims to have found the cause of all aggression and aims to be a general theory of the origins of aggression and violence (Dollard et al. 1939). Their hypothesis is that the occurrence of aggressive behaviour always presupposes the existence of frustration; and contrariwise, the existence of frustration always leads to some form of aggression. Following further research and critical reaction, Miller dropped the second part of the hypothesis, allowing that frustration could instigate a number of different types of responses, only one of them being aggression (Miller 1944). Recently it has been concluded that frustration is only one antecedent of aggression, and not the most potent one. There are also different kinds of aggressive responses. The aggression related to frustration may be direct, indirect, overt, covert, symbolic, hidden, public, real or imagined, pseudo, instrumental, accidental or defensive.

According to the drive theory, aggressiveness and destructiveness in human beings are biologically given and spontaneously flowing impulses which can be evoked through external stimulus. Aggressive energy constantly accumulates in human being, and thus it demands ventilation every so often, and the possibility of being directed at something or someone.

The learning theorists understand aggressive behaviour to be the result of learning and to develop through reinforcement, imitation and modelling (Bandura 1973; Freud 1964, cited in Lagerspetz 1977, 16).

All three theories of aggression noted above seek also to explain the aggression characteristic of a society at war, as well as the aggressivity of those who conduct wars.

Dollard et al. used the frustration-aggression hypothesis in their analysis of the behaviour of persons who were victims of economic and social insecurity in the Thirties in Europe. Subsequent history, marked by wars and violence, has partly proved their argument that people channel into aggressivity the social frustration they experience (Dollard et al. 1939).

Another major example of frustration leading to aggression may be seen among American coloured people. Dollard et al. concluded that the riots and violence among oppressed groups of people are a response to the economic and human frustration caused by other, more powerful groups. If a society’s reality does not meet people’s needs, the situation that develops leads through frustration to aggression, and to violence and wars.

Dollard et al. note that the world of children is filled with frustration. The outside reality, controlled by adults presents itself as different kinds of problematic situations and as a large number of demands, orders and threats of punishment, to which a child must adapt himself. In war, the satisfaction of a child’s basic needs — such as the need for personal attachment, for emotional stability, security and caring, as well as the need for educational models — is inadequate.A war situation always means greater frustration for children, as well as changes in the context of their frustrations. According to Dollard et al., children’s aggressive attitudes towards the enemy, their acceptance of war propaganda and their intense interest in war events are the result of the frustration caused by war and the non-satisfaction of their needs due to the war.

A report based on research among American children shows the role of personal frustrations and losses as a factor leading to expressions of aggression (Bender-Frosch 1942, Report of the Central Commission on Children and War to the International Congress on Mental Health, N.Y. 48, 24). At the beginning of the Second World War — when the daily life of children was unaffected by war and American soldiers sustained few losses — American children expressed attitudes marked by compromise and non-aggression towards the enemy. After the Americans began to suffer losses, children’s aggressivity usually took the form of verbal hostility and blaming of the enemy. When children suffered personal losses, their behaviour, and especially their play activities, became overtly aggressive. Towle (1943) noted that particularly destructive play became more common among children who had experienced destruction and other traumatic experiences of war.

War sanctions hate and aggression without guilt that normally follow the unaccepted feelings. This introduces a special element into a child’s life, which could readily reinforce and keep active the conflicts of early childhood, particularly those centring on aggressive impulses. Freud and Burlingham explain the increased aggressiveness of children living under war conditions in two ways: first, because they lose early repression and inhibition of aggressive impulses due to the example of destructive surroundings; and second because they revert to earlier modes of the expression of aggression as a result of overwhelming experiences (Freud-Burlingham 1943, 78).

Escalona notes that the greater the violence and the display and exercise of cruel power in the world, the more difficult it is for children to come to terms with the rage and hostility which at certain ages are the necessary and inevitable components of their inner lives (Escalona 1975). The major developmental issues in childhood and adolescence include learning to cope with the necessity of controlling and channelling aggressive and hostile feelings in order to avoid retaliation, or the loss of the love and friendship of important people.

A process takes place in which aggressive tendencies are gradually organized into a socially accepted concept in which the attitude of the surroundings is of paramount importance. In war, the general trend of development is for aggressiveness to be allowed, and even demanded and encouraged, toward the enemy (Escalona 1975). Aggressiveness thus becomes organized into the general social structure, and from the child’s psychological point of view aggression is regarded as a positive and valuable mode of behaviour.

The growth of juvenile delinquency during both the Second World War in England, and during the Vietnam War in the USA can be interpreted as an indication of the growth of aggressivity due to war morality. Admiration of soldiers and warfare, and incitement to a war of aggression against the enemy, led to an implicit acceptance of aggressive behaviour on the home front as well.This phenomenon may be accounted for in part by identification with soldiers and their activities, social norms favouring toughness and aggressiveness, or frustrating war experiences as a source of aggression. On the other hand, Vietnam veterans expended a great deal of their psychic energy in order to suppress the aggressive impulses which they had learned to act out freely on the battlefield (Horowitz-Solomon 1975; Lifton 1975; Strange-Brown 1970).

2.5. Summary

Discrepancies exist in researchers’ views about the severity, frequency an content of war-related psychological disturbances. Most of the psychologists agree, however, that war is always a stress situation which makes unusually high demands on a child’s psychic resources. Even if evidence of increased psychiatric illnesses and chronic mental disturbances due to war is rare, it has been observed that war affects children’s emotional life, development, attitudes and human relationships in many ways.

War, with its hostility, destructiveness and aggression, can never remain only an external stress, but becomes part of a child’s inner life, fantasy world and emotions. The psychoanalytically oriented researchers observe that traumatic war experiences can disturb a child’s development from one stage to the next. The harmful effects of war can be seen in child-parent relationships, in the functions of children’s fantasies, and in an increase or change in a child’s anxiety and aggression. Parents constantly experience feelings of guilt and anxiety when they try to give their children a normal childhood in conditions of war.Childhood in wartime seems to be very brief; children are forced too early to share the fears, threats and responsibilities of the adult world.

Children react diversely to the stress of war and political conflict. Some of the ways for coping may be healthy and will help a child to adapt to the situation. In the worst cases, children tend to deny their feelings because they are too painfully bound up with the memories of the war situation. The following modes of behaviour are demanded of people trying to adapt to life under war conditions: Functional double morality of attitudes and values, according to which war is a bad thing, but still necessary and valuable in the actual political situation of his own nation; strong control of the feelings of fear and anxiety and of other emotions, so that emotions do not disturb the war activities where the struggle against the enemy occupies the highest priority; directing aggressivity only towards the enemy, which is made possible by adopting war propaganda and dehumanizing the image of the enemy. If a child has to learn these modes of conduct of war society, we can understand that it will be difficult to “re-socialize” him into a peace-loving citizen.

3. THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to elucidate the psychological reactions of child to a situation of prolonged national conflict. I conducted research amongst Israeli, Palestinian and Israeli-Arab, children, concentrating on their attitudes toward war and peace, their fears and their feelings of aggression. I also surveyed the relations between attitudes expressed by the children and the fears which they registered. The relations between the children’s own experiences of war and violence, their nationality, sex and social background, and the formation of their attitudes and feelings (on the other hand) were also subjects that engaged my interest.

The Frame of the Study:

In this study I have tried to answer the following questions:

II Children’s Attitudes

—Do Israeli and Palestinian children differ in their attitudes toward war in general and toward their national struggle - their “own” wars, as regards their own participation in the national struggle, and their view of the prospects for peace? —How do the children’s own experiences of war and violence form their attitudes toward war and peace? —Are there differences in the children’s attitudes toward war and peace based on their sex and social class? —How do the Israeli and Palestinian children define the enemy, and what stand do they adopt toward the enemy? —How do Middle East children view the possibilities of solving the conflict?

II Children’s Fears

—Are there differences between Palestinian and Israeli children with respect to the quantity, intensity and content of fears? —Is there any relation between children’s own experiences of war and violence, and their fears? —Do girls and boys differ in their fearfulness?

Childrenʼsnationality

Attitudes towar & peace

Childrenʼs ownexperience ofwar & violence

Childrenʼs sex &social background

Amount, intensity & content of fears

Content, direction & mode of aggressivity

III Children’s Aggressiveness

—Are there differences between Israeli and Palestinian children in the direction, content and mode of aggressivity? —Is there a relationship between children’s exposure to traumatic war experiences and their tendency to react aggressively in a frustrating situation? —Do boys and girls differ in their aggressiveness?

IV Relations between Attitudes and Fears

—Is there a connection between positive and negative attitudes towards war and the intensity of fears?

Half of the Palestinian children in the West Bank were from working class families. The fathers of these families were about evenly divided between skilled and unskilled workers. Of the Israeli children only a quarter (26 %) were from working families, with most of their fathers being skilled workers. Most of the Israeli working class families lived in a development town near the northern border, and the head of the family originated from an Arab country. The working class families in the Palestinian sample lived for the most part in refugee camps.

Thirty-nine percent of the Israeli fathers, and 12 % of the Palestinian fathers belonged to the white-collar class. Academic education was rare among the Palestinian families studied.

A substantial number (22 %) of the Palestinian children’s fathers were not working. Of these 22 cases, six reported that their father was dead, nine fathers were abroad and five family heads were unemployed. Due to the military occupation and the large size of many families in the West Bank, one or more of the family members often works abroad, usually in an oil-producing country. This is often the only way to support one’s family.

The Israeli and Palestinian children studied thus differ remarkably from one another in their social background. This is of crucial importance when these groups are compared. The division reflects only in part the actual demographic situation in the Israeli and Palestinian societies. The proportion of kibbutz children (18 %), as well as children whose parents had an academic background (24 %) were over-weighted in the Israeli sample, as was the proportion of children whose father was self-employed (53 %) in the group of Palestinians living inside Israel. In fact, the majority of Israeli Arabs are salaried workers, but in our sample only 24 % of the children came from working class homes. The school which participated in the study was located in a town, where many of the inhabitants earn their living as craftsmen or in business. This group of Israeli Arabs does not demographically represent the whole population.

The Palestinian and Israeli societies have undergone a separate historical development, which accounts for their social and class structure. The Israeli upper class consists of Jews who immigrated mainly from Western Europe and from Anglo-Saxon countries. Jews from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union who arrived in the country earlier also occupy good social positions in Israel. The lower social class is made up chiefly of Jews from Islamic and Arab countries. The Israeli Arabs - those Palestinians who did not leave the country when Israel was established — belong socially to the lowest stratum of the Israeli society.

The occupation has had its effects on the social structure in the West Bank. Commercial

and industrial life could not be developed under occupation. The area serves as a market for Israeli goods and supplies labour to Israeli industry, building companies and agriculture. Until recently the Palestinians could acquire higher education only abroad. In addition, heavy taxation and strict security measures imposed by the Israelis lead to difficulties in carrying on trade in the West Bank. A good many highly educated, wealthy and professional Palestinian live as political or economic refugees abroad.

The size of the families also differed in the samples. About half the Israeli children came from families with two children and one-quarter from families with 3-4 children. Only 3 % of the Israelis were the only child in the family. In the Palestinian group, two thirds had 4-6 siblings at home, and one-quarter of them came from even larger families. Only ten percent of the Palestinian children came from a family with 2-3 children, and none was an only child.

4. THE RESEARCH METHODS

4.1. Construction of the Scales

A fear scale, a questionnaire measuring attitudes toward war and peace, and a picture test evaluating aggressiveness were constructed for the study. Most of the test items were modified to make them adequate for the problem and for the specific group of children under study.

The children studied, the Palestinians in particular, were not familiar with scaling methods, evaluations and test situations in general. Most of the standardized tests are related to Western reality, and it was assumed that the children being studied would find it difficult to understand the standard tests. We sought to make the test items relate directly to the Middle Eastern reality, because in addition to psychological information we were also interested in the children’s lives in general.

4.1.1. Attitude Scale

Based on interviews with children and teachers, literature on war and earlier research, 48 statements related to questions of peace and war were collected. The statements consisted of direct or indirect opinions regarding the acceptance or denunciation of war. The statements referred, inter aha, to causes of wars, purpose and goals of war, the possibility of ending war, the problems of Middle-East conflict, children’s own involvement in war and moral questions of warfare. While pre-testing and interviewing the children, too long, ambiguous and too abstract items were dropped. In addition, three experts checked the list of statements, and items inappropriate to the age and experience of the studied group were omitted.

The final attitude scale consists of 21 items, which can be divided through factor analysis and Tolley’s research into the following categories: (1) the moral judgement of war; (2) justification of the fight of one’s own nation; (3) child’s own involvement and sense of responsibility in war; (4) prospects of peace (Tolley 1977).

The tested child responds to every item on the scale by stating “Yes, I agree” or “No, I disagree.” In addition, the children were told that they could refuse to answer. The scale indicates a child’s tendency to support or condemn war, and his attitudes toward special questions related to war.

4.1.2. Fear Scale

The scale measuring the amount and intensity of a child’s fears is a modification of the Fear Survey Schedule for children by Scherer and Nakamura (Scherer-Nakamura 1968). Their Fear Survey Schedule is partly based on fear categories developed by Wolpe and Lang. The original list, which included 81 fear items, turned out to be too long. The interest and concentration of the pre-tested children barely lasted until the middle of the list (Wolpe-Lang 1964).

Thus items which were irrelevant to the reality of these children (cemetery, speaking on the telephone, electric shock, wolf etc.) or which were considered pedagogically unsuitable

(approaching an Arab/a Jew, our nation is annihilated, dead body) were excluded. In addition similar items had to be excluded from the list, even if they might have proved to be significant for the test.

Two new categories were developed in line with the problem under study:

Fears of war and conflict, and fears concerning the child’s own security. The items for the new scale were chosen in the wake of interviews with children, observation and the literature.The final fear scale consists of 48 items which can be divided into the following subcategories, according to the nature of the source of fear or threat; fears of animals, fears involving one’s own body, social fears, fears of authority and punishment, miscellaneous fears, fears of war and conflict, and fears concerning one’s own security.

The tested children had to grade every fear item on a four-class scale according to the intensity of the fear experienced. The choices were: 0-does not frighten me at all; 1-frightens me a little; 2-frightens me quite a bit; and 3-frightens me very much. From these ratings, two types of fear scores were obtained for each child. The total number of fears checked as disturbing without regard to the grade they were given, and the total degree of fear based on a scoring of the intensity of the child’s tearfulness.

The Fear Survey Schedule theoretically measures the type and effectiveness of fear stimuli (cues) which evoke emotional arousal (Wolpe-Lang 1964), Goldberg et al. proved empirically that the validity of the schedule was high, since it could measure and discriminate sensitively variations in the intensity of fear. The researchers studied fluctuations in the emotional expressions of Israeli students in times of actual war and relative peace (Goldberg et al. 1977).

4.1.3. Test Measuring Aggression

Children’s aggressive reactions were studied by means of a modified Rosenzweig Picture frustration test, based on the frustration-aggression hypothesis (Rosenzweig 1948). The test material consisted of 20 frustrating or stressful situations, which refer directly or indirectly to the war and conflict situation.

The situations in the pictures were obtained by asking a group of children:

- What is the most terrible thing in a war or attack? - What is your worst memory from the last war or attack? - Why is the enemy frightening?

It was clearly seen in the children’s answers as well as in earlier studies and the literature, that worry about parents, fear of being abandoned, general insecurity, uncertainty, and violence and humiliation were the main sources of children’s frustration and strain. Characteristically, frustrating and stressful situations disrupt the satisfaction of a child’s basic needs, such as the need for security, caring, approval, love, self-esteem and freedom. Frustration may also have its source in situations of conflict, guilt, disappointment, helplessness and uncertainty (Rosenzweig 1944).

In the original test it was important whether the frustration was caused by an adult or a child. In our test, we hypothesize that the war and conflict situation is implicitly always the source of stress and frustration, and blocks need satisfaction in a child’s life. The test pictures were made as natural and familiar as possible for the tested children, in order to enable them to identify easily with the pictures. The test is projective in nature, and we hoped to be able to study children’s conscious and unconscious reactions to frustrating situations.

The Picture Frustration test is based on the hypothesis by Dollard et al. (Dollard et al. 1939) which holds that the reactions to frustration are always aggressive in nature, even if their expression varies. Children’s answers were scored according to the direction and type of reaction to the aggression (Rosenzweig 1944, 1971).

(1) When a subject directs his aggression outward, to the environment or against other people, his reaction is termed extrapunitive aggression. Aggressivity can also take covert forms: a frustrated person may express irritation and worry, or make demands to others to compensate his suffering. A general hostility towards others and towards one’s surroundings also comes under the rubric of extrapunitive aggression.

(2) A person may direct aggression toward himself, blaming himself for the harmful situation and regretting his behaviour. A person can be the one who is punished if he ignores the situation and is thus left without others’ sympathy. This kind of aggression is intrapunitive in nature.

(3) In impunitive aggression a person attempts — usually through compromise and apology — to ignore and avoid frustration. He may regret the overwhelming obstacles, bad luck and circumstances; he may also accept the situation, adapt to it, belittle its importance, or hope that time will heal the wounds.

It is extrapunitive aggression that is usually referred to with respect to aggressive behaviour, and this applies to the present study as well.

4.2. Conducting the Field Work

Preparations for the study commenced in 1978: I was seeking literature and earlier studies on the subject both in universities in Israel and in the occupied West Bank. At the same time I interviewed some 20 Palestinian and Israeli children and their parents as well as teachers and social workers. With every chance acquaintance I would start up a conversation on the psychological effects of the Middle East conflict in order to gain understanding of the study problem.

The most troublesome, and at the same time the most instructive task, was to build confidential relationships with both authorities and private persons. Societies living under national conflict and war are characterized by deep-rooted suspiciousness, fear and mistrust; anyone could be the enemy. I had yet to learn that no research could be innocent given the experiences of Israelis and Palestinians. The propaganda battle is fierce in the Middle East, and it became clear that both sides were particularly fearful that psychological research focusing on children could serve the interests of the enemy. In the occupied West Bank special care was needed to avoid risking the tested children’s security.

Private contacts were thus the best way to conduct fieldwork in both Israel and the West Bank. Many courageous and concerned people were ready to help, saying: “the world, and

especially people living in peaceful countries, have to know how our children are sacrificed for political gains, injustice, and lack of prospects for a normal future.” Others, more reserved, said: “There is no way for those who come from peaceful countries to understand how and why people continue to live with war, in an atmosphere of constant threat, tension and hatred. And in any case, the world is always more ready to sympathize with our enemies than with us”.

The empirical part of the study — testing the children — took place in Israeli and Palestinian schools in May-June 1979. The local people who introduced the tests played a particularly important role in the success of the study. In the West Bank the introduction and explanations were given by a friend of mine, and in Israel by the teachers of the classes. The introducer of the test took nearly half an hour to calm down the excited children, motivate them to complete the forms, and evoke feelings of confidence and importance in them.

Much attention was given to the illustration and explanation of each test. The pupils filled out the forms in 60-80 minutes, including a ten-minute break. Appendix 3 contains descriptions of the study places and testing situations.

4.3. Statistical Methods

The results were obtained through the following statistical methods: factor analysis, chi square test, Pearson correlations and regression analysis.(1) The children’s attitudes, fears and war experiences were factor-analyzed in order to define their structure. The consistency of sum variables was studied by correlations, and reliability was estimated by Cronbach alfa. Forming of sum variables is presented in Appendix 4.(2) Most of the study questions could be answered by crosstables, and the significance of observed differences was tested by the chi square test. The methods based on correlations were not useful in this study because many of the original variables were dichotomic (attitudes, war experiences) or nominal (demographic variables). Variation between constructed sum variables was studied by correlations.(3) The connections between many variables were studied by regression analysis. The analysis is applicable in a study setting where there is at once one dependent variable and many independent variables under scrutiny. In this study a selective regression analysis was used, where the programme selects predictors stage by stage according to how much they improve the multiple correlation (Peltonen 1970, 71).

5. THE RESULTS

5.1. Description of the Studied Children

5.1.1. Sex and Age

I attempted to include an equal number of boys and girls in the study. In Israel schools this was easy since classes are mixed, but in the occupied West Bank girls and boys do not attend the same schools. Thus the Palestinian group includes 68 % girls and only 32 % boys. This difference must be taken into accounting in any discussion of the national differences between Israeli and Palestinian children.

Table 1. Division by Sex of the Children in the Sample

Israeli Jews

% N

Palestiniansin

West Bank% N

Palestiniansin Israel

Israeli Arabs% N

Total

% N

Boys

Girls

Missing

50 92

48 89

2 4

38 48

61 79

1 1

50 20

50 20

46 140

53 168

1 5

Total 195 128 40

My sample included 185 Israeli Jewish children and 128 Palestinian children — Moslem and Christian — born in the occupied West Bank. The parents of many of the Palestinian children are refugees from the 1948 war, and most of them continue to reside in refugee camps.

I chose 5th grade (elementary) classes, and the majority — 88 % — of the children were 11 years old at the time of the study. Only a small group of Palestinian girls, and an even smaller group of Israeli children, were aged 13 and 9, respectively.

5.1.2. Regional and Social Background

The Israeli Jewish children, and the Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and in Israel, live in very different surroundings and living conditions. These groups differ from each other in their culture, traditions, customs, norms, values and economic conditions. Each group has its own political, historical and social background. The national conflict tends to widen the differences between Arabs and Jews, between Israelis and Palestinians. Both sides take it as an insult if they learn that they are alike and bear many resemblances.

The Middle East conflict has also had its divergent consequences on the lives of Palestinian and Israeli children.

The living conditions of the studied children are reported in Chapter 1.2., and the study sites are described in Appendix 3. Below, we present the children’s backgrounds according to their place of residence and their father’s profession.

Of the studied Israeli children, 63 % lived in towns and 37 % in the countryside. About one-third of the Israeli children’s places of residence could be categorized as “peaceful” areas. The “peacefulness” in these places refers to the fact that there had not been bomb attacks, terrorism or other such violence, and children’s life in these places resembled peacetime conditions. The country’s villages and kibbutzim were the peaceful places. More than a third of the Israeli children lived in towns, which had been targets of bomb and rocket attacks and other violence. One-quarter of the studied Israeli children lived in surroundings, which had been slightly disturbed by conflict-related events.

We did not manage to find a Palestinian sample which was unmarked by violence due to the military occupation. All the places represented in this study were well acquainted with constant violence, demonstrations, curfews and military presence. Of the Palestinians studied, 62 % lived in refugee camps and 38 % in towns. The group of Palestinians living inside Israel, the “Israeli Arabs”, lived in a small town where open violence was rare.

In Table 2 the social background of the studied groups is presented through the occupation of the children’s fathers.

Table 2. Fathers’ Occupation in %

I s r a e l i (Jews)

Palestinians (W. Bank)

I s r a e l i Arabs

Total

Self-employed 8 13 53 14Higher official 24 4 3 12Lower official 15 8 21 13Worker 26 51 24 25Farmer 2 2 0 2Kibbutz member 18 7Army & security employee

5 1

Dead,unemployed,Abroad

3 22 0 7

TOTAL N 173 100 40 307

5.1.3 The Childrenʼs Own Experiences of War and Conflict

Although the heated Israeli-Arab conflict affects the lives of all the children in the region in many ways, the studied children differ as to their own experiences of violence and bereavement.

The childrenʼs own experiences were recorded by means of seven questions, some of those dealing with their direct experience of violence, and others with the effects of conflict through experiences of temporary or permanent loss of near relatives.

Figure 1. The Children’s Own Experiences of War and Conflict Amongst Israeli Jews and Palestinian West-Bankers (%)

As may be seen from Figure 1, the Israeli-Arab conflict has personally and directly affected a sizable section of both sides but has been particularly hard on Palestinian children.

Clearly the realities of war register in the child’s consciousness through events, which affect his own security, and the traumatic nature of war and conflict is often transferred and engraved in the child’s psyche through experiences at home. War often leads to a breakdown in the normal pattern of family life, and to a deterioration of the relations between the parents. This study also established, by means of factor analysis, that “the death of a member of the family in war or in a war-like event” is the most harmful traumatic experience for a child.

Palestinian children more often suffered the loss of a relative than did Israeli children: 39 % of all the tested Palestinian children, and 21 % of the Israeli children had lost a relative in war or in war-like actions. The figures for relatives wounded are 37 % and 29 %, respectively. Three quarters of all the Israeli children responded affirmatively to the question “Did your father take part in a war?” We may presume that this refers mainly to the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when the children were five years old. One-quarter of the Palestinian children’s fathers had, according to the children, taken part in a war.

Had seen or heard anexplosion, terror-actor shelling incident(Israelis)

Had been involved inviolent confrontationwith soldiers or “borderguards” (Palestinians)

Lost relative in waror war-like event

Relative wounded inwar or war-like event

Neighbour or friendwounded in war orwar-like event

Neighbour or friend lost in war or war-like event

Father took part in war

Relative is/has beenin prison (Palestinians)

The death or the wounding of a friend or neighbour was equally familiar to Israelis and to Palestinians; over one-third of the children had had this experience.

Sixty-seven percent of the Palestinian children in this sample have had a family member imprisoned by the Israelis. Popular resistance to the occupation led to a substantial wave of arrests in the West Bank. The number of detentions has also grown as a result of the children’s own demonstration activity. Many of the clashes with the Israeli forces have resulted in mass arrests of children, who are held for many hours or even days in detention in military government centres.

The children’s own participation in the conflict assumes different forms for West Bank Palestinians than it does for Israelis, due to the nature of the conflict: West Bank Palestinians live under Israeli occupation and struggle against it. Israelis, particularly in large population centres, have occasionally been subject to terror bombs exploding in buses, markets and other public areas. Israelis residing in the Galilee panhandle town of Kiriat Shemona were subject to shelling from across the border.

Israeli children of the age group of 11 are mostly passive subjects to incidents of violence. Amongst the Israeli children tested, 45 % said that they had heard or seen an explosion of shells or a terror device. Two of the Israeli groups were subject to such traumatic experiences: the children of the Jerusalem school (2l% of the Israeli sample) were subject to incidents of bombs exploding in the nearby market, and the children of a Kiriat Shemona school (16 % of the Israeli sample) spent long hours in air-raid shelters due to shelling incidents which occurred during the year in which the study was executed. For Israeli children, active participation begins at the age of 14 when they join the Gadna youth battalions as part of their compulsory education. The pupils may also serve as armed guards in their schools and participate in civil defence exercises.

The Palestinian children studied had played an active role in the conflict. As members of an occupied nation they took the initiative in demonstrations against the occupation, and for the establishment of their own independent state. These demonstrations, strikes, erection of roadblocks, burning of tires and stoning of Israeli military and settler vehicles are often answered by military measures. Schools have been closed for prolonged periods, and in one incident CS gas grenades were used in a classroom after the pupils were ordered to shut the windows. Such incidents are familiar to Palestinian children; indeed 87 % of the tested Palestinian children said that they had “participated” in at least one violent confrontation with Israeli soldiers or green-beret “border guards”.

5.2. Children’s Attitudes Towards War and the Middle East Conflict

5.2.1. The Moral Judgment of War and the Struggle of the Child’s Own Nation

The moral judgment of war refers to the goodness and badness of warfare and the consequences of wars. The attitudes toward the struggle of one’s own nation reflect the acceptance of one’s own struggle and its consequences. The percentages in Figure 2 represent children’s favourable attitudes towards war in general and their own nations’ fight in particular.

Figure 2. Favourable Attitudes Toward War in General and Toward One’s Own Nation’s Fight Among Israeli (‘Jews’), Palestinian and ‘Israeli Arab’ Children

There are some illogical fluctuations in the children’s answers. For example, 78 % of the Israeli children held the opinion that wars are always bad, but about the same number (72 %) agreed that wars are sometimes needed. This result can, of course, reflect a real attitude; even if war is a bad thing, it is needed sometimes, or as a girl in Tolley’s study put it: “War is horrible, but we have to learn to live with it” (Tolley 1973).

Half of the Palestinian children regarded war as being always bad; 81 % however, stated that wars are sometimes needed; 80.5 % of the Palestinian children and 62 % of the Israelis thought that “all people suffer from war.” Here, the children’s personal experiences were reflected in their attitudes.

The tested Palestinian children tended to have more favourable attitudes towards their own national fight. Nearly all (94 %) of the West Bank children and the Israeli Arab children

War in General

Wars are sometimes necessary (yes)

War is always a bad thing (not)

All people suffer from war (not)

War sometimes has good effects (yes)

Own nation’s fight

My people have no other choice but to fight (yes)

War is good when Israelis / Palestinians defeat their enemy (yes)

Wars have caused damage to our people (not)

Wars have had a good effect on the lives of Israelis / Palestinians’ (yes)

Wars have united our nation (yes)

agreed with the statement, “War is a good thing when the Palestinians beat their enemies.” Of the Israeli children, half (53 %) thought that their own victory legitimizes war. Similarly, half (52 %) of the Israelis and 71 % of the Palestinian children said that their nation had no alternative but to fight.

Children in both national groups were more often of the opinion that wars have good consequences in general, than that wars could have good effects for their own people. Half of the Palestinian children and one-quarter of the Israelis asserted that wars have had good effects on their nation’s life. The children living under occupation, however, were less often of the opinion that wars have united their nation.

The question about the consequences of war requires deeper analysis. It might have been more interesting to know what they view as the “positive” and “damaging” effects of wars in their nation’s life.

A small number of children were later asked to explain their answers, some children voluntarily wrote remarks on their test papers. Both Israeli and Palestinian children considered their nation’s fight against the enemy to be the “sometimes” when wars are needed. Palestinian children indicated that war is the way to get back their own homeland and stop the occupation. For Israelis war meant defending their country and eliminating the threat of the enemy.

5.2.2. Loyalty and Feelings of Responsibility in War

This category consists of items describing patriotism and heroism on the one hand, and the practical demands of a child’s own involvement in the fight, on the other.

The children’s responses demonstrate their unquestionably high degree of involvement in the national struggle. Both the Palestinian children living in the West Bank, and Israeli Jewish children seemed to be ready to make sacrifices for their country, and they admired their own fighters. Only the group of Israeli Arab children hesitated on this issue of national demands.

Israeli and Palestinian children stress their feelings of national loyalty in different ways. The Palestinian children emphasized positively the idealistic aspects of the national struggle, and thus warfare, whereas the Israeli children took a more pragmatic and less romantic stand towards involvement in their nation’s fight and war.

Nearly the Palestinian children (98 %) living under occupation expressed their admiration for the freedom fighters. A feda’i, or freedom fighter, is a Palestinian soldier who is fighting for the national goals. Similarly, virtually all the Palestinian children (98 %) wished their fathers to be a war hero, and they fully (92 %) agreed that everyone must be ready to die for his country. Many (87 %) of the West Bank children stated that to participate in a battle is an exciting experience.

Of the Israeli children 94% wanted to be good soldiers when they grew up, and 87% agreed that in a war one has to execute every order, even those that one feels are wrong. Admiration of their own soldiers was common (87 %) among Israelis, too, but about a third of them declared that they did not wish their fathers to be war heroes.

Unlike the Palestinians, the Israeli children did not idealize participation in battle. Most of the children agreed that to give one’s life for one’s country is a privilege.

One may suppose that the notion of heroism was stronger among Israelis during the open wars (1967, 1973) than at the time of the study, when negotiations between Egypt and Israel were successfully concluded.

There is a considerable difference between Palestinian children living in the occupied areas and Palestinians living inside Israel with respect to their expression of national loyalty and their involvement in the national struggle. Practical readiness to fight as well as admiration of national heroism and struggle, were much less evident among the Arab children living in the Israeli society than among their brothers under Israeli occupation. Those two Palestinian groups agreed only upon the importance of giving one’s life for one’s country.

For example, almost all the children in the occupied areas admired the freedom fighters, but among the Israeli Arabs only one-third (36 %) expressed such admiration. Similarly, the following statements gained only half the acceptance among Israeli Arabs they did among Palestinian children under the occupation: “I will be a good soldier when I grow up” and “In a war one has to execute every order, even those that one feels are wrong.” “Participating in a battle is an exciting experience” and “I wish my father to be a war hero. “

Figure 3. Favourable Attitudes Towards Own Loyalty and Feelings of Responsibility in War Among Israeli, Palestinian and Israeli Arab Children (%)

I admire soldiers (Israelis)

I admire freedom fighters (Palestinians)

I wish my father to be a war hero

Everybody has to be ready to die for his country

Participating in a battle is an exciting experience

When I grow up, I will be a good soldier

In a war one has to execute every order, even those that one feels are wrong

5.2.3. Prospects of Peace

Both the Palestinian and the Israeli children were quite pessimistic when assessing the prospects for peace in the world in general and in their country in particular. Sixty percent of the Israelis and 71 % of the Palestinians held the opinion that there will always be wars in the world. Even more of the children (68 % of the Israelis and 74 % of the Palestinians) believed that there will still be wars in their country when they are adults.

Certain differences did, however, appear in the Israeli and Palestinian children’s assessments of the prospects for peace. Of the Israelis, only 13 %, but of the Palestinians 88 %, did not believe that it is possible to prevent the next war from breaking out. Among the Israeli children 91 %, and among the Palestinians 52 %, agreed with the statement that none of us wants more wars.

The Palestinians were, however, more optimistic in their attitudes towards the enemy: one-quarter of them — but 70 % of the Israelis — believed that their enemy will always remain their enemy. This question was difficult for the Palestinians, and an exceptionally large number of them did not answer it.

Figure 4. Pessimistic Attitudes Towards Prospects of Peace Among Israeli, Palestinian and Israeli Arab Children (%)

The children studied here have not known one day of real peace in their lives. There is no peace in the Middle East, even if at times military violence absent. Peace would demand a settlement of the basic disagreements between Palestinians and Israelis. It seems that this situation of constant tension and fighting, and concepts like war, battles, victory and enemy threat have become more familiar to the children than the abstract and unknown idea of peace. The children find it difficult to imagine the opposite of national struggle and war — peace. And when they do imagine it, it is something so illusory and beautiful that it has no connection to

There will always be wars in the world (yes)

There will be no wars any more in our country when I am a grown up (not)

Our enemy will always be our enemy (yes)

It is possible to prevent the next war from breaking out (yes)

None of us wants to have more wars

their daily life. Children used to ask me: “Who are the enemies of Finland”? They reacted with surprise and delight when they learned that the Finnish people do not have any enemies. When we noted in an interview that children are very pessimistic in their attitudes towards peace, one nine year-old boy retorted: “No, I am not a pessimist, I’m a realist.” Another boy, aged 13, stated the reasons for his optimistic view about the prospects for future peace in Israel: “My parents already thought that there will be peace here. Otherwise, they would not have had us.”

5.2.4. Factors Related to Attitudes

5.2.4.1. The Relationship Between Sex, Age and Family Background

Earlier studies have among other things shown that children’s age, sex, race, religion and social class affect their socialization, and are thus related to their attitudes towards war and peace. These factors may restrict or promote a child’s opportunities to learn about and experience political conflicts.

It has been concluded that boys have more information, are more aware of social and political events and tend to be more favourably inclined toward war and the aggression characteristic to it (Tolley 1973).

Tolley agreed that American boys knew more about the Vietnam War than girls, but he did not find any great differences in their attitudes towards war. It was only in their opinions about their own involvement and responsibility in a war situation that American boys showed more enthusiasm than the girls did (Tolley 1973).

In contrast to earlier studies, the boys and girls whom we questioned did not display any broad dissimilarities in their attitudes toward war in general, their willingness to take part in the national struggle or their assessments concerning the prospects of peace. Where there were slight differences, the Palestinian girls were found to have even more affirmative attitudes towards war and the national struggle. Especially interesting was the finding that Middle East boys and girls have very similar attitudes towards the practical acceptance of war, and there are no gender differences vis-à-vis their readiness to participate in the national struggle.

Tolley supposed that the similarity in boys’ and girls’ attitudes toward war is related to the general equality development between sexes. What is sad about this progress is that the girls’ attitudes become more and more “manly” and warlike (Tolley 1973). Characteristic to the studied group of children is that both boys and girls are socialized to war in a quite practical manner: Israeli girls do military service like boys, and already at the age of 13 undergo paramilitary training. The Palestinian girls can at least dream of participating in the national fight. The Israeli and Palestinian boys and girls in the study had been similarly exposed to traumatic war experiences, and there were no differences in the Palestinian girls’ and boys’ involvement in demonstrations and fights with Israeli soldiers.Children’s Age

Some researchers have concluded that with age and development children’s unrealistic admiration of soldiers — their power and uniforms — as well as their general liking of war as something exciting, tend to fade (Hess-Easton 1961; Preston 1942). However, this peaceful development is conditional upon the society’s attitudes and morality being consistent with the

child’s condemnation of war and aggression.

Unfortunately, our sample does not provide sufficient material to study the correlation between the children’s ages and their attitudes toward war and peace. Most of the children studied were eleven years old; in addition there was an Israeli group of nine-year-olds (N=19) and a Palestinian group of 13-year-olds (N=20). The oldest group had the most favourable attitudes towards war and was the most pessimistic regarding the prospects of peace.Only in questions concerning the children’s personal involvement and loyalty in the national fight there was no difference among the age groups.

In our sample, age alone could not explain the more positive attitudes toward war and struggle among the older children. The thirteen-year-olds had more traumatic experiences due to war than the Palestinian group on average. One can cautiously conclude that a child who grows up with many personal experiences of loss and violence will have a greater tendency to see war as a positive state of affairs.

Family Background

According to earlier studies, children from low socio-economic backgrounds are most ready to accept war as a means to escape from a frustrating situation (Escalona 1962; Tolley 1973; Preston 1942). In the present study we were able to survey the relationship between social class and attitudes through the fathers’ occupations only in the Israeli sample.

Hardly any differences exist among the various social groups of Israeli children in their attitudes toward war and peace. In this sample the kibbutz children showed a little less enthusiasm in their attitudes toward their own loyalty and their willingness to fight. In addition, the kibbutz children, and children of professionals, were more critical than others of their nation’s fight. In general, a slightly more favourable attitude towards war emerged among children from working class families. The hesitation regarding national attitudes among the kibbutz children is a little surprising, because in wars the casualties among the kibbutzim are relatively higher than those of other social groups. Of course, it is precisely this fact that can account for the diminished enthusiasm among the kibbutz children. “My father is already a war hero,’’ noted a kibbutz girl, and disagreed with the attitudes indicating national heroism.

5.2.4.2. Experiences of War and Violence

There are discrepancies between the results of earlier studies about personal suffering and attitudes towards war. Most researchers in the Second World War hypothesized that attitudes supportive of war, especially feelings of vindictiveness, willingness to fight and patriotism, tend to increase when people experience losses, bombings and other traumatic experiences (Janis 1951).

Some reports conclude that people who have suffered most are more ready than others to seek a compromise for peace (Engle 1942). According to Ziv et al., Israeli children who were victims of bombings did not show more aggressive attitudes towards the enemy than children in safer areas (Ziv et al. 1974).

The traumatic experiences of war were related to the children’s attitudes toward war and peace only in the Palestinian children’s group. In Figure 5 the sum variables measuring different attitudes are presented according to the traumatic experiences. The percentages express the amount of those having favourable attitudes towards different questions of war.

Figure 5. The Frequency of Favourable Attitudes Towards War According to Traumatic Experiences in the Palestinian Group (%)

In the Palestinian group, the children who suffered most severely from the occupation and war seemed to express more bellicose attitudes than those who had fewer bad experiences. Children with many traumatic experiences had the most favourable attitudes to war in general, and were slightly more willing to manifest their own loyalty in a war situation. The main difference was noted in children’s attitudes towards their own nation’s fight; nearly half of those who suffered a lot of war and only 14 % of those who were saved from bad experiences showed favourable attitudes towards their own nation’s fight.

The assessment of the prospects of peace was not related to the children’s traumatic experiences. Overall, 44 % of those who suffered only a little from war, and 62 % of those who had suffered extremely, had favourable attitudes towards war and questions related to it.

Of all the experiences, the loss of a family member as a prisoner, or through death in war or attack, increased most strongly the positive attitudes towards war in general and towards the Palestinian struggle, intensifying also the willingness to participate in it. For example, two-thirds (66 %) of those who had lost a family member in war and 50 % of those who were spared this experience showed on the whole a favourable attitude towards war and a pessimistic attitude towards peace. In the Israeli group, no connection was found between losing a family member and the direction of attitudes toward war and fighting.

One could conclude that in the Palestinian group, personal experiences of war and violence and especially that of losing a near one, tend to increase positive attitudes toward war and fighting, as well as toward patriotism and the willingness to make sacrifices in war.

However, the real connection may well lie between the attitudes of parents and their children. It is likely that families with strong national beliefs and patriotic attitudes undergo more traumatic experiences due to the occupation than do others. Even the opinions expressed by the Palestinian children in this study could be enough to bring about their imprisonment under occupation.

5.2.5. Examination of Attitudes Towards War and Conflict

The study surveyed children’s attitudes toward war from a moral point of view, their attitudes toward the struggle of their own nation, and their attitudes toward prospects of peace. Also measured were the children’s feelings of loyalty and responsibility in war situations.

Earlier studies have concluded that children gradually learn to understand and accept war as a necessity when they have to live with it as a reality.Children’s attitudes towards war and peace reflect very much the atmosphere of the society in which they live. Militaristic experiences are thought to intensify favourable attitudes towards war, or rather the tendency to see war as the only solution to the problems prevailing in society (Tolley 1973; Wright 1942).

Bender and Frosch describe how American children at the beginning of the Second World War, when the USA was not yet involved in the war, expressed pacifistic and compromise-oriented opinion on war. The children tried to understand the motives of the enemy and even to make distinctions between bad Nazis and good Germans. However, the more the children experienced personal losses and horror and were divested of domestic security, the more aggressive their attitudes became and they blamed the enemy for their misery (Bender-Frosch 1942).

The proximity of war and the children’s personal experiences of it must be borne in mind when studying Israeli and Palestinian children. Most of the studied children had suffered in some way from the conflict, some had almost participated in fighting and others felt the conflict in more abstract ways or through the strain experienced by their families.

Some researchers have noted that general and moral attitudes toward war do not necessarily correlate with national loyalty and practical involvement in war. The discrepancy between moral and practical attitudes towards war is evident throughout history; men and women who in principle support peace, in practice obey and conduct military plans. Tolley noted of American children during the Vietnam War that they demanded and loved peace, but at the same time were convinced that the Vietnam War was justified and exempt from moral rules. According to Cornell, Australian children denounced war absolutely but were ready to defend and admire their own country’s military activity in Vietnam (Tolley 1973; Cornell 1971).

In our groups, and especially among the Palestinian children, the moral attitude towards war takes very much the same direction as the attitudes with respect to the justification of one’s own nation’s fight. The correlation between these two attitude scales is .31 in the Palestinian group and .10 in the Israeli group. In both groups it was noted that a correlation exists between attitudes toward one’s own nation’s fighting and the children’s personal readiness to be involved in it. Similarly, in the factor solution many items describing patriotism and loyalty on the one hand, and justification of one’s own war on the other were in the same factor when the number of factors was decreased (Appendix 4). This means that in the Middle East, to accept the struggle

of one’s own nation is virtually tantamount to practical participation in it. No discrepancy exists between the attitudes of Middle East children in principle and in practice towards war and national conflict.

Studies of Vietnamese children showed that for children living in actual war and violence, the concept of peace does not mean the opposite of or an alternative to war (Murphy 1977). A child meets with difficulties when trying to construct an idea of peace if he lacks any experience of it. During a war, children’s concept of peace is often fairytale-like, akin to paradise and unreal. A child may find it impossible to imagine that peace could actually enter his own daily life.

Observation of the differing attitudes toward war and peace manifested by Israeli and Palestinian children reveal divergences in their concepts of war and peace, their meaning and their context.

The agreement signed by Israel and Egypt just a few months before the fieldwork of this study surely had its effects on the Israeli children’s responses to war and peace. Children discussed peace and held parties for peace in their schools. Even a superficial observation of children’s drawings of the peace between Egypt and Israel, revealed that the airplane was the symbol of peace.

Children’s drawings were no longer dominated by jet fighters as in the war pictures, but by jumbo jets which took politicians to the newly befriended countries. Yet, the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt was transmitted to the children through television only as ‘news’, and hardly changed their own lives. This was evident also in the children’s drawings, where the symbol for war - the aircraft - still dictated the atmosphere of peace.

For example, the children from a northern border town thought that the agreement included only the south of Israel, since the reality of the peace didn’t correspond with their idea or fantasy of peace. Israeli bombing of Palestinian camps in Lebanon continued, and these children still experienced the reprisal of Palestinian forces in their lives. Israeli children soon learned the concept of ‘’negative aspects of peace’’ from adults. A special ‘’peace tax’’ was imposed, security was not real, and people were disappointed in their expectations of shorter military service and other forms of normalization in their lives. Some people said in a melancholic tone as they welcomed the new peace “how nice it would be to rejoice in a real peace”. By real peace they meant the end of all hostilities and possibly actual changes in their daily lives. Egypt’s Sadat may have instilled concrete meaning to the word “peace” for Israelis. In her study on children’s concept of peace before and after Sadat, Miriam Spielman (1979) has examined these questions in more detail.

The Palestinians put the “peace” between Israel and Egypt in quotation marks. For the Palestinian children this agreement meant only more violent measures by Israeli soldiers against their demonstrations. For these children, the concept of “war” means the fight by Palestinians to liberate their country from foreign occupation and the possibility of reuniting the Palestinians living in exile. This war or struggle is also called the Palestinian Revolution. Peace, as a goal of this struggle, means a return to the homeland, Palestine, or it may also refer to the possibility of establishing a state of their own in the occupied West Bank.

Thus, among Palestinian children the concept of war and fighting was marked largely by positive attitudes. For Israeli children war has a different meaning: defending their borders, serving in the official army on the frontiers, and also military superiority.

5.2.6. Comparison Between American and Middle Eastern Children’s Attitudes

In our attitude scale some items were identical with those of Tolley and Preston. Preston studied American children’s attitudes toward war during the Second World War. The American children in Tolley’s study experienced the Vietnam War through television, through changes in the national atmosphere, and possibly also through personal losses of family members. Middle Eastern children constantly sense the threat of war and experience daily the unsolved national conflict and the ongoing hostility in many ways.

Table 3 presents the items compared and the percentages indicating the favourable attitude towards war among American, Israeli and Palestinian children. Naturally, a comparison among children in different cultures and at different periods can only hint at attitudes; no real comparison is possible.

Table 3. Percentages of Favourable Attitudes Towards Some Questions of War and Peace Among American, Israeli and Palestinian Children (%)

Israeli (Jews)in 1979N=185

Palestiniansin 1979N=129

Americansin 1971N=384

Americansin 1942

War is always a bad thing (not) 22 49 46 48

Wars are sometimes

needed (yes)72 81 54 49

When I grow up I will be a good

soldier (yes)

95 (boys)93 (girls)

88 (boys)80 (girls)

36.5 (boys)6 (girls)

In a war one has to execute every

order, even those that I feel are wrong (yes)

87 66 24

War is good, if my nation defeat the enemy (yes)

53 94 35

It is glorious to die for one’s

own (yes)87 92

3650 kids of

professional soldiers

There will always be wars

in the world (yes)

60 71 32

When I am a grown up there will not be wars anymore in our country (not)

68 74 44

The Middle Eastern children studied seem to have, overall, more favourable attitudes towards war and related questions. The differences between American and Middle Eastern children are greatest with respect to the children’s national loyalty and responsibility in fighting. For example, the Middle Eastern children’s willingness to become combat soldiers and their readiness to die for their country is three times greater than that of the American children. Interestingly, the sex of the children assumes importance only among Americans vis-à-vis their practical involvement in war. An indication of Middle Eastern children’s strong socialization to national struggle is the finding that 87 % of the Israelis, and 66 % of the Palestinians — but only 24 % of the Americans — agreed that in a war situation one has to obey all orders, even those one does not accept.

The Middle Eastern children were more pessimistic about prospects of peace than the American children. These differences in children’s attitudes towards war and peace can be understood by the different security conditions and conflict resolution models of their surroundings. One may also suppose, that when a country is conducting a war in another part of the world (Vietnam) rather than at home, children’s attitudes towards fighting take on a different character — and this is doubly true of situations in which children themselves are victims of hostility.

5.2.7. Children’s Opinions of the Middle East Conflict

5.2.7.1. Defining the Enemy

An open question was presented to the children: “Who are our enemies”?

Even if it was not difficult to guess that the enemies of Israelis are the Arabs and the enemy of the Palestinians is Israel, we wanted to study the differences and variations in the children’s responses. The results show how children understand the existence of the enemy, and the clarity with which they form a picture of the enemy. In addition, the responses reflect some of the effects of propaganda and information on children’s minds.

It is interesting to compare the definition of the enemy among the Palestinian children living in the occupied West Bank and those living in Israel. In both groups, one-fifth of the children did not answer this question, revealing their confusion and fear in a test situation.

Table 4. Definition of the Enemy by Palestinian Children from the Occupied West Bank and from Israel

Palestiniansin West Bank

%

Palestiniansin Israel

%Israel 26 6

The Jews 46.5 81The Zionists 6 -

The United States - 3Americans 4 -

Egypt 1 -Begin, Sadat, (King) Hussein,

Carter8 -

Israeli soldiers, Jewish Settlers, occupation authorities, Border

Guards

6 3

We do not have enemies 1 6N=99 N=32

Most (81 %) of the Palestinian children living inside Israel defined enemy as “the Jews”. Some children declared Israel to be their enemy and some felt that they have no enemies. This single result generates quite a pessimistic picture of the Palestinians living in the Jewish State. In the situation of unsolved problems and the suppression of the Arab minority in Israel, the model that increased contacts between people will decrease hostility does not| seem to work.

In addition, nearly half (46.5 %) of the Palestinian children in the West Bank defined their enemy as the Yahud -the Jews (which often stand in colloquial slang for ‘’Jews who carry guns’’), while one-quarter (27 %) view the State of Israel as their enemy. The enemy is an everyday acquaintance of the child under occupation. Just how concrete the concept of the enemy is maybe seen in the children’s responses that the enemy is “soldier”, “occupier”, “Israeli army”, “spy” or “traitor”. Some children feel that the civilians carrying guns and living in settlements in the occupied area are their enemies. Defining the enemy as “Zionists” indicates a well-developed political analysis.

Some children consider heads of hostile States as their enemies.

Of the Israeli children 42 % gave a list of Arab states as their enemy. Most children mentioned the neighbouring States: Syria, Jordan, Lebanon. Often Saudi Arabia was included, because “it is so big”, or Iraq because “it is so bad”. In addition to the Arab States, 13 % of the Israeli children mentioned the Soviet Union as an enemy (or, as they say in Israel, Russia). This definition indicates the effectiveness of the propaganda war in the Middle East, as well as the children’s developed understanding of politics and especially world politics. Among the Israelis, 14 % described the enemy as terrorists, a reference to the concrete nature of the enemy.

Here again, the shift of the most powerful neighbour and enemy, Egypt, from enemy to friend was reflected in the Israeli children’s answers. Only 20 % of the children said the enemy was the Arabs, and many added: Arabs except Egypt.

Every tenth Israeli child referred to Palestinians as their enemy and some mentioned the name of a Palestinian organization, such as the PLO. The children’s ability to define Palestinians as their enemy is a sign of change in Israeli thinking. Officially Israel hardly speaks about Palestinians. Golda Meir declared, “There are no Palestinians”, and Prime Minister Begin added: “If there are Palestinians, then I am a Palestinian.’’ The name of the PLO is hardly mentioned in official speeches. Palestinians are generally referred to as “terrorists”.

Some of the children’s responses illustrate the continued prevalence of the historical burden in Israel. Hitler, Germans, and the Nazis were cited in the enemy lists, along with the notion that the whole world is the enemy.

It is thought that if civilians have a clear and concrete picture of their enemy in a war situation, they will find it easier to bear war stress. The idea behind this observation is that the enemy always serves as a target for aggressive feelings. In war, children’s earlier objects of fear and rage are replaced by the enemy, and thus the enemy becomes the embodiment of everything ugly, forbidden, horrifying and disgusting in a child’s world.

Feelings toward the enemy are easier to transfer and control if the picture of the enemy is concrete and familiar. The task of war propaganda is to simplify, to draw a clear picture of the enemy in order to guarantee its functionality as the object of aggression.

The children’s answers suggest that Palestinian children’s image of the enemy is more unified and concrete than that of the Israeli children. In the West Bank, the enemy is so concrete and familiar that children feel they can plan attacks and throw stones in order to get rid of him.

Naturally, the more heterogeneous definitions of the enemy among Israeli children do not justify the conclusion that the enemy’s image is ambiguous. Israelis have been engaged in actual war and conflict with the Palestinians for decades, and this fight is sometimes a daily, face to face struggle in the same country and on the same piece of land. Seldom, however, are Palestinians considered as enemies in children’s answers. More often the enemy is mystical and distant, e.g., terrorists, Arabs, Saudi Arabia, Russia.

5.2.7.2. Causes and Solution of the Conflict

The children were asked: “Why do we have enemies and a state of war?” “What should be done to the enemy?” and “How can further wars be prevented from breaking out in our area?”

They responded in their own words without prepared alternatives. About one-fifth of each group did not want to, or was not able to answer the questions. To judge from the unanswered questions, the most difficult question in the study had to do with the prevention of further wars in the Middle East. Appendix 6 contains the percent frequencies of the different answers, while below we survey the children’s answers through examples.

Why Do We Have Enemies and a War Situation?

The Palestinian children were very united in their opinion about the reasons for the Middle East conflict and the hostilities between Arabs and Jews. Two thirds of the West Bank children

referred to the fact that their country is occupied, and the enemy has taken their homeland by force:

‘’because the enemy took our land and rejects our right to get it back’’; ‘’because the Jews occupied Palestine”; “the Jews forced the Palestinians to give up their homes and many Palestinians died, that’s why there is war”; “because the enemy took all of our most beloved things’’; “we were robbed of our homeland and freedom.’’

A fifth of the Palestinian children gave politically formulated answers about the Palestinians right to establish a state of their own. Very often the answer was a single word, underlined and followed by an exclamation mark: Palestine!

Some Palestinian children tended to understand the problem and conflict in a very concrete way, and their answers refer to their daily experiences:

“There are wars because we, the Palestinians, are defending our country and not giving up”; “because we have to liberate Palestine”; “because we throw stones and carry out operations”; “because the Jews are shooting children’’.

Of the Palestinian Arab children living in Israel, about one-third considered the expropriation of land or occupation as reasons for the conflict. Only one child in this Palestinian group mentioned the Palestinian cause as basic to the problem. About one-third of these children offered an abstract, unbiased explanation of the reasons for war:

“Wars break out because countries are not able to resolve their differences of opinion.”

One-fifth of the Israeli Arab children replied that they did not know, an answer which was given by only a few West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Jewish children.

The most prominent thought in the Israeli answers was that “the enemy wishes to destroy us, plans to capture our land; the enemy wants to annihilate us and take our State and country.”

Nearly half of the Israeli children regarded the wicked intentions of the enemy as a source of conflict and hatred:

“We have wars because the Arabs hate the Jews and they say that we have to get out of Israel”; “because other countries want Jerusalem and all of Israel and even more areas”; “because we are surrounded by enemies and they want to conquer Eretz-Israel, that is why they are starting wars against us.”

About a quarter of the Israeli children attempted to give an impartial or abstract explanation for wars. These children treated war and conflict in general terms, basing themselves on principle and on morality, and refraining from relating them to their own nation’s problem:

“When countries do not manage to clear up their disagreements, wars break out’’; “States are fighting over territory”; “there are historical disputes, envy and other kinds of reasons.”

The Israeli children living in ‘’peaceful’’ locations offered the most emotionless and general replies concerning the causes of the conflict. Israeli children also gave moving answers according to which the enemy covets their country because it is beautiful and fruitful:

‘’There are wars in our area, because the land is very beautiful and good, we are situated near the sea and not far away from the mountains. That is why the Arab countries want to conquer our country (except Egypt).”

A small percentage of Israelis referred to the Israeli conquest and occupation of Arab land. Every tenth child in the Israeli northern border town (see Appendix 3) explained that the cause of the hostilities was the Israeli attacks and conquest of their neighbour’s lands:

“Because the enemy is not satisfied with the land they have, but want to have our country back”; “the neighbours want to get back their dignity which they lost when we conquered their lands”; “because we conquered the enemy’s land and they want us to return it”.

No Israeli child cited the Israeli-Palestinian problem as a cause for the Middle East conflict.

Some of the Israeli children’s explanations of the causes of the conflict showed a tendency to experience themselves, the Jews, as the scapegoats of the world. Thus, 16 % of the Israeli children said that the Jews are always hated and other people wish to destroy them:

“There are wars in our area because some States have the opinion that we should not exist at all, and they wish to throw us into the sea”; “because there are people who hate us”; “all people hate the Jews and want to get rid of us”.

On the whole, most of the Israeli and Palestinian children alike understand the struggle over land to be the main reason for wars in the Middle East. The Palestinian children have experienced the loss of their homeland, while the Israeli children feel the threat of losing their country.

What Should Be Done to the Enemy?

More than half of the Palestinian children agreed that fighting and struggling is the best way to cope with the enemy:

“We have to stay firm together, a fight against the enemy”; “we have to attack them and carry out operations against them, only then will they leave us and our country in peace”; “the only way is to force their soldiers to leave our land”; “we must put up resistance, and protest against them as one man’’.

One-fifth of the Palestinian children urged strong measures against their enemy:

“We must destroy the Zionists, and other enemies of the Arabs”; “a snake can not be a brother, that is why we must snuff out the enemy”.

The Palestinian fate and cause was often related in the children’s answers to their attitudes towards the enemy:

“We have to force them to return our land which they have occupied, to recognize the Palestinians’ rights, and to stop them from using force against us”.

Once again, some of the Palestinian children (11 %) assumed the responsibility for coping with the enemy themselves: “We should throw stones at them.”

A considerable portion (44 %) of the Israeli children expressed readiness to make peace with the enemy:

“We should make friends with them”; “in general, people should be bound together by friendship, and wise people should gather together and make important discoveries”; “in my opinion, we should attempt to reach a peace agreement, but it should be accepted by all sides”.

Some of the Israeli children proposed “strategic or conditional peace”, the idea being that if the enemy was not willing to sign a peace agreement he should be forced to do so by war:

“I would be willing to destroy all our enemies, but alas, because it is not possible, I think it is better to make peace with them”; “one should make peace with them, but if they are not willing, we should uproot them from their land and shut them in prison”; “either to try to sign a peace agreement with them or to fight against them, and I do not mind if we have to give up some piece of land. In any case, Egypt has only sand and desert. I do not like desert, I like Europe”.

How Can New Wars Be Prevented in the Middle-East?

More than half of the Israeli Jews, but only a quarter of the Palestinian Arabs, stated that peace was the key to preventing wars in the area:

“The only way is to sign a peace agreement, as we did with Egypt”; “to be friendly with the enemy, and not to use the language of war”; “by negotiating, and returning areas which do not belong to us in order to prevent the envy of our neighbours, and to clear up the old disputes”; “Israelis should give their land back to the enemy, give them all kind of presents and appreciate them” (Israeli). “To make them believe that it is not worth fighting against us”; “one should return what one has taken from the other, and visit each other”; “peace and friendship is the only way, not war and fighting” (Palestinians).

One-fifth of the Palestinian children hoped that the enemy would leave their land and that the Palestinian problem would be solved with the cooperation of other Arab nations. Some of the children felt it as their own responsibility to liberate Palestine:

“We should throw stones and organize demonstrations against the enemy in order to make them leave Palestine”; “the war can be prevented by uniting with Arab countries

and forcing Israel to withdraw from the occupied areas”; “by punishing all those who do not support the PLO”; “we can reach peace through Arab unity and by the liberation of Palestine”.

Every tenth Israeli, and 17 % of the Palestinian children, said that the final peace can be reached only through victorious wars:

“By preparing for war and being ready to fight”; “to lay large ambushes and to bomb everyone with our strong air force”; “the only way to prevent wars is to continue to struggle against our enemy, they deserve it”.

Few children expressed a hopeless and pessimistic view of the prospects of peace: “There is nothing we can do”; “we cannot stop hatred.”

At the official and political level, the Israeli and Palestinian views about the causes of the Middle East conflict and the prospects of resolving it are in sharp disagreement. The parties to the conflict have never sat around the negotiating table. Both sides have written their own history of the Middle East and its lands. In the seemingly unending conflict and growing suffering, the bitterness and the distance between the two nations have only increased, and at the official level alternative solutions are seldom sought.

The concepts of peace and war in the Middle East adduced by the children in the study offer partial support for the pessimistic view about the deep differences between Palestinians and Israelis in their understanding, experience and feeling of the Middle East conflict. On the other hand, the children offered more alternatives and showed more imagination, readiness to compromise and an attempt to use common sense in solving the problem than their national leaders.

5.3. Children’s Fears

5.3.1. Intensity of Fears, among Israeli and Palestinian children

The study employed the following fear categories: fear of animals, physical fear, social fear, fear of authority and punishment, miscellaneous fears, and fears connected to war and conflict and threats upon a child’s own security.

A significant difference emerged in the fears expressed by the Palestinians and Israelis studied. The Palestinian children had more fears, and their tearfulness was more intense than was the case in the Israeli group. However, it was the Israeli Arab children who expressed the greatest tearfulness. Table 5 shows the total amount of tearfulness in the studied groups. Nearly half (46 %) of the Palestinian children in the West Bank, one-fifth (19 %) of the Israeli children and over half (58 %) of the Israeli Arab children expressed much or very much fear when measured against the sum variable.

Table 5. Intensity of All Fears According to Children’s Nationality (%)

Not frightenedat all

%

Frighteneda little

%

Frighteneda good deal

%

Frightenedvery much

%

Total

NIsraeli (Jews) 19 62 18 1 185

West Bank Palestinians

9 46 40 6 128

“Israeli Arabs” 15 28 48 10 40All Children 15 52 29 4 363

χ2 = 41.13, df = 6, p = .001A dichotomic sum variable was also formed, and it shows the amount of admitted fears,

without referring to their intensity or context. The four-class fear scale was transferred to a dichotomic scale so that those items in the category of “do not fear at all” were given a value of 0. The other three categories, indicating very strong or less strong tearfulness, were valued by 1. This sum variable was dichotomized again, to the first class (0-.5) belong those subjects with few fears and to the second class (.6-1) children with many fears. The table below shows the amount of fear among Palestinian and Israeli boys and girls.

Table 6. The Total Amount of Fear Among Israeli and Palestinian Boys and Girls (%)

Little fear

Girls Boys All

Much fear

Girls Boys All N

Israeli (Jews) 62 81 71 38 19 29 185Palestinians 41 79 56 59 21 44 128

“Israeli Arabs” 20 65 43 80 35 57 40

Nationality: χ2 = 15.67, df = 2, p = .001Sex: χ2 = 8.69, df = 1, p = .01 (Israel)

χ2 = 18.03, df = 1, p = .001 (Palestine)

One-third (29 %) of the Israeli children, 44 % of the West Bank Palestinians, and 57 % of the Israeli Arabs had many fears. When we consider the breakdown by sex, we note that the national differences in tearfulness stem from the differences between the girls. The Palestinian girls studied expressed far more fears than the Israeli girls; the Israeli and Palestinian boys, for their part, have the same amount of fears. As a whole, boys showed fewer fears than girls. In both national groups the girls were at least twice as fearful as the boys.

Other studies on fear have obtained similar results. In Scherer and Nakamura’s study concerning English children, the hypothesis is that the different attitudes and norms regulating boys’ and girls’ expressions of emotions are behind the girls’ greater tearfulness. Traditionally girls are given greater leeway and encouragement with respect to showing their feelings of fear and concern especially (Scherer-Nakamura 1968).

One can hypothesize that in a situation of national struggle, demands for heroism, fearlessness and courage are first and foremost directed towards boys. The difference between Palestinian and Israeli girls’ tearfulness may be due to cultural and social differences and

partly due to objective signs of danger. It seems that military occupation invests many neutral activities, such as being alone or driving a car, with fear.

5.3.2. Fears Threatening the Child’s Own Security

Of all fears, the threats concerning personal security evoked the most intense tears among the studied children. There was a difference, however, between the Palestinian and Israeli children, as a whole, in their tearfulness for their security (χ2= 27.61, df = 6, p = .001). Nearly two-thirds (63 %) of the Israeli children, 81 % of the Palestinian children, and 85 % of the Israeli Arabs were quite or very much frightened about their security.

Figure 6. Mean Values of Fears Related to Security Among Israeli and Palestinian Children. Scale 0-4, Theoretical Mean 2

The most serious fear among Israeli children was the possibility that terrorists will attack their home. 85 % of the Israeli children feared this much in very much. An attack on the home, the safest haven, the family, is a nightmare for a child. Further, when an Israeli child thinks of a ‘terrorist’, he can only assume a passive role, as the victim of such an attack, and virtually the only way to cope with such a fear is to suppress it.

Of the Palestinian children, 62 % were most frightened by a possible attack of soldiers on their home. The intrusion and attack of occupation soldiers on Palestinian homes is fairly frequent, but it seems that the fear they generate is of a different order than that caused by a ‘terrorist attack’. Palestinian children have a great deal of experience, albeit for the most part horrifying, of Israeli soldiers, and they are thus more readily able to assess the consequences of such an attack. Of the Palestinian children, 40 % feared much or very much the occupation soldiers and Border Police as such, whereas for 81 % of the Israeli children their only image of a terrorist was a very frightening one.

Active fighting against soldiers may partly decrease the fear experienced by Palestinian children. Fear often means a paralysis of activity and being left alone under threatening circumstances. When thinking of a terrorist attack, an Israeli child can only adopt the role of a passive victim. He can use verbal aggression against the enemy and swear revenge in the name of his own army, but in practical terms he is alone with his images and his helplessness. The Israeli child thus has little possibility of acting against the cause of the fear and horror; whereas the Palestinian child can, to some extent, feel that he is controlling the enemy when he joins demonstrations and throws stones at the enemy, no matter how frightened he is.

The most intense fear amongst the Palestinian children was the possibility that father will go to prison: 83 % of the children studied were quite or very frightened by this thought.

Imprisonment for political activity is common. In the Palestinian group under study, two-thirds of the children said that one or more members of their families had been imprisoned. The imprisonment of the family head usually means suffering and threat for the entire family, as collective punishment may be directed at the family. The family members are harassed in many ways, and in the worst cases women are threatened and humiliated in front of or within the hearing of the prisoners who are being interrogated. On the other hand, it is evident that social support and admiration for the acts of a political prisoner can be of great help to such a family.

The Israeli children were less afraid than the Palestinians of the possibility that they might be expelled from their homes or that their home might be destroyed. More than two-thirds of Palestinians and about half the Israelis feared these eventualities much or very much.

In the collective minds of both nations, Israelis and Palestinians, the security of family and home is deeply threatened. For Israelis the threat is associated with anti-Semitic pogroms and the Jewish fate under Fascism. The Palestinians’ deep sentiments for home are associated with memories of people leaving their homes and their villages, and losing any hope of security as a result of Israel’s establishment in 1948 and the onset of the Israeli occupation in 1967.

The demolition of homes is one form of collective punishment under the occupation. The reason is usually political, such as a member of the family belonging to a Palestinian organization or being suspected of military action or of stone-throwing. The destruction of the home, in addition to the practical suffering it causes, bears within it of the symbolic import of helplessness, the sense of being a refugee at the mercy of a powerful enemy.

Both national groups expressed a similar measure of fear that something bad will happen to the family; around 70 % of all studied children feared much or very much for their families. The item referring indirectly to the conflict situation and to a child’s security — father does not return home — evoked considerable fear in nearly two-thirds of both Israeli and Palestinian children.

Father going to army duty was not frightening for Israeli children. Over half (62 %) of them declared that they were not at all afraid when their father went on reserve duty. In relatively peaceful times, the Israeli men spend about one month a year in military service. In the interviews the children often said that they did feel uneasy when they thought their fathers might serve is dangerous areas. One boy put it this way: “I do not want to see the letters my father sends from the army, because they have an army stamp and my mother is so sad.”

The threats to the child’s security and home occupy a central place in the fears experienced by Middle Eastern children. Earlier studies, too, noted that the reality of war and violence was reflected in a child’s psyche through events that affect the family routine, events that change parents’ moods and lives and thus affect the child’s sense of security (Freud-Burlingham 1942).

A child may be more worried about the dangers threatening his parents than about his own security. Even a neutral change may mean insecurity for children living in conflict areas. War and constant tension shock the psychic balance of parents and their mutual relationship, and cause changes in the family’s economic and social conditions.

In drawn out war and violence, parents have difficulties in planning for their own and their children’s future. Parents may be too afraid to concentrate on their children’s problems, or else they fuss over them too much due to guilt feelings caused by their bringing up children under war conditions. War and unresolved conflict have a direct impact through traumatic family experiences, and an indirect effect on human relations due to the atmosphere of hatred and fear that is generated (Lieblich 1977; de Shalit 1973).5.3.3. Fears of War and Conflict

This fear category consists of events and threats, which are familiar to children living in times of war. The intensity of the fears related to war and conflict, when measured against the sum variable, was very much the same among Israeli and Palestinian children. Half of the Israeli children (54 %) and of the Palestinian children (51 %), and two-thirds (65 %) of the Israeli Arab children feared much or very much things related to war and conflict.

Figure 7. Mean Values of Fears of War and Conflict Among Israeli and Palestinian Children. Scale 0-4, Theoretical Mean 2

The most serious fears among Israeli children were “I am in a battle” and “bomb, terrorist and katyusha attack”. The Palestinians were mostly afraid of bomb and military attacks, and to some extent of guns and machine guns.

The biggest difference between the two national groups had to do with the fear of being in a battle. More than half (59 %) of the Israeli children, but only 22 % of the Palestinians were very fearful of the possibility of being in a battle.

Half of the children under occupation said they were not at all afraid of being in a battle. It seems that by “battle” the Palestinian children understood their own demonstrations against the occupation, stone throwing and fights with Israeli soldiers in their own towns and villages. The strong denial of the fear of being in a battle reflects the social norms of heroism and fearlessness in participating in the national struggle prevalent among Palestinian school children.

Terrorists (Israelis)Soldiers and Border Police (Palestinians)

The police beat me up

Bomb, terrorist and katyusha attacks (Israelis)Bomb and military attacks (Palestinians)

Sound of an ambulance siren

Guns and machineguns

I am in a battle

Sound of an alarm siren

Sound of a jet fighter

The possibility of being in a battle may also be a familiar idea to Israeli children. For them, however, being in a battle is an idea related to a frightening or challenging future. Army ideology impinges upon Israeli children’s education, and many of the interviewed children saw themselves as future soldiers and as participants in combat.

5.3.4. Other Fears

Fear of Authority and Punishment

The Israeli and Palestinian children differed from each other most decisively in their fear of authority and punishment (χ2 = 116.51, df = 6, p = .001). The category consists of fears referring to conflicts in the children’s world, school and home, which are familiar to all children everywhere (see Appendix 7).

Over half (62 %) of the Palestinian children in the West Bank, two thirds (67 %) of the Israeli Arab children, but only one-tenth (11 %) of the Israeli Jewish children expressed quite a bit or very much fear of authority and punishment.

The possibility of punishment both by teachers and fathers evoked twice as much fear among Palestinians as it did among Israelis. The result may indicate differences between Palestinian and Israeli society. Respect for authority — both at home and at school — may be deeper in the more traditional Palestinian society than in the Western life-style of Israel.

The Palestinian children’s worry about their school grades is nearly of the same intensity as their fears of war and conflict. More than half (56 %) of the children from the West Bank, but only 8 % of the Israeli children felt much or very much fear about bad school marks.

Palestinian children often understood the national fight and the task of liberating Palestine as being their own responsibility, me importance of studying and going to university, the idea of competing with other nations’ educated people or being able to help their own people, were given clear expression when children were asked about their plans for the future. We may conjecture that the children’s concern about their school performance stems from the central role of education in the lives of Palestinian children. One often hears that intellectual capacity is the only thing left for Palestinians living under foreign occupation and without their own government. Naturally, speculation about the connection between children’s work motivation and the national political climate would demand more detailed research. Here the “work stress” of children is measured by one item only: fear of bad marks at school.

Miscellaneous Fears

Miscellaneous fears consist of classical phobias and frightening things in general (see Appendix 7). In this category, too, Palestinian children show a greater degree of fear when measured by the sum variable of miscellaneous fears. More than half (57 %) of the Palestinians, but only 17 % of the Jewish children expressed much or very much fear.

The Palestinian children fear mainly ghosts and spooks, being lost in a strange place,

and fire. Israeli children were afraid, but far less than Palestinians, of being lost and of fire. For example, 60 % of the Palestinians and 17 % of the Israelis feared ghosts and spooks much or very much. Similarly, 62 % of the Israeli children and 31 % of the Palestinians said that sleeping in a dark room didn’t frighten them at all.

Social Fears

Social situations evoked the least severe fear in the tested children. Of the Palestinian children in the West Bank 42 %, and 31 % of the Israeli Jews and the Arab children expressed great or very great social fears. Not a single item reached the theoretical mean of the fear scale (see Appendix 7).

For example, performance in front of other pupils — much feared by Finnish children — evoked no fear at all among 81 % of the Palestinians and 71 % of the Israeli cases. Being with strangers was the most severe fear for the Israelis as well as for the Palestinians. In addition, criticism by friends caused fear among the Palestinian children; 23 % of the Palestinians, but only 6 % of the Israeli children, feared very much friends’ criticism. Having to wear odd and different clothes instilled very much fear in 21 % of the Palestinian children but only in 4 % of the Israelis.

Fear of Animals

Fears of animals were more common among Palestinian children than among Israelis, and again Israeli Arab children showed the most severe fear.

Almost half (48 %) of the Israelis, nearly a third (31 %) of the Palestinian under occupation and a quarter (25 %) of the Israeli Arab children expressed no fears of animals. Most feared were snakes and scorpions, the only lethal animals on the list (see Appendix 7).

Physical Fears

Physical fears are fears involved with the inviolability of the body and pain and illness. The national groups studied differed least from each other in regard to these fears. 41 % of the Israeli Jewish children, 46 % of the Palestinian Arabs and 51 % of the Israeli Arab children expressed much or very much physical fear (see Appendix 7).

“I can’t breathe” was the most serious fear among all the studied children, and two thirds (68 %) of them feared this much or very much. Of other physical fears, only severe illness evoked more than medium fear in the tested children.

5.3.5. Factors Connected to Intensity of Fears

5.3.5.1. Experiences of War and Conflict

I hypothesized that children exposed to severe experiences would be the most fearful. In particular, reminders of traumatic experience are thought to evoke strong fear in children. Feelings of

horror may be connected to violent experiences through association or generalization. A child may “forget” the details of a terrible experience, but things related indirectly to the memory may assume a special significance in a child’s emotional life.

We begin with the connection between fear categories of war and threats to the child’s security, and traumatic experiences; the Israeli and Palestinian children’s groups are treated separately. Then we go on to study the relations between significant traumatic experiences and fear variables.

As shown in Figure 8, variation between fears connected to war and conflict and children’s traumatic experiences were completely at odds with the hypothesis. The children who suffered most from war and violence showed the least fear of war and conflict as well as of all the fears measured in a sum variable. In both national groups, then, an increase in children’s traumatic experiences does not mean an increase in children’s general tearfulness.

The only fears which become more intense among children who have suffered many traumatic experiences are those connected with their own security.Both Israeli and Palestinian children who had undergone plenty of traumatic experiences due to war and violence, were more fearful for their own and their family’s security. The differences are not statistically significant, but as an example, among Palestinian children with many traumatic experiences 92 % and 82 % of those who had undergone few traumatic experiences expressed much or very much fear for their security, respectively.

The neutral fears, such as fear of authority and punishment, social, physical and miscellaneous fears, and fear of animals were unrelated to a child’s being a victim of traumatic war experiences.

Figure 9 examines the connection between a single war experience and the intensity of fearfulness. Among the Israelis only hearing or seeing a bomb explode and among the Palestinians confrontation with occupation soldiers or having a family member imprisoned, increased the total amount of fear. Of the Israeli children exposed to a bomb explosion, one-third (35 %), and of those spared this experience, one-quarter (24 %) expressed much or very much fear.

Over half (54 %) of the Palestinian children who had had a family member imprisoned, and one-third (35 %) of the children who had not undergone this experience, expressed much or very much fear.

We may conjecture that signs of fear, weakness and anxiety are in the main condemned, so that the ‘hero child’ must hide such feelings. We would be so bold as to suppose that the image, as well as the self-image, of the child who has “a martyr of war” in his family is characterized by fearlessness and courage. The social pressure connected with demands of heroism may be reflected in the children’s responses as the negation of strong feelings of fear. Yet we noted that while the Palestinian children tended to express the most absolute demand for heroism, in their group the relationship between losing a family member in war and fearlessness was nevertheless as pronounced as it was among the Israeli children.

The importance of heroism and demands for courage are of importance because they may, in a moment of horrifying experience, function as psychic defence mechanisms. Ideals help

people to withstand overwhelming suffering and to suppress feelings of helplessness and fear. On the other hand, the social norms of heroism may cause special anxiety in children who have suffered personal losses. A child may feel himself to be a failure because in a painful situation he may fee) that he is not able to respond to social expectations; he needs more consolation than admiration on the part of his friends. In this kind of conflict situation a child may completely deny his feelings of fear, insecurity and sorrow which would in fact be normal reactions to, for example, a relative’s death.

Figure 8. Relations Between Child’s Traumatic Experiences, Fears of War and Conflict, Own Security and the Total Amount of Fearfulness (%)

FEAR OF WAR AND CONFLICT

Few traumatic experiences Many traumatic experiences

Few traumatic experiences Many traumatic experiences

Few traumatic experiences Many traumatic experiences

Few traumatic experiences Many traumatic experiences

Few traumatic experiences Many traumatic experiences

Few traumatic experiences Many traumatic experiences

FEAR OF CHILD’S OWN SECURITY

TOTAL AMOUNT OF FEAR

Figure 9. Relations Between Single Experiences of War and the Total Amount of Fearfulness Among Israeli and Palestinian Children (%)

In the Israeli group the children who had lost a family member in war or in an attack, and those whose father had fought at the front showed less fearfulness than the children who had not undergone these experiences. Sixteen percent of the Israeli children who had lost a family member, and a third of the other children expressed much or very much fear. The children who had suffered losses also showed less fear related to their own security.

The connection between the experiences of losing a family member in war and the total amount of fears is similar in the Palestinian group, but less significant.

The Israeli children whose fathers had not participated in any war expressed more fears than other children. Great tearfulness was expressed by 43 % of the children whose father had not been a fighting soldier, but by only 26 % of children whose father had fought in a war.

Some explanation of the findings according to which children who have certain kinds of experiences in war situations express the least fear may be found in the children’s life situation, in the norms and values of the society, as well as in the methods of the study.

BOMB EXPLOSION

Had the experienceDid not have the experience

CONFRONTATIONS WITH SOLDIERS

Had the experienceDid not have the experience

FAMILY MEMBER IN PRISON

YesNo

FAMILY MEMBER DIED IN WAR OR ATTACK

YesNo

FATHER HAS BEEN FIGHTING IN WAR

YesNo

A strong moral code of heroism exists in both Israeli and Palestinian society at war. Children in both national groups told me that a school class might make a child who has lost his father, brother or other dear one in the national struggle ‘the hero of the class’. Such a child actually inherits the image of a hero, and is expected to behave as courageously as his relative.

The pen and ink test is able to measure children’s verbal reactions of fear, but the scale does not indicate suppressed or denied feelings of fear. This kind of test also gives a child the opportunity to answer with a certain tendency (so called halloo effect). We may suppose that a child experiencing the pressure of being a hero will decide not to show his fears and refrain systematically from making responses indicating fearfulness.

5.3.5.2. Relation Between Domicile and Fears

Our hypothesis was that children who live in tense and risk-filled surroundings and are personally exposed to violence would be the most fearful.

In the whole sample, the relation between fearfulness and domicile is significant (χ2= 76.71, df = 13, p = .001). The total amount and intensity of fears, as measured with sum variables, tends to be less severe in groups living in peaceful areas compared with those residing in more dangerous places. The variation, as a whole, is due more to national differences than solely to the nature of the children’s surroundings. The impact of surroundings on children’s fearfulness could be studied only in the Israeli group, since all the Palestinian in the study were living in areas filled with tension and violence (see Appendix 3).

In the Israeli sample the children living under tension were more fearful than children living in peaceful areas. For instance, half (51 %) of the children living under bomb threats in Jerusalem, over one-third (37 %) of the children from the border town, but only one-fifth (21 %) of the residents of a peaceful country town expressed much or very much fear.

The kibbutz children were the least fearful in the Israeli sample. Not one of them expressed much or very much fear, when the corresponding share in the whole Israeli sample was 19 % as measured with sum variable. In the testing situation kibbutz children often asked: “Does this mean seeing blood alone, or going by bus alone”? Things are far more frightening to kibbutz children if they have to confront them alone without support from their own group. Even though they were asked to answer as individuals, it seems that the studied kibbutz children answered as a collective, in other words if we are afraid, and in this way most items in the scale had no emotion-evoking character.

The exception to the relation between open violence of domicile and fearfulness were the Palestinian children living in Nazareth, Israel. In recent years their town had been quiet and unmarked by open hostilities or violence. The most serious confrontations between inhabitants and Israeli soldiers occurred in 1975 when the first communist mayor was elected in Nazareth. Yet these children showed the most severe tearfulness as a whole, and this was evident in each and every fear category.

One explanation might be the hidden and suppressed nature of threat and violence in the lives of Israeli Arabs. The Palestinians living in Israel are more or less objects of mental violence, being a minority in the Jewish State who belong to the enemy nation. However, in this study we were unable to provide a sufficient explanation for the strong expression of fear, among the Israeli Arab children who were interviewed.

5.3.6. Conclusion of Different Fears

Figure 10 hereunder describes the severity of different kinds of fears among Palestinian and Israeli children.

Figure 10. Severity of Various Fears Among Israeli and Palestinian Children (%)

Among the studied Palestinian children some neutral fears, such as the fear of authority and punishment, and miscellaneous fears, are as severe as the fears connected to war and conflict. The most severe fears in both national groups were those related to the child’s own security.

The most significant differences between Israeli and Palestinian children were in security fears, miscellaneous fears and especially in fears of authority and punishment.

Why do the Palestinian children show considerably more miscellaneous and authority fears than the Israelis? These fears are seldom direct products of the child’s surroundings, but are common everywhere in children’s lives. In a dangerous and life-threatening situation, a person may tend to transfer his fear and anxiety to more neutral and objectively less adequate objects. Transferring fears is functional because it makes a dangerous situation easier to live through; the reality and danger are denied, but the fear and other strong feelings evoked by the danger are still experienced in a more secure context. This kind of transfer of fears, to less important objects during dangerous times was documented in Israel by Goldberg et al. (1977).

The environment of the tested Palestinian children is full of dangerous events. On the other hand, we have to remember that these children are also heroic children: they go out on the streets to fight fully armed Israeli soldiers and demonstrate tirelessly against the occupation.

FRIGHTENS A LITTLEOR NOT AT ALL

FRIGHTENS MUCHOR VERY MUCH

Fears concerning child’s own security

Fears of war and conflict

Fear of authority and punishment

Miscellaneous fears

Social fears

Fears of animals

Physical fears

Their behaviour appears fearless, even reckless, and they don’t seem to avoid dangers. For a child of this group, it is difficult to express feelings of fear, panic or his wish to flee. In this kind of situation, a child tends perhaps to ‘exaggerate’ his fear of ghosts or of being left alone, but denies his fear of soldiers or being in a battle.

The mechanism of transferring the fear object in a terrifying situation would demand, however, a deeper analysis. Nor is it clear why there is such a large difference in the intensity of classical fears between Israeli and Palestinian children. As a whole, the model is not unquestionably supported by the results of this study. The fears connected to the children’s security were still more intense among Palestinians and Israelis than the fear of objects which are irrelevant in a situation of war and violence. We may conclude that the threatening and violent living conditions of children under occupation are reflected in the large total amount and severity of all fears. Rather than transferring fear from horrifying to more neutral objects, children show general fearfulness and their fear is reflected indiscriminately in all areas of their lives.

A ‘heroic’ child finds it easier to express fear of authority or miscellaneous fears than to admit being afraid of the occupation and of things related to the national struggle.

5.3.7. Comparison of Fears Among Middle Eastern and British Children

It is possible to compare some fear items among Israeli, Palestinian and British children (Scherer-Nakamura 1968). The comparison hints at the possible differences in tearfulness between children living in a ‘normal’ and peaceful society and children living under national conflict and war threat.

Naturally, many other factors besides the war-peace dimension affect children’s tearfulness in different societies. Unfortunately, the items measuring fear connected to the child’s own security are not present in the British study, which diminishes the interest of the comparison.

Table 7 Comparison of Various Fears Among Israeli, Palestinian and British Children. Scale 0-4, Theoretical Mean 2

Israeli (Jews) Palestinians British

FEAR OF AUTHORITY & PUNISHMENTI get bad marks 1.3 3.0 2.7My parents fight 1.8 2.8 2.3My father punishes me 1.1 2.4 1.8

FEARS OF WAR AND CONFLICTBomb attack, explosion 3.1 3.0 2.7Guns and sub-machineguns 1.8 2.4 1.4I am in battle 3.1 1.4 1.3I go by bus 0.6 0.5 0.5

SOCIAL FEARSI am in a crowd 0.7 0.8 0.91 perform in front of other pupils 0.7 0.3 1.3Other children laugh at me 0.7 0.9 1.7My friends criticize me 1.0 1.8 1.6I have to wear different and odd clothes 0.8 1.4 1.2

FEARS INVOLVING ONE’S OWN BODYI am wounded or hurt 1.7 0.8 1.4I see blood 1.3 1.4 1.0I get a serious illness 2.5 2.9 2.3I am not able to breath 2.7 2.7 2.6I am taken to the hospital 1.5 1.5 1.8I visit the dentist 1.1 1.0 1.0

FEARS OF ANIMALSMice and rats 0.9 1.6 0.9A snake 2.3 2.7 1.7Spiders 0.7 0.5 1.2

MISCELLANEOUS FEARS Ghosts and spooks 1.3 2.7 0.8I am sleeping in a dark room 1.1 2.0 0.5I am left alone 1.3 2.1 0.8I am lost in a strange place 2.2 2.6 2.2Thunder and lightning 0.8 1.3 0.8

The studied Palestinian children show more intensive fear in nearly all of the compared fear variables. There are hardly any differences among the Israeli and British children’s tearfulness, and in general many of the studied fears were common to both Middle Eastern and British children.

Going to the dentist, not being able to breathe or being lost in a strange place, are frightening for a child whether he lives in a London suburb, a Palestinian refugee camp or an Israeli border town.

The following differences between Middle Eastern and British children may reflect the children’s cultural and social surroundings: guns and machineguns; I am in battle (actual war and conflict situation); ghosts and spooks (traditions, tales and education); I am sleeping in a dark room; I am left alone (the size and importance of the family); and a snake (an actual danger in the child’s environment).

Only the social fears were more prominent among the British than the Middle Eastern children, and among the Israelis the possibility of being in battle caused more fear than in other groups.

5.4. Children’s Aggressiveness and Reactions in Frustrating Situations

5.4.1. Direction of Aggression

The direction and nature of children’s aggressions were studied by using a modified version of the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test. The statistical analysis and initial scoring system turned up very few differences between Israeli and Palestinian children. Here the statistical results are presented very briefly, and we concentrate on the description of the contents of the answers.

Figure 11 shows the direction of aggression. The one slight difference between the national groups is the tendency of the Israeli children to avoid, deny or ignore the frustrating and aggression-producing situation. One-fifth (22 %) of the Israelis and 13 % of the Palestinian children tended to ignore frustration and to deny aggressive tendencies. The Palestinian children living under occupation expressed slightly aggressive feelings more openly, than the Israeli and directed them outward.

Figure 11. Direction of Aggression Outward (E), Inward (I) or Denial (M) Among Israeli, Palestinian and Israeli Arab Children (%)

5.4.2. Reaction Tendency

Figure 12 presents different modes of reaction in a frustrating situation. Very few differences emerged between the Israelis and the Palestinians with respect to their type of reaction according to Rosenzweig’s scoring system. The most common answers were those indicating a tendency

Israeli Jews

Palestinians

Israeli Arabs

Aggression, blame, hate or rage is directed at the surroundings, other people; that is, outwards.

Aggressive feelings, disappointments, hate and anger are turned against oneself. Feelings of guilt are dominant.

Aggressive and hostile feelings are denied, and the frustrating situation avoided of adapted to.

to defend one’s invulnerability, while least common in all groups were active reactions aiming at solving the frustrating situation. The Israeli Arab children were those which came up with the fewest answers indicating helplessness and obstacle dominatedness.

Figure 12. Reaction Tendencies According to Nationality (%)

Much criticism has been levelled at the validity and discrimination ability of Rosenzweig’s scores of reaction tendencies. In addition, in our sample differences in the children’s living conditions, cause of frustrations and a high degree of violence could lead us to hypothesize about certain differences in children’s reaction tendencies in frustrating situations.

According to the original interpretation, a child’s personality was considered to be the explanation for different kinds of reaction tendencies in frustrating situations. However, a child’s living conditions also determine the reaction alternatives, which are left for the child to express. If a child has few possibilities of influencing the source of stress or frustration, he is disposed to choose answers dominated by obstacles and helpless feelings. Children whose security-connected, e.g. human relationships or surroundings are threatened, usually show reaction alternatives which aim at ego defence and invulnerability.Answers indicating activity and a willingness to solve the frustrating situation refer to a child’s resources (both inner and external) for actively influencing a situation. The small differences in our sample cannot offer evidence regarding the psychological dynamics of these different answers.

5.4.3. Factors Connected to the Expression of Aggression

Here we will examine only the variations of aggression directed outwards according to the child’s sex and his war experiences. Aggression directed outwards is here simply called aggressiveness.

Girls showed aggressiveness less intensively than boys. In particular, the Palestinian boys gave considerably more aggressive answers than the Palestinian girls. About one-third (29 %) of the girls and 13 % of the boys offered no responses indicating aggressivity. The Israeli sample showed differences tending toward the same direction, though not as explicitly.

Israeli Jews

Palestinians

Israeli Arabs

Obstacles, overwhelming situations and feelings of helplessness dominate the answers.

Reaction alternatives which aim at ego-defence and at preserving one’s invulnerability.

Answers indicating activity and willingness to solve the frustrating situation.

Rosenzweig (1971) confirms that girls tend, more than boys, to direct aggression inside to themselves or to ignore frustration; thus girls show less outwardly directed aggression than boys.

Traumatic experiences stemming from war and conflict were not as a whole connected to a child’s tendency to express outwardly directed aggression. Thus, the present sample does not reinforce the contention, that personal traumas undergone in war situations will lead children to manifest strong aggressiveness. What in the Palestinian children’s group intensified aggressiveness was their confrontation with occupation soldiers.

Nearly half (46 %) of the children who had not had such an experience, but only one-quarter (24 %) of those who had participated in a “battle” showed little or no aggression.

Among Israeli children, the personal experience of witnessing a bomb explode, or a terrorist attack increased aggressive responses. Of those who had been visual or aural witnesses to terrorism or sabotage, one-fifth (21 %) expressed little or no aggressiveness; whereas the comparable figure for those who had not undergone such an experience was 35 %. None of the family-related traumas (loss of a family member) increased the children’s aggressiveness. Only experiences entailing a child’s personal involvement actually increased aggressiveness.

5.4.4. The Content of Picture Test

Here we describe children’s responses in different situations of frustration. We also explain the nature of the events and frustration connected to the pictures.

Mother or some other adult has been angry with a child and has hit him. After a while he/she regrets the act, embraces the child and says, “I am sorry I hit you,” This situation is unrelated to a war conflict situation, and is familiar to all children. However, according to certain views, in a situation of political stress parents have difficulties in bringing up their children consistently, and are more prone to lose their temper because of the tense situation. The situation described throws a child into a conflict situation involving feelings of guilt, anger, helplessness and forgiveness.

While the conflict situation did not have its impact in the children’s answers by and large they reflect their own relationship with their parents. About half of the Palestinian and Israeli children evinced attitudes of compromise and forgiveness:

‘’Mother, I forgive you because you are the one who has brought me up”; “Do not mind, my dear sister, our friendship will last and it is going to keep us together; what is past is past, I will forgive you”; “Never mind, mother, it did not hurt”.

Palestinian children took the guilt on themselves more often (31 %) than the Israelis (11 %):

“It was not so terrible, I know that I was to blame’’; ‘’I promise you that I never will do it again’’.

The Israeli children offered somewhat more aggressive responses than the Palestinian:

“I will never forgive you, first you hit me and then you ask forgiveness – go to hell”; “But it hurt, and I am not going to forgive you”; “What a bad father you are, you are always beating your child. Tomorrow I will run away from home”.

A policeman has caught a boy, is holding him by the neck, and saying, “I finally caught you, little bastard.” This situation is probably more familiar to a Palestinian child than to an Israeli. The frustration is related to the war-and-conflict situation, and contains threat, violence and superiority, and helplessness and guilt on the part of the child.

To the Palestinians the situation seemed concrete and they projected their own experiences to it. The Israeli children understood it more as a cartoon:

“I will return the jewellery I stole, and you will let me go”; “I will not confess.”

While nearly all the Israeli children supposed that they had been caught because they had stolen something, nearly all the Arab children in the West Bank cited demonstrations, stoning and other resistance activities as the reason for detention.

Earlier studies showed that war and violence do not necessarily increase children’s aggressivity, but change its target, context and meaning.

In both children’s groups about half the subjects expressed aggressive feelings toward the police:

“You are a bastard yourself”; “Take care, if you don’t let me go, I’ll bite you”; “I haven’t done anything, let me go, what do you want from me, I want to go home to my mother.”

The Israeli children denied their guilt more often than the Palestinians:

“Let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong”, Or they blamed others: “I have not stolen anything, those other boys took the money”.

The Palestinian group was divided between those who denied their guilt and those who expressed pride and justified their deeds:

“I did not set up barricades on the road and I did not participate in any demonstration. I am still a young boy and my father has forbidden me to set up stones on the roads”; “I have not done anything bad, I was not even on the street during the demonstration. Please do not imprison me”. Or: “So what — you don’t frighten me at all, you are a bastard yourself, you want to detain a boy who is fighting for his country”; “I am not afraid of you — not even if you interrogate me and throw me into prison’’; “You are the bastard, you occupier’’.

Some of the Palestinian children expressed deep fear instead of aggressive feelings:

“Dear father, father, I have not done anything, come here and help me, this policeman will kill me.”

Two children are sitting on the stairs, and one says: (in the Palestinian version) “There was an explosion on your street”. (in the Israeli Hebrew version) “There was an attack on your street”.

The situation may be familiar to both national groups either through personal experience or through television. Here the source of frustration is the child’s helplessness and insecurity.

About one-quarter of both groups expressed aggressive feelings and hatred toward the attacker or toward those who had planted the bomb:

“Why do they torture us like this, those bastards, those enemies’’.

In some cases the aggression was directed at the messenger who told about the incident:

“There was no explosion in our street”; “Don’t lie to me, it was your house they destroyed”.

More than aggression, however, the situation caused worry and pity in the children. Children tend to fear for near ones and to worry about their future:

“I only hope that my family was not wounded’; “Yes, I know that such a thing happened, my mother died of her wounds. A bullet hit her in the head, it was terrible”; “What can I do, I am shaking from fear, let’s go and look for our parents, maybe they are in danger. And what if they have killed my father and mother, I am so afraid”; “Yes, my friend died and Yossi was wounded.”

The next test involved two different pictures, one for the Israeli children and the other for the Palestinian children. We shall begin with the Israeli frustrating situation. Two children chance upon a place where the remains of a bus are being removed after a bomb explosion. One of them says, “Another bomb has gone off on a bus.” The situation is probably very familiar to many Israeli children through their own experience or through the media. The source of stress is an act of violence, involving elements of fear, insecurity, hatred and helplessness, and caused by an invisible enemy.

The Israeli children expressed as much aggression toward the enemy as they did feelings of fear, worry or weariness:

“I know, every day they find bombs in buses. If I could only see one of those devils who put bombs in buses, he would be dead in my hands”; “Those terrorists are overdoing it –it’s disgusting to put bombs every day in people’s vehicles”; “There are explosions all the time, I am afraid to take the bus any more”; “Those terrorists, how terrible, again we have innocent victims”.

Children showed also pity and a desire to help the victims of the explosion:

“I saw wounded people, I feel pity for those poor people’’; “I really hope that none of my family was on the bus, let’s run, we can help the wounded”; “Oh no, another bomb in a bus, those poor people, let’s go and help evacuate them”.

In the Palestinian picture a boy is running with a coin in his hand to a shop. On the door of the shop is the mark meaning that the shop has been closed as a punishment. A notice states: “By order of the military government, this shop is closed.” The situation is hypothesized to mean disappointment, helplessness and humiliation for the child. Palestinian shopkeepers participate in political demonstrations sometimes by going on strike. As punishment, the occupation authorities open the shops by force or — as in this situation — order them closed for a certain time.

The Palestinian children expressed aggression towards the occupiers often as they did feelings of helplessness and defection. Most of the children’s responses were merely affirmative with no strong emotions:

“What an ass the military government is for closing the shop”; “Why do they close the shop even if we haven’t done anything?”; “I hope that one day they will suffer themselves, those enemies who closed our shop.’’

Often the children expressed concern for the shopkeeper, their own nation and themselves:

“I think the shopkeeper should keep his shop closed, because if he opens it, the soldiers will shoot him”; “They intend to let us starve to death”; “The only time I have money,

and they close the shop”; “What has the shopkeeper done to them that they are ready to punish him and close his shop?”

Some of the children reflect their own experiences. Children who spent weeks under curfew responded with deep despair to this situation:

“It’s in the same way that the soldiers closed our school, they have now closed this shop”; “If they don’t open the shop, we will all die.”

This picture depicts the recurring violent confrontation between Palestinian children and Israeli soldiers. The soldier has caught a child and threatens him with truncheon and says: “I’ll teach you to throw stones, you devil.” The source of stress in this picture is the fear and insecurity of the child’s own vulnerability, he soldier’s superiority, and the violence and horror of the situation’s consequences.

The Palestinian children’s responses indicated most often their willingness to make sacrifices for their own country and to fight for their own nation. Many of the children’s responses showed heroism:

“Take me for the sake of Palestine”; “Until my country is saved, I will sacrifice my life for Palestine”; “I will continue to throw stones until we have our own State”; “We will throw stones and demonstrate on the streets, we will defend our country.”

About two-thirds of the children showed aggression toward the soldiers, the rest were more fearful and desperate than aggressive.

“We will throw stones whenever we see your dirty faces here”; “We will demonstrate and throw stones as long as you and your kind are occupying our land.”

About one-tenth of the children denied having taken part in the stone throwing:

“Let me go free, you cruel Jew, I did not throw stones and 1 did not participate in the demonstration”; “You should know that only the adults are demonstrating. I am an innocent child”; “I am not evil and I am not impolite”; “I am only a small boy who doesn’t want to do anything wrong. Believe me”; “I am still a young child, and I do not participate in demonstrations because I am too afraid”.

There were also children who persistently denied their fear:

“I do not care about you, I am not afraid of you even if you carry a gun, l am the one who is fighting for his country”; “You have put us under curfew and you have shot us. We are not afraid of you, we are only afraid of God and we will continue to throw stones at you, you enemy Jew”.

For most Israeli children the confrontation between soldiers and children is familiar through TV. In the Israeli picture children view the event on TV, where the child in the screen says: “We demand a Palestinian State”.

The soldier says, as in the previous picture: “I’ll teach you to throw stones!” Here, the source of the child’s frustration might be the open demand by a Palestinian child and guilt feelings due to the violence of his nation’s soldier.

About two-thirds of the Israeli children expressed aggressive feelings towards the child who was making his demand:

“The child is stupid, and he is also wrong”; “Oh, how I hate those Arab terrorists, they are asses”; “Don’t accuse us, you are to blame, you are the one who wants to kill everybody”; “Those Palestinians are pigs”; “You can continue to hope for your own country, but you will never get it”; “How does he have the nerve to talk like that to our soldier”.

Others expressed empathy for the child who had fallen into the hands of a soldier, or wondered about the soldier’s harsh behaviour:

“Oh, this poor Arab boy, it must have been his parents who told him to go and demonstrate.” “The poor child, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes”; “How cruel the soldiers are towards the Arabs, it’s really not nice’’; “The child may be wrong, but I don’t think the man should beat him”.

Still others framed the answer in political terms:

“We are a democratic State, but if they continue to throw stones we have to do something to stop it”; “But the task of our State is to guarantee the rights of the Jewish people and not Palestinian rights’’; “It is necessary to find some kind of a place where those Palestinians could live”; “The Palestinians should be sent to Arab countries, there they would have plenty of space for themselves”; “When will the day come that those Palestinians will stop bothering us”; “So what, you can continue to want your own state, but we have been living here already for 2 000 years”; “Your demand will never be met, country is and will be a Jewish State’’.

The children’s tendency to transfer ideas from one picture to another is evident here:

“Don’t you think it’s enough already — first the Arab adults put bombs everywhere and then even their children throw stones at our soldiers”.

A child is listening to the news on the radio together with his parents. Breaking news is announced. For Israeli children the text reads: “The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) spokesman announces: Three of our soldiers died, and eight wounded in clashes with terrorists”. For the Palestinian children: “The Israeli army destroyed a base of Palestinian freedom fighters”. This news is assumed to cause feelings of insecurity, shame, fear and helplessness, and hurt the child’s pride self-esteem.

The Palestinian children reacted to the situation slightly more aggressively than the Israeli children. More than half of the Palestinian answers indicate a willingness to take revenge and destroy the enemy, to intensify the national struggle:

“Oh, oh, how long will these battles continue, our brothers are slaughtered, death to the enemy”; “We have to get rid of those cruel enemies”.

Both Palestinian and Israeli children readily relied on their soldiers’ strength:

“The Palestinians will defeat the enemy army once again, and we are going to gain victory with the help of the Feda’iyeen and their martyrdom”; “They are killing our brothers, but we are not going to give up. We will not let despair overwhelm us”; “We will defeat the enemy and rebuild the bases of the Freedom fighters”; “We have to defend our country, to encourage the freedom fighters and to love our homeland Palestine”.

“The terrorists will destroy us. When I grow up, I will shoot all of them”; “Those terrorists only want to bomb, kill and cause suffering, especially to our soldiers”; “We, the Jews, are going to take revenge on those dirty and cruel Arabs”.

Some of the Palestinian children gave extremely fearful and panicky answers:

“Father, father, help, they are going to kill all of us. They killed our brother, let’s get out of here”. Few Palestinian children trusted their own activity to solve the situation: “Let’s go and throw stones at the Israeli enemy”.

The Israeli children often expressed worry about persons close to them:

“Oh, help me, imagine if father was among the dead. I hope all the wars will end”. “Mother, I am afraid, why are there terrorists in this country, Shmulik just entered military service yesterday”. “How terrible, once again. It could be someone from our family”. “Maybe father should go and see if Hanan is among the dead.”

A boy comes home with a dirty face and his clothing torn; his mother asks him, “What has happened to you”? The event in the picture does not directly refer to the conflict situation. The source of frustration is possible wounded self-esteem and violence.

The Israeli and Palestinian children differed more notably in their reactions to neutral pictures than to those depicting conflict and violence. There is seldom a difference in the amount of aggression, but rather in the content of the responses. The Palestinian children living under

occupation mention events and feelings connected to outside reality even when responding to neutral pictures, whereas the Israeli children referred to the national conflict only when reacting to the pictures which were directly related to it.

Most of the Israelis’ answers refer to common everyday events:

“The big boys hit me on the street”; “Some children attacked me and tried to steal my bike. I fought them, and they hit me and threw stones at me”; “We were playing football with my friends and I fell down in the mud”.

The source of harm and misery among the Palestinian children was, without exception, a soldier, the enemy or the occupier:

“Soldiers attacked me and beat me up”; “Soldiers came to school and spread tear gas and threw a grenade at me”; “The Jews hit me because I disturbed them”.

There were a few similar answers among the Israeli children, too:

“Terrorists caught me and tortured me”; “People on the street caught me, and they hit me and shot me, because they thought that I was a terrorist”.

A child has woken up at night and says to the other child sleeping beside him, “I hear shooting and I don’t know where father and mother are”. This kind of situation was often described in children’s interviews as their most terrifying memory of war. The basic security of the child is threatened, and the child feels lonely, rejected and helpless.

Fear and horror were the most common responses among both Israeli and Palestinian children. Children often showed more worry and anxiety about their parents and their security than about the threat to themselves:

“My dear sister please take care of me; I am so worried about mother and father”.“I am so afraid that something has happened to father and mother”.“Help, they might shoot mother and father’’.“Ruthy, I am so afraid, maybe they are dead, let’s phone the police”.“Oh, I am so frightened that something terrible has happened to my parents. Maybe father has shot some terrorists”; “Who is coming into the room? Terrorists are in the hall already. I am frightened to death”.

The Palestinian children showed more readiness than the Israelis to act and solve the problematic situation:

“Oh, oh, what is really going on, come with me, let’s go hide under the bed and close our ears”; “We should stay inside the room. I will dress up as a woman and give myself a woman’s name in order to prevent them from killing me when I am still in bed”; “Dear brother, we have to rely on God, because he is on the side of the Freedom fighters and justice”.

The Israeli children especially tried to deny the severity of the situation and the feelings aroused by the danger:

“Don’t worry. Let’s pull the blanket over our heads. Yes, mother and father are home. Mother...”; “Don’t frighten me, or I will dream about terrorists the way you did and then I won’t be able to sleep anymore”; “Let’s go to mother’s and father’s room”; “Surely mother and father went to fight even though they told us that they were going to a movie. They didn’t want to worry us. Yallah, let’s go to the shelter”.

Aggressive answers were very rare in both national groups:

“I want to sleep, if they kill us, let them kill. Men who shoot people are idiots”; “I am not afraid to shoot. I will revenge to them many times for what they have done to us”.

A child is playing on the floor. His mother comes and scolds him, “Don’t make so much noise, your father is ill”. The child’s frustration does not refer to the national conflict situation, but is caused by his having been prevented from playing, and by worry and guilt.The children’s answers tell primarily about their relationship to their parents. Even the Palestinians’ answers were not affected by the conflict situation.Around a third of both Israeli and Palestinian children gave aggressive responses.

“Don’t he to me, I do not believe that father is sick, it is not like him”; “You yourself make more noise than I do when you shout at me”; “So what, what can I do about his illness?” “But I am building houses, and construction workers can’t be silent”; “Mother, I was only playing cops and robbers. The police fired and shouted, I couldn’t help it”.

There were also answers indicating concern about the father:

“I hope his illness is not serious”“I hope my father is well soon; in the meantime, I’ll shut up”.

Most of children answered briefly, “O.K., I will play quietly”.

A group of people is in a shelter, and one of them says: “Nobody knows how long we may have to stay here”. The test pictures for Israeli and Palestinians differ. There are no shelters or well-equipped security rooms in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian children’s picture describes a situation of taking shelter and of hiding, a familiar experience for most of the tested children. On the other hand, Israeli children, particularly in Kiriat Shemona, have had the experience of spending a night in a shelter. Insecurity, uncertainty about coming events, helplessness and boredom are the sources of frustration in the shelter.

The Palestinian children’s responses were more aggressive than those of the Israelis. More than half of the Palestinian children wanted to revenge against and accused the enemy or the occupier. Quite often the aggression was accompanied by deep despair:

“We have to stay here for at least three months, until the Israeli army stops this hell in the camp”; “Only when we expel the occupiers, those devils, can we free ourselves”.

The Israeli children tended to give sober and calm responses, which maybe revelatory about Israeli children’s habituation to the demands of the conflict situation. Often children tried to console others in the shelter and even to see the positive sides of the situation.

“But don’t you think it is much better that we are here instead of being at home”; “Only one night more, dear brother. Then our father will come to save us from here’’; “Surely we can get out when the battle is over. For security reasons we are going to wait a while”; “Don’t worry, our soldiers will certainly protect us”.

Boredom often formed the main content of the children’s responses. In the Israeli group, children who lived in a border town and who had spent a great deal of their time in shelters, showed more intense aggressiveness than other Israelis.

“Al this suffering is because of the terrorists, we really should finish them off completely”; “I have had enough of all this. We have played all the games once and then over again, and our soldiers have fought enough”; “All the time just war and fighting. Come, let’s go out, let’s put an end to all this fighting. I am bored to death with hiding here, I can’t stand this war any more”; “What an irritating situation. It is impossible to live with these attacks and katyusha (salvos)”; “This war is driving me crazy, I can’t move even a bit”.

At a mass meeting the speaker is shouting: “We have to throw the Jews into the sea” (in the Israeli Hebrew test); and “We have to deport the Arabs” (in the Palestinians test). These slogans are quite familiar to the children living in the midst of the Middle Eastern propaganda war. To the Palestinians this also a mention that transfers may occur again. The source of frustration here is a wounding of the child’s national identity, self-esteem and pride.

In both national groups the most common response to the enemy threats was a declaration of readiness to fight. The Israeli children’s answers were, however, more directly aggressive, whereas the Palestinians’ answers showed defensiveness.

“You will never succeed, we will fight for our State and defend our existence”; “But you have taken our land and home, you are a heartless enemy; you occupiers are good-for-nothings”; “There’s no way to get us out of our own country, go away, you should go back to your own country”; “We are going to defend our country, because the soil and the earth are dear to us here”.“We are going to throw you into the sea, it won’t be the Jews as you say”; “We, the Jews, will take our revenge one day on you, you dirty Arab”; “If I had a gun, I would kill him”; “Ha, ha, ha, take care and make sure that the Jews don’t throw you into a cesspool first”.

In addition to aggressive feelings the Palestinian children expressed fearfulness:

“But we fled from our homeland once already, because our enemy frightened us”.

Very few compromise responses were forthcoming from either national group:

“Please do not throw us into the sea, we will be your friends”. “But can’t you understand that the Arabs are not bad”.

A couple of Israeli children projected the traumatic history of the Jewish people into the situation:

“Poor Jews, nobody in this world feels pity for them”; “How cruel they are, those Germans”.

This picture is from the original Rosenzweig picture test. A child has broken another child’s doll, and is reprimanded: “You broke my favourite doll”. Here, the child’s guilt feelings and rejection by a playmate may be the sources of frustration.Only one Israeli in the entire sample transferred a thought related to war and conflict to this picture:

“Kapara (make an offering to God). Dear God, we hope that by sacrificing this doll we have saved the lives of many soldiers”.

Aggressive answers were rare in this situation:

“It was your fault, you broke my car first”; “You are stupid and childish, you are too old to play with dolls”.

Most of the children assumed responsibility for their bad behaviour and were ready to compensate the other’s suffering:

“Please, do not cry, I will buy you a new doll which is much more beautiful than this one”; “Please forgive me. I will ask father to buy you a new doll”.

Two children look at a ruined house. One child says: “It was your home which they destroyed”. This situation is familiar to the tested children at least through the media. Demolition of homes is common punishment of the occupation army in the West Bank, while in for Israelis this is known through TV images. Destruction of ‘Jewish’ home happens rarely. Destruction, worry about family, and helplessness in the face of the enemy’s superiority are here the sources of frustration.

Most of the children’s answers reflected worry and sorrow about their families’ security and fear for their fate:

“Where can I sleep now, what has happened to my father and mother, we don’t have a home anymore”; “We are lost, our home is destroyed, and I cannot find my little brother. Please, help me”; “What a pity, we have lived in this house all our life, and it was very dear to us”; “It all happened so suddenly, where will we live and sleep now?”“My brother is wounded, and I don’t know what to do”; “I really hope that father and mother are not buried in the ruins, let’s run and find out”; “Yes, my home is destroyed,

my father is dead and mother is badly wounded, and I do not know where I can go”.

The Palestinian children express slightly more aggressiveness; fully half of them, and a third of the Israelis, directed bitterness and anger towards the destroyer of the house:

“Oh, I loved my home so much, I wish those who destroyed it would die”; “Let’s just wait, one day we will destroy your house”.

Among the Palestinian responses were some marked by activity and heroism:

“Do not worry, I will come with you and we will build a new home; even if they come and destroy it again, we will not give up”.

In this picture, the Israeli mother is saying, “Father has told me that because of the tension on the border he has to stay on reserve duty”. Almost every Israeli child loses his father to reserve duty for a month a year. The test picture indicates uncertainty, threat, and worry about the father’s security. In the Palestinian test the girl’s mother is saying: “Because the curfew is still on, we have to eat the same soup as yesterday”. Some of the Palestinian children had been under curfew for two weeks just before the test, and the other children were also familiar with this kind of situation. In the Palestinian picture the source of frustration is uncertainty, threat and violence, as well as obstacles to pleasure.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians tend to console the mother and thus ease their own anxiety:

“Don’t be worried, mother, father is a hero and he will protect us”; “Do not be afraid, mother, our father will soon be back in good condition’’.

Just as frequently, children gave desperate answers and worried about their father’s security.

“This war will never end, and I miss father so much”; “Oh, no, I see my father so seldom. I prepared a present for him and now he is not coming”; “The main thing is that father should return in good health”; “Mother, let’s hope that he is not wounded”; “But imagine if he dies”; “Mother, are you sure that nothing bad has happened to him”; “Poor father, he may die there”.

About a fifth of the Israeli children reacted aggressively to the mother’s words:

“Oh, no, my father is always going to the army, I am not going to accept it”; “I have had enough of all this, I hate the army, they should send my father back home”; “How I miss father, he is hardly ever home with me”.

The Israeli children’s answers show how war, even if accepted as a “normal situation”, assumes the role of “a third party” in family relationships.

Among the Palestinian children fully one-third expressed aggressive feelings and directed them at the occupier who had imposed curfew.

“Oh my God, I can’t stand them, let’s hope we will get rid of the Jews, and then we can live in peace”; “They are devilish to do that to us. Can’t they understand that we are not going to shut up about their crimes”; “I can’t stand it anymore, why do these cruel occupiers have to do this to us”.

The Palestinian children, too, tried to console their mother and themselves:

“But mother, we have enough vegetables, do not be sad”; “I am patient, I am ready to make sacrifices until the curfew is over”; “Mother, I promise to help you with everything, until somebody brings us food”; “What will we do now? We have an orange tree growing in our yard, we used to eat its fruit and fill our stomachs”; “When the curfew is over, I will prepare you very, very good food, dear mother”.

It is worth noting that children who had just experienced curfew quite often left this picture without an answer. For them the situation might have been too personal and painful. The content of their other answers did not differ from those of other West Bank children, and they did not ignore other pictures.

Two children are returning from school. One says to the other: “You are such a coward that you will never be a hero”. The atmosphere of national struggle and war makes many demands on the children and imposes an ideal of heroism. Thus underestimating a child’s ability causes feelings of inferiority and shame.

The most common answer in both groups was: “But of course I will be a hero”.

About half of the Israeli children reacted with aggressiveness to the other’s claim:

“You dirty liar, I will be a good soldier”; “What did you dare to say, I will certainly be much better than you”; “You have a big mouth, you are also afraid, but you just don’t dare to show it”.

The Palestinian children often confirmed their denial of cowardice by citing practical testimony:

“That is not true, I threw stones at the Jews, and I even hit them”; “Don’t be stupid, I will be a super hero”; “1 will be a great hero and I will fight for Palestine and I will free us all”; “Why do you say that? Don’t you think that I deserve credit for the fact that the soldiers did not kill you?” “On the contrary, I will be a good soldier and I will die for my country”.

In both groups many responses sought to elevate and defend one’s self-confidence:

“Of course I will be a hero when I grow up. It doesn’t matter at all that I’m still small, I can still be a good soldier”; “How do you know? Have you already used a gun? I

have”; “I am the one who does his homework carefully, you are lazy and you will never be a hero”.

Among the Israeli children there were some completely divergent responses. Expressions of hesitation or fear are not widely accepted in the atmosphere of heroism:

“I do not want to be a war hero at all, because I hope there will be no need for soldiers when we are grown-ups”; “When I am an adult, I hope they won’t need me as a soldier. But in case they still need soldiers, I will certainly be one of the good soldiers”; “Anyone would be afraid if facing such things as I did”.

Mother asks the child: “What happened at school today”? The picture does not refer to the war and conflict situation nor does it overtly suggest frustration.The answers of the Israeli and Palestinian children differed considerably, perhaps reflecting their different living and security conditions. Without exception the Palestinian children’s answers referred to the occupation, and the violence and tension connected to it:

“Soldiers came and killed our headmaster and teacher, and we fled”; “The army attacked and pupils were wounded by their shooting”; “The Jews beat us up and destroyed our school”; “We had a demonstration and built a stone barricade on the road”.

Their most common answer was simply “a demonstration”. Even when describing their school work the Palestinian children introduced the political situation:

“Our teacher gave us a nasty test, and we organized a demonstration”.

Less than a tenth of the Israeli responses reflected the tension:

“There was a bomb in front of our school’’; “Our teacher told us about the katyusha attack that took place yesterday, and the children played war games”.

The Israeli children’s answers describe the relations between teacher and children as well as events taking place among the children:

“Nothing special, our teacher lost her head and threw me out of the class”; “The teacher scolded me because I got a bad mark”; “We had a sample test and I did very well”; “One of the teachers caused trouble again, but the teachers are never blamed, only the pupils”; “Nothing special, we fought with Moshe”; “Uzi hit me, and the teacher shouted at me”.

We may assume that in the occupied West Bank the violence directed at children in school will crop up frequently in their consciousness. A comparison of the answers given by Palestinians living in the West Bank and in Israel offers some confirmation of this argument. With few exceptions all the Israeli Arab children responded to this picture, “The teacher hit me” or “The teacher pulled my hair and put me in the corner”. Physical punishment is still quite common in the Arab schools in Israel, and the children were clearly expressing their frustration about this. There is no doubt that children are physically punished in West Bank schools, too, but it is evident that this bothers the children far less than the violence of the military forces.

This single example suggests that the children living under the occupation are deeply conscious of its external violence. It seems that daily conflicts and frustrations lose their importance when compared to the greater stress caused by the military forces.

Two children are left alone in the classroom. One of them says, “Why did they have to attack our school?” The attacker is not specified here, but the children are assumed to connect it to the enemy. The situation could be familiar to all West Bank children, where soldiers’ attacks against schools are common.

While we were testing in the northern Israeli border town, Qiriat Shemona, katyusha salvos sometimes hit the schools. Here a child is in an atmosphere of fear, helplessness and uncertainty, as though at the mercy of a superior power, a state of affairs characteristic to war.About half of the Israeli children were aggressive and irritated because of the attack:

“Terrorists want to attack anywhere, because they want to kill everyone they come across”; “I don’t know, they’re just devils”; “I’ve had enough of these terrorist attacks, every terrorist should be killed”; “Those terrorists are giving me a nervous breakdown. If I could just get a hold of Arafat, I would do terrible things to him”.

The children living in Qiriat Shemona, the northern border town, who had personally suffered due to the situation we have described, tended to give especially neutral and emotionless responses: “Because there are many children in our school”. “Our school is located on the slope of a hill, so we are a good target”. The Israeli children’s responses also revealed their image of the enemy:

“Because they, the enemy, know that there are plenty of children here, and they will kill children”; “They are crazy, they want to destroy our country”; “They want to cause nervousness and despair among us”.

Some Israeli children denied the severity of the situation:

“Oh, don’t you think it is nice that we can’t study and we can stay home the whole day?”

Among the Palestinian children as well, about half directed their aggression toward the attacker — Israeli soldiers, according to the children:

“How cruel they are, they feel no pity for anyone, not even innocent small children”; “They are asses, they don’t have anything else to do here except to attack”; “They are devils, they don’t want us to get education, they just want to get rid of us”.

Some of the Palestinian children saw themselves as being to blame for the attack:

“They attacked our school because children threw stones and built barricades”; “All the other children are at the demonstration; what should we do now?”

There were, however, more frightened answers among the Palestinians than among the Israelis.

“What could we do to escape to safety, we are persecuted all the time”.

Three children are playing in the playground. Two of them leave the third child alone, saying, “We donʼt want to play with you anymore.” In this situation, familiar to all children in any political situation, the source of frustration is an offence to the childʼs self-esteem and his need to belong and be accepted.

Only a few responses in both national groups referred to the political conflict:

“I don’t want to play with you either, because you are Jews”.“I don’t like playing with you, because you are dirty enemies”.

Two-thirds of the Palestinian responses and one-third of the Israeli responses showed indignation, uncertainty and willingness to compromise:

“But why, I am a human being just like you”.“I don’t have anyone else to play with”; “Please come back, you can have my ball, too”; “You can’t leave me alone”; “But we had a nice time together, why are you going”.

Aggressive responses were rare:

“There’s not much point waiting for you — remember, I have warned you”; “I really don’t need your favours, why don’t you just disappear”.

In the picture for the Palestinians, a soldier surprises a child in the forest and says: “Go away at once, this country doesn’t belong to you any more.”

The sources of stress are humiliation, offence to the child’s esteem, insecurity, and superiority on the enemy side. About two-thirds of the West Bank children responded aggressively to this hostile demand:

“I am not afraid of you, you’re a mule, you Israeli soldier”; “You’re the one who will vanish from our land, this is our home”; “I think we are the ones who will throw you

out of here, so disappear, you son of a bitch”; “I am not going to obey you, this path leads to my uncle’s house, and I have always used it”;

The other responses reflected feelings of fear, helplessness and guilt in the face of the superior enemy: “Please do not shoot me.”

In the Israeli picture, children are travelling on a bus. Soldiers stop them at a checkpoint and shout: “Everybody out!” This scene may be familiar to Israeli children, and it suggests fearful images of a possible bomb explosion or terrorist attack. Here the sources of stress are uncertainty, helplessness, and threat. The children’s responses were as often aggressive as frightened. Most of the responses indicated irritation and weariness:

“Mother, I can’t stand this kind of life any more, I’m going to leave this country”; “Every day there are bombs in buses, I’ve had enough”; “Mother, I am terribly afraid, what does it mean? — Nothing special, my son, the soldiers only want to check the bus in order to find explosives or bombs”; “Don’t panic, it’s only a routine check. They want to know if there are suspicious objects on the bus’’; “What happened? Is there a bomb on the bus, or what?”

The most common answer was simply “Leave the bus at once”.

A child is playing, and a parent appears, saying: “soldiers” (for Palestinians) or “terrorists” (for Israelis) are shooting. Rush to the shelter”. In this situation the child’s security is threatened and he is at the mercy of fear and violence. The external threat also interrupts the child’s play.

Over half the tested children gave very neutral and “matter-of-fact” answers, unmarked by much emotion:

“Fine, mother, I am coming”; “I’ll just get my things together, and I’ll come, mother”; “Just a minute, I’ll just take I Kushi (the dog) with me so I won’t be bored in the shelter.”

In both national groups about a fifth of the answers were aggressive:

“Oh no, again those bloody terrorists are here, kill them all”.

Feelings of fear were as common as aggressive expressions among the tested children:

“Okay, mother, I’m coming, wait for me, I am so afraid, what if they shoot us when we leave the house”.

The Palestinian children’s answers were also marked by attitudes of despair and fatalism:

“Let them shoot and kill, we can’t do anything”; “Oh God, why don’t You help us get rid of those enemies and help us return to our homeland”.

5.4.5. Conclusions Regarding Children’s Aggressive Responses

The tested Israeli and Palestinian children did not differ in the degree of aggressiveness they showed, but in the content and meaning of their responses. In a frustrating, violent and threatening situation children react fearfully as often as aggressively.

The situation of conflict and tension seems to have had a more pronounced impact on the Palestinian children’s responses than on those of the Israelis. The difference was particularly noteworthy in reactions to the neutral pictures.

The psychological nature of the response may be identical, but the content differs, as is illustrated by the situation, “What happened at school today?” An Israeli boy answers: “I had a fight with Uri, he is really a tomfool.” A child in the West Bank may respond in a manner that refers to political conflict rather than to the disappointments and disputes of childhood: “I was throwing stones at the occupation soldiers, they beat me, they’re really asses.”

In addition, the Palestinian children tended to transfer emotions from conflict-ridden situations to the neutral test pictures — an indication of the total influence of violent and threatening surrounding on children’s reactions.

Sometimes the transfer from one picture to the next was quite moving, as the following example shows. The confrontation with the soldier may have been the most emotion-evoking for the Palestinians, and responses to it were often transferred to other, neutral, pictures. One child responded to this picture, “Don’t hit me, I didn’t throw a single stone, I wasn’t even near the demonstration.” Later, the same child offered the following response to the mother’s query about what happened to him: “A soldier hit me because I threw stones at him in the demonstration.”

The Palestinians tended to link the resolution of frustrating situations directly to the termination of the military occupation. This was common not only in the political conflict situations presented by the test; the occupation itself was understood as a far more pervasive cause: of personal suffering, disappointments and frustrations. Also remarkable was the Palestinian children’s willingness to assume responsibility for bringing victory to their nation. Both national groups showed strong feelings of identification with and trust in the power of their own fighters to protect the children.

The Palestinian children’s answers indicated deep despair, even depression, more than those of the Israelis. The mention of death might well betoken these feelings:

“The soldiers have done this again and again, in the end I will surrender and die at the hands of the enemy” (demolished home).

“Let them shoot, what can I do, I will die in any case” (shelter). Anxiety about the

possible death of parents and relatives was also more common among Palestinians than among Israelis. One may also assume that the protective nature of the picture test allowed children to express feelings which otherwise, because of the prevailing heroic norms, would be denied or censored.

5.5. Relations Between Children’s Fears and Attitudes

The hypothesis about the connection between fears and attitudes is based on the view that aggressive attitudes have a kind of defensive function. Social psychologists have observed that aggressive attitudes serve the function of diminishing fear and horror. When a person starts with the help of such attitudes, he may commence a “psychological attack” before feelings of fear and helplessness overwhelm him. Thus the aggressive attitudes function as a defense against fears (Adorno et al. 1950). However, contradictory results have also been obtained. For example, Gough et al. (1950) argued that aggressive attitudes fail to diminish fears; on the contrary, strong fears and anxieties lead a person to react aggressively and boldly (Gough et al. 1950).

Our survey of Israeli and Palestinian children does not provide a clear picture of the relationship between aggressive attitudes and feelings. The dynamics seem to be different in each group of children. When we examine the connection between fear and attitude sum variables, we find that in the Palestinian group the children having favourable attitudes towards war and fighting expressed less tearfulness. In the Israeli group, on the other hand, children with aggressive attitudes towards the enemy showed more fears.

In the Israeli group those children who gave aggressive answers to the open question, “What should be done with the enemy?” - showed more fears as measured by sum variable. Of the children who held that the enemy should be “killed, destroyed, annihilated, beaten,” etc., 45 % showed many or very many fears. Of the children who supported unconditional peace and compromise toward the enemy, 30 % expressed many or very many fears. A similar result was obtained with respect to attitudes about how wars can be prevented in the region. Half (54 %) the children who demanded preparation for a victorious war and called for being strong and strict, showed much or very much tearfulness, as compared to the children supporting peace and friendship between neighbours among whom one-quarter (25 %) had many or very many fears.

In the Palestinian group there was no connection between the children’s attitudes towards the enemy or opinions about the national conflict and its attendant fears, when measured with the open questions. Interestingly, those children in the Palestinian sample whose attitudes were active and self-initiating showed the least number of fears. Fourteen (11 %) of the children suggested that they should hold demonstrations, carry out operations and stone the enemy. About one-third of these showed a large degree of fear, as compared to the overall total — 44 % — of the Palestinians who showed such fears.

When we consider the whole sample, we find the Palestinian children an example of a group showing strong national attitudes together with deep fears. An explanatory factor may be their more severe exposure to violent and traumatic experiences.

Figure 13 shows the connection between attitudes and fears in the Palestinian group. In their group the fears of child’s own security and of war and conflict were related to the war and

peace attitudes. The relationship between attitudes and other kinds of fears was not significant, although it inclined in the same direction. The children who showed, on the whole, the most favourable attitudes towards war and the national struggle expressed least fear. The Israeli children showed a similar trend, but the connection was weaker. Thus the Israeli children who held favourable attitudes towards war and the struggle showed fewer fears than the others.

Figure 13. The Relationship Between Attitudes of War and Peace and Fears connected to War and Conflict, and Total Fearfulness in the Palestinian Group (%)

The children’s living conditions could provide at least a partial explanation for the connection between fewer fears and stronger attitudes. Both Palestinian and Israeli norms and values take fearlessness, heroism, a fighting spirit, pride and courage as highly esteemed traits. The official policy of war and combat is seen as a means of solving national problems, and citizens are supposed to identify with the national goals. Thus we find in this study Middle Eastern “hero children” who consistently show fearlessness and regard the war and combat as a means of solution. We have to remember, on the other hand, that in a picture test which provides possibilities for more personal expressions, children could not avoid showing their feelings of horror at the overwhelmingly demanding situation of violence. We noted earlier that in the Palestinian children’s group the exposure to traumatic losses and violent experiences increased favourable attitudes towards war, while also decreasing the general fearfulness. But exposure to personal traumas increased the fears related to the child’s own security.

FEARS OF WAR AND CONFLICT

Negative Attitudes

Mean

Favourable attitudesχ2=30.45, f=15, p=.01

CONCERNING CHILD’S OWN SECURITYNegative Attitudes

MeanFavourable attitudes

χ2=40.61, df=15, p=.001SUM OF ALL FEARS

Negative Attitudes

Mean

Favourable attitudesχ2=20.88, df=15, p=.10

According to regression analysis, the single most important fear variables which were

able to predict the direction of war and peace attitudes were; fear of being in battle; the police beat me up; I am wounded; terrorists soldiers attack our home; I am hospitalized; terrorists, soldiers, Border Police. All the fear variables were able to predict only 22 % of the variation of attitudes’ total sum.

Of the different kind of fears the best predictors of attitudes were, as seen above, fears connected to the child’s own security; fears of war and conflict; fears of authority and punishment; fears related to one’s physical intactness. Regression analysis does not provide much information regarding the relationships between fears and attitudes. It is of interest, however, that the fears of authority and punishment were even more important in predicting attitudes than fears related to the war situation. This might suggest that authoritarian education both at home and at school gives rise to attitudes favouring war.

Table 8 shows the correlations between attitudes and fear sum variables in the group with little war experiences as compared with the group that suffered considerably.

Table 8. Correlations Between Fear and Attitude Sum Variables in Children’s Groups with Much or Little Suffering Due to War and Conflict

120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 animal physical war & social security author. mix all fears

conflict punish. ____________________________________________________________________________ SUFFERED A LOT*

115 Moral judgment of war -.18 -.03 -.11 .00 -.03 .42 .04 .04

116 Struggle of one’s nation -.17 -.14 -.03 -.06 -.06 .34 -.16 -.03

117 Loyalty & responsibility -.16 -.01 -.17 -.06 .06 .11 -.18 -.03

118 Prospects of peace -.16 -.13 .10 .07 .41 .24 .11 .10

119 Total Attitudes -.26 -.18 -.04 -.09 .17 .48 -.07 .05

SUFFERED A LITTLE*

115 Moral judgment of war .18 -.13 -.12 .05 -.14 .00 -.06 -.06

116 Struggle of one’s nation .15 .01 -.11 .03 -.02 .02 .07 .05

117 Loyalty & responsibility -.17 .01 -.18 .05 -.15 -.15 -.21 -.10

118 Prospects of peace .07 .11 -.03 .14 .12 .22 .13 .05

119 Total Attitudes .10 -.05 -.15 .14 -.13 .05 -.02 .03

*Suffered a lot due to war and conflict: N = 39, 15 Israelis, and 24 Palestinians from the West Bank. They have 12-15 points on the sum variable of traumatic experiences.

Suffered a little: N = 91, 56 Israelis, 5 Palestinians from the West Bank, 30 Israeli Arabs. Their values on the variable of experiences range from 0-3, (See Appendix 5).

The correlations between the sum variables of fear and attitudes are neither one-dimensional nor clear. The result confirms the findings obtained through cross tables, namely, that children possessing attitudes that favour war tend to show few fears (negative correlations). An interesting exception is the relation between attitudes and fears of authority and punishment.

Particularly in the group of children who have suffered much, it seems obvious that children, who show strong attitudes, fear a lot authority and punishment. These kinds of fears include punishment by the child’s teacher or father, and other fears connected to school and home. In the group of children who have suffered much, those with pessimistic attitudes towards peaceful solutions, are also marked by severe security fears (.41), as well as by fears of authority and punishment (.24). Most of the correlations between attitudes and fear are, however, not significant.

Children exposed to personal losses and violence may diminish their fearfulness by means of holding strong attitudes, but their fears of authority and punishment tend to become more intense. We may advance the cautious hypothesis that the education, the degree of authority and the severity of punishments may have an impact on the dynamics of choosing strong war-oriented attitudes as a means of problem-solving. The degree of frustration and misery caused by personal traumatic experiences of war may increase the child’s tendency to seek security in strong national attitudes and to fear the authorities. Evidently, a child’s “world”, its values, circumstances and content are severely shaken by traumatic experiences, which often threaten the child’s immediate security and human relationships.

5.6. Summary of the Results

THE AIM OF THIS STUDY is to examine the psychological reactions of children in a long-lasting conflict, which involves a high degree of stress, and the damage it may cause to normal development. The Israeli and Palestinian children’s attitudes towards war and peace, and their feelings of fear and aggression were studied and quantified. I was especially interested in finding out how the children’s own traumatic experiences of war and violence affect their attitudes, as well as their feelings of fear and aggression. Further, the relation between the children’s nationality, sex and social background and the attitudes and feelings were studied.

THE SAMPLE consists mostly of children who are eleven years old.

46 % are boys and 54 % girls.

185 are Israeli Jewish children (all of whom reside inside ‘the green line’) and 128 are Palestinian children who live in the occupied West Bank. 50 ‘Israeli Arab’ children from Nazareth make up a total of 353.

The studied Israeli children lived either in areas, which could roughly be called “high-tension areas”, or in more peaceful surroundings. All the studied Palestinian children of the occupied West Bank lived in locations where violence was rather common. The Nazareth (“Israeli Arabs”) children lived in what could be called an outwardly peaceful situation, with rare outbreaks of open violence. The national groups differ also with regard to their social background: about half of the Palestinian children’s fathers, but only a quarter of the Israelis’ were manual labourers — the Palestinians normally occupying the bottom of the employment ladder. A fifth of the Palestinian children’s fathers were not working (unemployed, dead or abroad). Most of the Israeli Jews came from the “white collar” class.

The Children’s Personal Experience of War and Violence

The studied Palestinian children had more traumatic experiences related to war and conflict than the Israeli sample. Of the West Bank children, 87 % had been personally involved in at least one violent confrontation with Israeli security forces; many were involved time and again in such confrontations. Two thirds of the sampled Palestinian children had lost a family member to an Israeli prison during their short lives. 39 % of the West Bank children had lost a family member in war or other violent attacks, while 21 % of the Israeli children had suffered a similar loss. 37 % of the West Bank children had a member of their family wounded in war-like circumstances, as against 29 % of the Israeli Jews sampled. Surprisingly common to Palestinian groups were their father’s participation in war — 26 %. 76 % of the Israeli fathers had fought in war. Also true for both national groups was the fact that boys did not differ from girls in suffering from war and violence.

CHILDREN’S ATTITUDES — the children of both national groups were by and large accepting war and questions related to it. The willingness to justify the ‘necessity’ of war comes out in the children’s attitudes towards war in general, the fight for their own nation’s goals, and their attitudes towards the prospects of peace. The children’s loyalty and “patriotism” — as it

is commonly defined — provide the most definite answer: both groups of children showed high cohesion in not questioning this issue. Palestinian children’s approval-loyalty and patriotism — was marginally higher than that of Israeli Jews studied; they approved of fighting and of their own nation’s struggle as a means of solving the national conflict. The concept of war might be identified by those children to mean “The Palestinian revolution”; that is perhaps why they — the children of the oppressed nation — felt more often than Israeli children that war serves a positive purpose, in that it could result in a Palestinian state.

Israeli and Palestinian children stress their feelings of national loyalty and responsibility in a different way. Palestinian children admired unconditionally — 97 % — the “Feda’iyeen” (= those willing to die in struggle for their country and nation). 98 % also dreamt that their father could become a war hero, and generally stressed positively the idealistic sides of the struggle/war.

Israeli children took a more pragmatic — and less romantic — stand towards involvement in the national war. 94 % of the Israeli children wanted to be good soldiers as they grew older, and 87 % were ready to carry out any order in a battle or war. The percentage of Israeli and Palestinian children, who were ready to die for their own country was very high: 87 % and 92 %, respectively. The children studied were quite pessimistic about the prospects of peace — both in the world in general, and in their own country in particular. Two thirds of all the children held the opinion that there will always be wars in the world, and that there will be war/wars in their country when they are adults.

As opposed to some earlier studies elsewhere, boys and girls in my sample did not differ significantly from each other in their attitudes to war in general, or in their willingness to take part in the fight, and in their assessment of the prospects of peace. The explanation of this result may lie in the “socialisation to war” in actual conflict situation, or in the fact that both Israeli and Palestinian girls take an active part in their respective national struggle. Israeli girls serve in the regular military forces, and Palestinian girls take an active part in demonstrations against the Israeli occupation — and may, as adults, join ‘freedom fighting’ units.

I found that among Palestinian children, those who had many personal experiences of war inclined to approve of war as a means of solving a problem. The death of a member of the family in war or during an attack, or the loss of a family-member into an Israeli prison, had especially encouraged a positive attitude to war, both in general and to their own nation’s struggle — just as it encouraged the feelings of loyalty in a war-like situation.

Taking into consideration the factors of age, nationality and suffering from warlike traumatic events (on the individual level), we can conclude that societies in conflict and under aggression, have great difficulties in bringing up peace loving citizens.

Both national groups in this Middle East conflict brought up children who showed considerably higher degree of approval of war than did, i.e., children in the United States studied during the Vietnam War.

CHILDREN’S FEARS — the fear scale used in this research consists, on the one hand, of the same fears which are familiar to children in many parts of the world and on the other hand, of fears connected to this particular conflict/occupation and war, and also included were fears related to the children’s own security.

On the whole, Palestinian children showed both more numerous and more intense fears, than the Israeli children studied. Boys in both national groups registered fewer fears than girls. Thus, the national differences are largely due to more intensive fears among Palestinian girls, than among Israeli girls.

The most severe fears, among both national groups, were those related to the child’s own security. Such fears were registered in reply to e.g.: “Father does not return home,” “I will be driven away from home,’’ “Our house/home will be destroyed’’ and ‘’Something bad may happen to my family.’’ Two thirds of the Israeli children studied, and 80 % of the Palestinian children feared ‘much’ or ‘very much’ threats related to their own security.

The most serious fear among Israeli children was: “Terrorists would/may attack our home.” An attack against the home — the most secure haven, the family — is the nightmare of a child’s imagination. Further, when the Israeli child is thinking of a “terrorist”, he can only assume a passive role — the victim of such an attack — and almost the only way to cope with such fear is to suppress it. Similar fears, which registered high among Israeli children were:“Rocket and bomb attack.” Another fear, which registered high among them is: “Taking part in a battle.”

Among Palestinian children, the most serious fear was: “Father will be imprisoned”. That fear reflects a concrete danger in the children’s lives. Two thirds of the studied Palestinian children had a family member imprisoned by Israel. A number of the studied children had themselves undergone a day of interrogation in Israeli military detention cells. In addition to those fears, Palestinian children express great fear of the possibility that: “Our home would be destroyed.” That fear is also related to a real threat in the children’s lives. Destroying houses has been one of the methods of collective punishment used against the population in the occupied territories.

Both national groups scored high on the family related issues: “Something bad may happen to my family” and “father does not return home.” Both among the Israeli and Palestinian groups, fears related to one’s own personal security were greatest among those children who had been exposed to traumatic experiences of war and conflict. Personal experience with bomb explosions amongst Israeli children, and violent confrontations with occupation-forces among West Bank Palestinian children, increased the children’s general anxiety. On the other hand, war fears, such as: “Taking part in a battle,” “Guns and machine-guns” — as well as the sum total of all the fears were slightly higher among children who had suffered from war by e.g., losing a family member.

The relation between children’s fears and traumatic war experience is not uni-dimensional, and factors such as social norms related to the expression of fears, may have an effect on their answers. Israeli and Palestinian children differed most significantly from each other in fears of authority and punishment.

Such fears are e.g. punishment by father or teacher, performance at school etc. Palestinian and Israeli children also differ significantly with regard to fears of ghosts, sleeping in a dark room, being left alone and other ‘miscellaneous fears’. All these fears registered much higher among Palestinian children than among the Israelis. Both national groups in the Middle East showed a low level of social fears, when compared to European or American children.

CHILDREN’S AGGRESSION AND REACTIONS UNDER FRUSTRATING SITUATIONS — the children’s reactions were studied by means of a modified Rosenzweig drawing-frustration test, which is based on the frustration-aggression hypothesis. Israeli and Palestinian children showed roughly the same amount of aggression as measured by the Rosenzweig scoring model. The context and meaning of the children’s answers differed, however. Analyzing the Palestinian and Israeli groups showed that the children’s reactions to the frustrating situation are those of fear and anxiety, just as often as they are of aggression.

The situation of tension and conflict was reflected clearly and more totally in the Palestinian children’s answers than in the Israelis’. In those drawing situations, which were not directly connected to conflict or violence (i.e. those taken from the original Rosenzweig test), the Israeli children reflected their own children’s-world in their answers. The Palestinian children answered the same Rosenzweig neutral frustration drawings by expressing feelings of oppression, occupation, and their own violent experiences under occupation.

Such neutral drawings showing a mother asking a child: “What happened at school today?” could provide us with an illustrative example as to the differences between Israeli, Palestinian and Arab Nazareth children’s frustrations in daily life. Israeli children gave ‘normal’ answers describing regular happenings in school life. Nazarenes mainly answered by: “The teacher shouted at me”, or by “the teacher hit me” perhaps reflecting an inherent situation at their school; but the West Bank pupils’ answers clearly referred to events of occupation which were of a violent nature. A typical Palestinian answer was: “A soldier broke in to our class and tear-gassed us” or “Israeli soldiers had beaten us and the teacher.”

Thus, the amount of objective violence, threat and frustration registered by Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank overshadows all other sources of stress. The same pattern repeated itself in other neutral situations, to which Palestinian children responded by describing a variety of events of occupation, which are familiar to them. The Palestinian children’s answers were generally full of deep despair and frustration — often indicated by mentioning death and total destruction by occupation forces. On the other hand, the Palestinian children’s group showed much greater initiative — in order to solve their problem and the frustrating situations involved — than the Israeli group.

6. DISCUSSION

6.1. Israelis and Palestinians

This study presented the same questions and tests to two groups of children whose nations are enemies and unofficially at war. While the Jewish children live in a militarily powerful Israel, the Palestinians have no homeland or government of their own, and in fact live under foreign rule.

In a situation of national war and conflict, the differences between opponents are intensified. In a state of war both sides seek to divest the other of human image, and to deny that the other bears traits similar to oneself, in order to legitimize and simplify the inhuman treatment of the enemy. The enemies generally exaggerate and play up the differences between them, and are easily hurt when they are reminded of their common features.

In spite of the striking differences and the political dichotomy between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the tested children were sometimes movingly similar in describing their experiences and feelings regarding the Middle East war.

The Palestinian children living in the West Bank were the most unsheltered and most exposed to violence. They had suffered considerably due to the stresses of military occupation on them and their families. Their attitudes towards war and national struggle were more favourable than those of Israelis or of Palestinians living in Israel. The Palestinians’ attitudes underscored their uncompromising loyalty to the “Palestinian revolution”, i.e. to their own struggle. Particularly noteworthy were the idealistic attitudes they expressed towards their physical struggle. The Palestinian group, especially the girls, showed considerably more tearfulness than the Israelis. They manifested intensive fear of both things related to the war and to the conflict, as well as of so-called normal objects as fears. Among the Palestinian children, the amount of aggressive responses was about equal to that of the Israeli children.

There was evidence in the Palestinian group that personal exposure to traumatic losses and experiences due to war and violence had an impact on the children’s attitudes and emotions. We can conclude, however, that these relationships are not one-dimensional: The children who suffered the most traumatic experiences of war and violence expressed more readiness to choose war and fighting as a means to solve problems, but they had more fears of threats to their own security. Furthermore, children who had experienced violent confrontations with occupation soldiers expressed the most aggressiveness. Feelings of fear and deep despair were as common as aggression in the wake of the children’s experiences of frustrating, humiliating or violent situations.

Some researchers argue that, as a motivation to participate in war and fighting, the feelings of fear, horror and insecurity are more important than conscious feelings of aggression and hate vis-à-vis the enemy. In this view feelings of tearfulness dominate one’s emotions in frustrating situations, where the object of aggression or the source of frustration is inordinately superior or overwhelming (Bandura 1973).

Military occupation seems to pose a concrete threat to a child’s wellbeing and security; from early on, the child must share the parents’ economic worries; the departure of family members to exile, prison or war; and the latent and overt consequences of violence and of the constant threat of land confiscation. The verbal aggression towards the enemy was considerably more pronounced in the Palestinian children’s open answers, as compared with their reactions to the semi-projective picture-frustration test. The children’s answers concerning actual confrontations with the occupation realities suggested that intense feelings of fear and despair, may well underlie their aggressive and heroic statements. The Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank seem to be torn between heroism, pride and courage on the one hand, and the objective danger, horror and tearfulness on the other. When a child expresses his aggression towards the soldiers in real life, he makes himself, and often his family as well, victims of both physical and mental violence, and punishments of various kinds. On the other hand, when questioned after participating in violent demonstrations, children replied that they cannot afford to be afraid of the soldiers. They seem to assume the entire responsibility of fighting for their homeland and even of returning the land to their parents. If a demonstrating child were to admit his fear of the enemy soldiers, he would fall prey to the danger of experiencing not only external violence but — to more daunting — inner anxiety and horror.

It is possible that their firm trust in their own strength as a stone-throwing “army”, and their deep admiration of, and identification with their own fighters, may be psychologically functional as a protection against the horrors evoked by the occupation situation. Yet, how long can this state of affairs persist? Admiration and respect may be considered positive and constructive feelings, but a situation of unresolved war and violence always calls forth negative and harmful feelings. Moreover, a stress-laden political reality often means, tragically, the denial of all natural feelings. Even if recklessness, fearlessness and bravery are psychologically functional means of coping in certain specific situations, they will have negative consequences for a child’s development if the external reality continues to be marked by violence, and if the insecurity and threatening situation to which the child is exposed is overbearing, as is the case in the occupied West Bank.

While interviewing children in the West Bank I was constantly regaled with heroic stories and declarations: “We are going to continue our fight and our demonstrations until we rid ourselves of the occupier and we have built our own state” … “I have no choice but to fight; if I show fear and run, or if we show signs of weakness to the enemy, they will expel us all”. Enjoying the company of all these energetic and brave children, I said in frustration, “Please bring me one child who is AFRAID of the soldiers, one child who would get cold feet in demonstrations and would suffer in this meaningless oppression”. “Here they are, the same children”, my assistant replied…

Similarly, Israeli children are also exposed to traumatic experiences due to war and conflict. Even if the Israeli parents find it somewhat easier to shelter their children in the face of enemy violence than the Palestinians, they cannot guarantee them a normal childhood with real prospects for future either. To guarantee security in an unresolved conflict situation demands great political, military, economic and human sacrifices, and we must bear in mind that the morality of a nation that occupies another nation is in constant danger.

A thorough analysis of the long-term effects of the threat of militarization and war on people’s psychological and social wellbeing, must take into account indirect factors. Also

this study, which merely studies the direct consequences of enemy violence on children’s psychological reactions, cannot produce anything but an imperfect picture of the subjects’ psychic and social reality.

Characteristic of Israeli children’s attitudes is their pragmatic loyalty vis-à-vis “their own fight”. Their future self-image as an adult is “naturally” that of a soldier.

“Of course, I will become a good soldier and do my best in battle”; “No, not because I like wars especially, but I love my country, and an Israeli has to be a good soldier”, explained nine-year-old Amos.

The ambivalent ideological outlook, which pervades every bellicose society, according to which peace is a good thing, but one’s own war is nevertheless highly esteemed and legitimized, was reflected in the children’s answers. Some of the Israeli children’s answers reflected also the deep-rooted fear of persecution, which permeates the Israeli society due to the experience of the Holocaust. The present enemies are identified with the former ones (the Nazis) not only in war propaganda, but also in children’s minds. “We do not want to go to war, but because everybody hates the Jews, we have to fight”, was the comment of some children in response to the questions about enemies. The issue of life-or-death, the “either you or me”-syndrome, which usually becomes familiar only in extreme combat situations, seems highly familiar to all Israelis from a very early age. The logic and the ethos of war have become an immanent part of daily life in Israel; ideas related to war and survival usually assume a symbolic meaning; war also seems to be the third partner in human relationships.

The study sample incorporated also a small group representing Palestinians who live in Israel, most of whom are Israeli citizens. They are also known as “the Arabs of Israel”, or “Israeli Arabs”, or, in the daily parlance of occupied Palestine, as “The Jew’s Arabs”, or “The 1948 Arabs” (who remained inside the cease-fire lines).

This diversity of nomenclature aptly reflects the unclear political and psychological position of this population. Constituting 15 % of the population of Israel within the pre-1967 borders, they consist of those Palestinians and their progeny, who refused to flee or who were not expelled in the wake of the 1948 war and the establishment of the Israeli state. Even though they constitute a relatively large minority in the Jewish state, their role and position is delicate, since objectively they belong to the Palestinian nation, which is at war with the state whose citizens they are. They have been termed the ‘invisible man’ in the Israeli-Arab conflict (Smooha and Peretz, 1982), and they have been disregarded by Israel, by the Arab States and until recently, even by the Palestinian resistance movement.

Understandably, their identity and political orientation have been much surveyed and studied. Until the June 1967 war the Arab minority was to a large extent politically passive, the victim of suspicion by both the Israeli Jews and the larger Arab world. After the 1967 war and with added intensity after the October 1973 war, the attitudes of Israeli Arabs have become rapidly politicized, with distinctive patterns that differentiated them from the country’s Jewish majority, which still discriminates against them. In parallel to the growing prestige and power of the Palestinian resistance movement, shifts in their attitudes towards a “Palestinian identity” occurred.

Smooha (1980) argues, however, that the stand the Palestinians in Israel take toward the conflict (which in turn is closely linked with their self-identity) is moulded by bow well or badly they are treated by the authorities, rather than by factors beyond Israel’s control.

In the present study the small, and unrepresentative, group of Arab children living in Israel significantly differed from both the Israeli Jews and the Palestinian children in their reactions and emotions towards the conflict. Most prominently they differed in their attitudes vis-à-vis a child’s own loyalty and sense of responsibility in a combat situation. We noted that while Israeli Jews, as well as Palestinians under occupation, tend to believe that it is their own responsibility to fight for their nation, the Palestinian children living in Israel as Israeli citizens showed far greater caution with respect to their involvement in the national struggle. Their tearfulness was slightly more intense than both of the other national groups, but their reactions in the situations of daily frustration were more similar to those of Israeli Jewish children than to those of the children under occupation. In their responses they evoked daily incidents, conflicts and emotions, which were not strongly connected to the war or to the national conflict, in contrast to the Palestinians living under military occupation.

This study on Israeli and Palestinian children is descriptive in nature.However, the differences between national groups suggest that children’s psychological reactions can be partly understood through their living conditions. The effect may be at least two fold: the national-political situation in general, and the children’s own exposure to it. In this study, only the latter could be empirically measured — through the children’s own traumatic experiences of war and violence. It was noted that this personal exposure to enemy violence or to experiences of loss due to war had an effect on children’s attitudes only in the group of Palestinian children living under occupation. We may conclude that the existence of traumatization as such cannot account for the more determined attitudes towards fighting, the more intense security fears, or the more openly expressed aggression. Rather it is the combined effect of the child’s own exposure to traumatic experience and of his/her being a member of a nation at war.

6.2. Evaluation of the Methods

Most of the tests employed in this study had to be modified or constructed especially for the purpose of the study. The validity, reliability and interpretation of the tests caused problems in the planning stage of the study, and in the analysis of the results. This study may be considered a general survey concerning the attitudes and emotions of the children living in an area of war and conflict. The following questions should be taken into consideration in the development of more appropriate methods for the study of “children of conflict”.

The construction of the sum variables of the attitude and fear items proved problematic. Underlying the construction of sum variables is the theoretical assumption that items can be divided into certain categories which are essential for the purposes of the study. As a theoretical basis of appraisal, earlier studies were utilized (Preston 1942; Scherer-Nakamura 1968; Tolley 1973). Their material differed from that of the present study, among other points, with regard to children’s exposure to traumatic experiences. The functionality of the earlier theoretical categories for this study was studied by means of factor analysis. The result of the analysis, as well as correlation and reliability measurements, showed that the earlier attitude categories were inappropriate for this study, although the fear categories used by Scherer and Nakamura were

adaptable to deal with our material.

The factor analysis of the children’s attitudes showed that in the actual situation of threat and danger, children are unable to extrapolate from the reality in which they were living, so as to make a distinction between the moral aspects of war and the principles over which it is fought.

Thus, already in the stage of planning and constructing the study methods, it is necessary to define the nature of the conflict, violence and threat, as well as their proximity to and connection with the child.

The fear scale performed quite well in the study, according to the statistical criteria. The new categories constructed for the purpose of the study — fears of war and conflict and fears concerning the child’s own security — were functional according to the factorial solution. To obtain a complete picture of the nature and intensity of children’s fears, the use of a comparison group — children living in peaceful conditions — would have been necessary. Through the comparison group it would have been possible to discover whether children living in a conflict area have more fears, and what the interplay is between neutral fears and fears connected to their living conditions. It would also be important to study the dynamics and meaning of the different fears. A “pen-and-ink” test of children’s tearfulness can only provide hints about their life situation, and the results are strongly affected by social desirability.

All the children in all the tested school classes were fond of the picture test. We were successful in utilizing the children’s motivation to get them to respond honestly to the test.

In order to facilitate the child’s identification with the picture situations, the test was modified to make it as familiar as possible, with the situations in the pictures oriented toward the child’s own experiences. As this method is developed further, it will be important to be able to define precisely the degree of the identification of the subject and the factors which predict it.

The traditional scoring method devised by Rosenzweig provided very meagre results. The content analysis of the children’s answers gave somewhat more detailed information about the children’s reactions in frustrating or stressful situations. However, the content analysis used in this study was incomplete: the children’s answers were only described. On the basis of the Israeli and Palestinian children’s answers, a new classification should be made, and the psychological meaning and dynamics of the contents of the answers should be studied.

The assumption that all the situations in the study would produce an identical degree of frustration, may well be criticized. Similarly, the degree of emotion evocation and the importance of different situations of frustration, cannot be assumed to be identical for Israeli and Palestinian children.

The issue under study — the impact of war, conflict and violence on children’s psychological reactions, wellbeing and development — demands a more thorough development of study methods. In addition to “pen-and-ink” tests, interviews and individual testing could be adapted as study methods. The use of this kind of group testing causes problems, inter alia, in concept formation and in defining the differences of meaning of these concepts for the tested children.

6.3. Questions Without Answers

The strong acceptance of norms of heroism prevailing in conflict societies was hypothesized to explain some of the children’s responses. For example, the relation between certain traumatic experiences — the death of a family member in war, or father taking part in a war — and minor fears, may be partly the result of the fact that the self-image of these “martyr-children” is characterized by their admiration of courage, heroism and fearlessness. It was hypothesized in this study, that if the children had wished to answer strictly according to the social desirability and norms prevailing in their societies, they would have tended do deny their fears, especially those related to war and conflict, to express intense aggression vis-à-vis enemy, and to show readiness to fight for their national aims. We found few children who showed complete socialization to the norms demanded by a bellicose society in our sample of Palestinian and Israeli children.

However, empirical analysis should be undertaken of the existence of heroic norms and their impact on children’s psyches. One possible means to this might be the measurement and comparison of the norms and values expressed by parents, teachers and national leaders on the one hand, and children’s attitudes, emotions and feelings on the other.

The question of what children understand by the concepts of war and peace demands a more thorough analysis. It is noteworthy that the word “war” had a different meaning for Israeli and Palestinian children who are enemy-partners, as it were, in the same conflict. For a Palestinian child, war meant a nationalistic struggle to re-acquire his own country and to end the military occupation. For an Israeli child, war referred to defending the borders and fighting the enemy. The image of war, its contextual and practical meaning in the minds of children living in societies differing in their degree of threat, war memories, cold war attitudes and actual fighting, requires further research.

It may not be a widely known fact that it is as easy or difficult to educate children for peace as for war. It was found that Norwegian children regarded peace as a normal way of life and they need not actively maintain it. One might argue that people who spend their entire lives under war conditions, as is the case in the Middle East, have learned to regard war and enemies as normal elements of life, and that it is not necessary to make an active effort to effect a change in the situation. However, empirical evidence must be provided to support this quite uncompromising statement regarding socialization to war conditions.

There are undoubtedly many differences between the culture, norms, values, education, aims and morals in peaceful countries and in countries at war. A change in the peacetime ethic of loving one’s neighbour to meet the wartime demands of the necessity of killing cannot but generate deep changes in people’s social relationships in general, in personality development, and indeed throughout the entire society. The study of these changes and characteristics in bellicose and peaceful societies would be difficult, important and fascinating.

Previous studies of the effects of war on children’s psyches have pointed out that the traumatic nature of war affects the child’s psychic wellbeing and development primarily through his/her parent’s mental state, especially the mother’s. To gain a deeper understanding of the impact of war and external violence on the growing child’s psyche, we must study the child as a part of his/her nation, but also as a member of his/her primary surroundings: the family. The questions to be considered are how the existence of external threat and danger affects the

family’s dynamics, the roles of the parents and of the children, the relations of the family to the society, the possible effects on parental functioning, and the emotional climate of the family.

The child’s socialization process in a peaceful and in a bellicose society requires thorough study. Such research should bear in mind that in times of war information about the human psyche and its operation is used to further the aims of the combatant society, in the service of war propaganda or in order to denigrate the enemy. Even today, all our illusions about the “positive effects of war”, such as greater cohesion, deepening friendship, and heroism, are not based on empirical or scientific evidence.

It is speculated that children who are forced to resort to war-like strategies of behaviour during war times, will be more prone to accept quasi-military and violent means of solving problems when they encounter stress as adults. This contention places a heavy responsibility on parents and public leaders, since what children learn today, they will practice tomorrow. “At least six people were killed yesterday in an air-raid by Israelis on the Lebanese south coast, according to a Palestinian spokesman in Beirut...” said a brief news item. But an Israeli pilot who took part in the attack, said on the radio: “We are nothing more than a bunch of kids. Only yesterday we were going to school carrying our school bags on our backs and a lunchbox in our hands. And today we have strong, destructive weapons in our hands, and carry a manʼs responsibility on our shoulders. We could not have imagined that the adult world would be so different”.

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APPENDIX I

ARABIC and HEBREW Questionnaires

APPENDIX 2

THE VARIABLE LIST

1. The tested children 1-353

2. Nationality 1. Israelis (Jews)2. Palestinians in West Bank3. Palestinians Living in Israel (=Israeli Arabs)

3. Place of residence 1. Rural village (Israel)2. Big town3. Northern border town4. Big town5. Kibbutz #16. Refugee camp #1 (Palestine)7. Refugee camp #28. Town in West Bank9. Town in West Bank10. Rural village (Palestine)11. Israeli Arab town12. Kibbutz #213. Kibbutz #314. Small town (Israel)

Attitudes Towards War and Peace (0-2)

4. Wars are sometimes needed5. It is good to die for our country6. Israelis/Palestinians have no alternative but to fight7. War is always bad8. War is good when Israelis/Palestinians win over their enemies9. I want to be a good soldier/freedom fighter when I get older10. Everybody suffers from war11. When I am grown up there will no longer be wars in our country12. In war one should execute all orders, even those which in my opinion are unjust13. Participating in a battle is an experience14. Wars can be prevented15. Wars sometimes have positive results16. There will always be wars in the world17. Wars have caused damage to our nation18. I admire soldiers/freedom fighters19. Wars have had a positive effect on our nation20. We all want there to be no more wars21. Our wars have united our nation22. Peace will come only if Israel/the Palestinians will be strong23. I would like my father to be a hero

24. We will always have enemies25. Gender (1) Boy (2) Girl26. Age (1) 9 years (2) 10-11 years (3) 13 years27. Country of birth* (applied to Israeli Jews only)

(1) Israel (2) USA (3) Western Europe (4) USSR/other socialist country(5) Arab/Islamic country (6) South America (7) South Africa (8) Other

28. At what age did you immigrate to Israel* ? (1) Younger than four (2) 5-9 years old (3) Older than 10 years

29. Country of father’s birth* (Classification is the same as in variable 27)

30. Father’s occupation**(1) Self-employed(2) High official(3) Lower official(4) Skilled worker(5) Unskilled worker(6) Farmer(7) Kibbutz member(8) Army/security service

31. Number of brothers and sisters**(1) None(2) 1-3(3) 4-6(4) 7-9(5) 10 or more

**Open question, classified according to children’s answers.

Personal Experiences of War and Conflict (1-2)

32. Father army staff (Israeli Jews)Relative in prison (Palestinians)

33. Father took part in war34. Relative killed in war or war-like action35. Relative wounded in war or war-like action36. Neighbour or friend killed in war or war-like action37. Neighbour or friend wounded in war or war-like action38. Saw or heard an explosion, a terrorist act or shelling incident (Israeli Jews)

Involved in a violent confrontation with soldiers or “Border Police” (Palestinians)

Children’s Opinions -- Open Questions

39. Dream about war or a battle40. Dream about peace41. Who are our enemies?42. Who are our friends and allies?43. Why do we have enemies and a war?44. What should be done with the enemy?45. How can the breaking out of more wars in the Middle East be prevented?

Children’s Fears

46. Mice and rats (1-4)47. I can’t breathe48. Terrorists (Israeli Jews),

Soldiers and “Border Police” (Palestinians)49. Ghosts and spooks50. I am taken to hospital51. I get lost in a strange place52. A snake53. Teacher expels me from class54. The police beat me up55. My father does not return home56. Terrorist attack, bomb explosion, shelling (Israeli Jews)

Attack by soldiers or police (Palestinians)57. The siren of an ambulance58. Going to the dentist59. Other children mock me60. Spiders61. I am travelling on a bus62. I get bad marks in exams63. Guns and submachine guns64. I am in a battle65. Fire (house burning)66. I am wounded67. I am in the middle of a crowd68. Thunder, lightning69. Sound of alarm sirens70. I am thrown out of the house71. I am checked upon entering an official building72. My parents are fighting73. I am performing in front of other pupils74. My father is going to reserve duty (Israeli Jews)

My father is going to prison (Palestinians)75. My friends criticize me76. I have to be together with strangers77. I see blood78. Barking dogs

79. Soldiers80. Armoured cars, tanks81. I sleep in a dark room82. Our home is destroyed83. I am left alone84. Sound of a jet fighter85. My father punishes me86. Participating in a demonstration87. I contract a serious illness88. Police detain me89. I have to wear odd and extraordinary clothes90. Terrorists (Israeli Jews)

“Border Guard” or Soldiers attack our home (Palestinians)91. I am driving a car92. Something bad happens to my family93. Scorpions____________________________________________________

Sum variable of war and conflict-bound experiences (1-4)

Children’s Aggressive Responses (Picture Test) (1-9)

95. I am sorry I hit you96. I finally caught you, you bastard97. There was an explosion/attack in your street98. Another bomb in a bus (Israeli Jews)

The military government has ordered the shop closed (Palestinians)99. We demand a Palestinian state (Israeli Jews)

I’ll teach you to throw stones, you wicked person (Palestinians)100. The terrorists have destroyed IDF bases (Israeli Jews)

The Israeli army has destroyed bases of Palestinian freedom fighters (Palestinians) 101. What has happened to you?102. I hear shooting, and I don’t know where father and mother are103. Don’t make so much noise, your father is ill104. Nobody knows how long we have to stay here105. We must throw the Jews into the sea (Israeli Jews)

We must deport the Arabs (Palestinians)106. You broke my favourite doll107. It was your home, which they destroyed108. Father has told that because of the tension on the border, he has to stay on reserve duty

(Israeli Jews) Because curfew still continues, we have to eat the same soup as yesterday (Palestinians)

109. You are such a coward that you never will be a hero110. What happened at school today?111. Why did they have to attack our school?112. We do not want to play with you anymore113. Everybody out (Israeli Jews)

Go away at once, this country does not belong to you anymore (Palestinians)114. Soldiers/terrorists are shooting, quickly to the shelter

Sum Variables

115. The moral judgment of war — variables 4, 7, 10, 13, 15116. The struggle of the child’s own nation — variables 6, 8, 17, 18, 21117. Loyalty and feelings of responsibility in a war variables 5, 9, 12,18, 23118. Prospects for peace — variables 11, 14, 16, 20, 24119. Total sum of attitudes towards war and peace120. Fears of animals — variables 46, 52, 60, 78, 93121. Physical fears — variables 47, 50, 58, 66, 77, 87122. Fears of war and conflict — variables 48, 54, 56, 57, 63, 64, 69123. Social fears — variables 59, 67, 73, 75, 76, 89124. Fears concerning the child’s own security — variables 55, 70, 71, 74, 82, 88, 90, 92125. Fears of authority and punishment — variables 53, 62, 72, 85 0-4126. Miscellaneous fears — variables 49, 51, 61, 65, 68, 81, 83, 91 0-4127. Total tearfulness, intensity of all fears 0-4128. Dichotomal sum of all fears, number of fears 1-2221. Aggression directed outwards 1-15222. Aggression directed towards 1-15223. Feelings of aggression ignored 1-15331. Obstacle-dominance type of reaction 1-15332. Ego-defence type of reaction 1-15333. Need-persistence type of reaction 1-15

APPENDIX 3

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH SITES AND TEST SITUATIONS

Israeli (Jews)

1. Village school near Jerusalem. The children come from the nearby Moshavim (co-operative village), a peaceful rural environment. “These children experience the Israeli wars, violence, shelling and terror only through television and radio”, says their teacher. Most of their parents — even if they have been farmers before — now work in Jerusalem. Some of the children expressed their concern about their parents and sisters having to go daily “to the more dangerous areas”. Few of the children themselves, however, had personal experiences of war.

The children’s behaviour in tests lends at least partial support to the assumption of their secure environment. For instance, they thought that the picture test was a nice game; they used a great deal of imagination in describing the situations depicted, and unlike in the case of some other groups who had traumatic experiences, the situations did not seem to cause any anxiety. Indeed, they welcomed the tests with enthusiasm and worked seriously on them; some of them even asked afterwards: “Is that all the pictures you’ve got?” or “Can I take one questionnaire for my friend?” The children asked several questions about the test, most of them in fluent English. The children could not understand why the instructions said that there were no right or wrong answers. They asked: “Can I answer like this...”, and we answered: “You write just as you like and how you feel”. In all Israeli schools, children were very anxious to avoid “wrong answers”. The village children also asked us a lot of personal questions, such as “Where are you from?”, “How would Finnish children answer these questions?”, and “Where is Finland?”

2. Big town. The school was located in the vicinity of an old Jewish market place, a noisy and crowded place that was also known as the ‘‘bomb market’’. During the study, bombs were found almost weekly there, causing several casualties and substantial material damage. The school class that participated in the test had often heard or seen these explosions, and sometimes had run back to the classroom in panic after witnessing an explosion. The children also used to climb on the walls near the market place, and some of them had been wounded.

On the basis of individual interviews, it was evident that the children felt insecure. Many of the children reported that they avoided the so-called “bomb buses’’ and that they were afraid of terrorists. The town seemed to be quite peaceful, but the threat of bomb explosions or attacks, often shown on TV, caused deep anxiety. They seldom showed “heroic” or nationalistic attitudes, and they felt that they were alone with their fears; they believed that nobody else felt the same way.

The teacher showed great concern for her class and was very upset to hear about the fears and anxiety of the children. It is generally believed that children can better cope with the threat of bombs.

The class had participated in another study concerning peace as a generally moral concept and practical solution between nations. Therefore the children were familiar with the subject of our study, which is why they asked few questions about the test.

3. Northern border town, Qiriat Shemona, is located at the foot of the verdant mountains of Lebanon. It is a so-called developing town that the government has established to receive young couples and emigrants, mainly from Islamic countries.

The town has been the target of numerous tragic acts of terror. During the test period, the inhabitants spent their nights mostly in shelters; in daytime, shelling from the Palestinian bases in Lebanon made them seek shelter. Many of the families interviewed had plans to move out to “more normal circumstances”. On the other hand, leaving was considered a sign of lack of solidarity and surrender. Apart from the military threat, the children were afraid of losing their friends and being left alone, but they also showed patriotism.

The school where the test was conducted had been attacked twice, and most of the casualties were schoolchildren. Only a month earlier a shell had hit the neighbouring class, and the children had rushed in panic to the shelter. Many of the children said that they felt safe only in the shelters, where they often slept their nights and spent their schooldays.

The children were familiar with the subject of the test. There had been projects in which psychologists and social workers had tried to help the people cope with the constant threat. Children had been also interviewed by the Israeli media. Some themes in the tests were supposedly quite painful for the children. This, however, was not displayed in their working: they answered the test questions in a shorter time than other classes (45 min.), and the only thing that seemed to worry them was whether they got the answers right. These children were more shy and “grown up” than other classes. After the test, they sang the winning melody of the recent Eurovision Song Contest, “Hallelujah, Hallelujah”, and two peace songs.

4. Big town - Haifa. The school is in the city centre. Most of the children came from lower middle class families. They live in a peaceful and secure environment, but they were familiar with the Middle East conflict through the media. In Haifa there has been virtually no military violence.

The children were very pleased because the test interrupted their schoolwork. “We are bored with coming to school”, they said. They were the liveliest (or wildest) class in the test. The teacher had difficulties in maintaining order during the test. The children made dozens of questions and were eager to relate their own feelings, experiences and fears. The teacher had to tell the children over and over again that they should not tell the answers to their classmates but write them down on the paper. One boy needed help in filling the forms; he was an immigrant who did not yet know Hebrew. After the test they asked even more questions. They were curious to know why such tests were done, who would use them and what would happen to their answers, whether I knew how to use a computer, whether Finnish people were able to read their answers, and so on. And they went on: “Do you like Israel?”, “Where do you live?”, “How old are you?”, “Have you heard the Israeli Eurovision song?”

5. Kibbutz. Kibbutz is a communal village where property, production and consumption are planned and decided upon collectively. Such a community aims at satisfying all the needs of its members, and is thus rather autonomous and independent within Israeli society. About 3 % of

the Israelis live in kibbutzim. These were earlier mainly agricultural collectives that also played an important role in national defence. Today a considerable share work in industrial production and use external labour.

Most kibbutz children live in special children’s houses and are looked after by specialized educational personnel. The children spend a few hours a day with their parents. The children from three kibbutzim participating in the test also lived in such houses (Kfar Masaryk, Merhavia, Mishmar Ha’emek – All belong to Hashomer Hatza’ir movement of the “Zionist Left”).

The groups were small (10 children) and needed a lot of help in filling the questionnaires. On the other hand, it was up to the children themselves whether they wanted to take part in the test. They wanted to know the purpose of the test and its possible consequences for the kibbutz and for Israel. They showed the least interest towards the test.

The kibbutz children tended to answer collectively. Very often they asked whether they had to do the test by themselves or with the others. For instance, they would be much more afraid if they had to meet the frightening things all on their own.

Palestinians

1. Girl class in the Dheishe refugee camp. The girls had returned to school four days before the test after having spent two weeks under curfew. Curfew is one of the punishments used by the military government against the Palestinian communities. Before starting the test, the children insisted on telling about their experiences during curfew. Their stories suggested that they had experienced but also overcome fear, frustration and anxiety during the days when large families were closed in small camp houses. In their camp there had been continuous confrontations between the children and the soldiers, and they were familiar with all kinds of violence and threat stemming from the occupation. The girls knew that they were going to have to work overtime to fill the gap in the curriculum caused by the two weeks’ absence.

The girls took the test very seriously. They were flattered and felt themselves important because a researcher was interested in their opinions and experiences. They asked many questions and wanted to show their answers to each other and the conductor of the study. They seemed to have a need for acceptance. After finishing the test they giggled and were clearly excited. They could not hide their curiosity: “What is your name...?”, ‘’Where do you live?”, “Do you love Palestine?’’ They did not take the time to wait for the answer, but hid their faces in their hands, laughing, until the next girl repeated the same questions. But during the test the class was completely silent.

2. Boy class in a refugee camp. The boys who participated in the test attended school seven hours a day instead of the usual five. They were working to catch up with the time lost when the military government closed their school for two months. This had obviously been a long time for boys of this age, and some of them never returned to school; during the two months they had probably found a job in Israel. The reason why the school was closed was that some children had been caught red-handed in throwing stones towards a military vehicle patrolling in the refugee camp. The life in the camp is severely affected by the occupation. The children constantly at odds with

the soldiers, and they had been detained, interrogated and even tortured (Langer 1979). The boys seemed to identify themselves with the situations depicted in the picture test collectively. “This is just what the soldiers did in our school”, “This has happened to us too” — these were their comments on pictures depicting confrontation. Otherwise they concentrated on the questionnaire silently and seriously. They asked only few questions, but filling the questionnaire took them two hours, including a break we took.

3. Girl class in town. There is hardly any school in this town where the children would not be familiar with conflicts between pupils and soldiers. The children and the occupation troops seem very conscious of each other. During the research period, the least provocation was sufficient to raise the hidden hatred of the civilians, which would burst out in demonstrations. Many of the schools had been closed by military order, new settlements would rise everywhere, and the Palestinian leaders were detained or humiliated. When the girls told about these incidents, it seemed obvious that they considered it their personal duty to fight the injustices. They planned peaceful demonstrations, “just something which irritates the soldiers, like standing silently, not moving at all”. “We want to show them, we will not let them forget what we Palestinians think of their presence in this country”, says one of the girls.

The way in which this school class works suggests that the girls mature rapidly because of their strong political consciousness. The girls took a very critical, yet serious, concentrated attitude to the test, and seemed to be very proud of having been chosen for the test. Their questions concerned their own security and the security of their school, they would answer only if they were sure that the Israelis would not get access to their answers. Still, when some hesitated, others explained that “The world has to know about our life and about what we Palestinians think”.

4. Boy class in town. As expected, the “fighting activists” of this class were no less enthusiastic about the test than the girls. The teacher was present in the test situation to maintain discipline in the class. These boys worked quietly and rapidly, a few questions were presented. The boys found the questions too difficult and needed help in answering. A tall, red-haired boy raised his hand to ask: “What should I answer to the question, has somebody from my family has been in prison? I myself have been in prison for 11 days”. When asked why, he answered: “Falastin”, referring to the struggle for free Palestine.

Palestinians from Israel, Nazareth, town.

There is no consensus upon what the Palestinians living in Israel should be called. For the sake of simplicity, I have here called them Palestinians, although they could just as well be called “Israeli Arabs”. The Arab minority accounts for 15 % of the population of Israel. They are descendants of the Palestinians who stayed in the area when the state of Israel was established. The social and psychological reality of these Palestinians is bound to be problematic. They are expected to be loyal citizens of a state that is at war with their countrymen. In economic terms they seem to be second-class citizens. In social terms the Jews and the Arabs keep apart, intermarriages are very rare. There has been much research into the highly interesting question about the identity of Arabs living in Israel. A general trend would seem to be that the crystallization of Palestinian national identity, unity and pride in the PLO and its sub-organizations also reach the Israeli Arabs, who identify themselves more readily with Palestinians than with the Israelis. A 24 year-old student says about his identity: “In our school we studied Jewish history, Jewish literature and Jewish geography. We learned about our own history that some tribes, Bedouins had been

living here before the establishment of the state. At the university I speak their language, and about my own nation I learn that they are enemies, undefined terrorists. How could I identify with this state whose whole policy is directed against us, the enemy”.

Trying to get permission to test a class in the Arab school, taught us something of the intricate identity of the Palestinians living in Israel. The headmaster wanted to be helpful, and politely tried to persuade us not to test the children of his school. He was very afraid: he was sure that the Israeli authorities would somehow manage to lay their hands on the answers; “This is too dangerous, you, as an outsider living in a peaceful society may not understand it”. He read the questions concerning attitudes, and this was his comment:

“Our children are too young to know what the Palestinians are. Our children are not familiar with the problems of war and peace. Speaking politics in our school is useless and dangerous. You will ask the children if wars have united their nation. Children are not going to understand that, they do not have a concept of their own nation, they do not belong to any nation, they belong to a minority without a clear identity. You see, the situation is different for a Jewish school class, they are taught civil defence, their own nation’s history, activities of Israeli Defence forces. They know why they fight, they have their memory days and heroes. To die for one’s own country... This is naturally suitable to Jewish children, but our children do not have a country of their own. They are not going to understand these questions”.

Many Israeli Arabs have different views of their children’s national consciousness. The way in which the Palestinian children in this Israeli school answered the questions proved that the headmaster did not know his pupils. And the more reason he had to protect them.

APPENDIX 4

CONSTRUCTION OF SUM VARIABLES DESCRIBINGATTITUDES AND FEARS

Different dimensions of attitudes and fears were examined by a variety of items. For the sake of conciseness, the items were combined into sum variables that were to express dimensions relevant to the problem. The content of the categories was specified on the basis of a) theoretical knowledge gained through prior research, and b) statistical treatment of this material.

Attitude Scale(a) The content of the attitude scales was originally determined on the basis of earlier research

results (Droba 1931; Cornell 1971; Preston 1942; Tolley 1973), Preston’s scale classification is based on results from factor analysis. Cornell and Tolley, for their part, have shown by their results the difference between attitudes to war in general and to war waged by the respondents’ own people. Judged by earlier research, the theoretical basis of the scales is thus relatively weak. Moreover, the functioning of the scales has not been studied previously in a Palestine or Israeli material, so that items falling into pre-specified categories should be checked statistically.

(b) The links between the items and the internal consistency of the categories was examined by correlations. To ensure a sufficient reliability of the scales (at least .50), intercorrelations between the items should be at least .20. The highest correlations of individual variables to the sum variables can also be taken as estimates of reliability (Kerlinger 1973, 452). Analysis of correlations did not justify the use of the scales laid down by other researchers in the further analysis of this material. Reliability based on correlations (Cronbach’s alfa coefficient) was too low for the use of the scales to be reliable. The correlations between the individual items and the sum variables were, on the other hand, with few exceptions, fairly high. Theoretically constructed scales are used in introducing results because of their consistency. However, the analysis is based on individual variables and the sum variable depicting the overall trend of attitudes (M199), the correlative reliability of which was .78.

(c) Factor analysis was used for checking whether there were any dimensions of attitude diverging from the pre-established categories in the material. Factor analysis was done by the polar axis method, and the highest correlation of the absolute value of each variable (item) was used as an estimate of communality. A Varimax rotation was carried out on 2-10 factors. A suitable number of factors were selected according to the theoretical classification (4 dimensions) and statistical criteria. Factorization was continued until the factors explained the extent of overall variation shown by the estimated communality. Further, the eigenvalue of a factor had to be at least one (Harman 1980,153; Peltonen 1970, 6). The number of factors on statistical grounds came to five, while pre-specified dimensions numbered four.

Only those variables whose loading on the factor in question — and on this factor only — was at least .33 could be included in the sum variable. This guaranteed that at least one third of the item’s variance was explained by the factor solution.

Categories which were found serviceable in factor solutions and which were consistent with the theoretical scales were “personal loyalty and a sense of duty in a state of war” and, with some adjustment, “attitude to the possibility of peace”. With certain reservations the general approval of war formed its own category, too. It was found on the basis of the factor solution that no separate scale measuring the “approval of my own people’s battle” could be set for the children. Most of the items theoretically laid down in this scale were strongly loaded on the “war in general” factor. The

fifth category remained unnamed in the factor solution, the most loaded item of which was M14: “It is possible to prevent the outbreak of the next war”. Theoretically the variable was to show the possibility of peace.

In all, the attitude factors explained 23 % of total variation in attitudes.General approval of war was the factor which explained most of the variation in attitudes. As the number of factor solutions was dropped, more and more attitude variables received highest loadings in the general factor of war.

Thus the result of the factor analysis justifies cautious use of pre-specified scales in the presentation of research material. There is reason in causal analysis, however, to use the total sum of attitudes, which also has a sufficient reliability. The low reliability of theoretically constructed scales, and the vacillation of certain items in factor solutions indicated that the scales were not homogeneous in content, i.e., the items measure more dimensions than the one intended. For this reason, this study aims at using the scales in a flexible way to reach conclusions, and the content of scales is presented as the outcome of individual variables. On the other hand, the placing of dissimilar items in different scales provides further information about the material, so that in further studies there would be reason to go well into the content of scales both theoretically and statistically.

Internal consistency of theoretical attitude scales as examined by correlation and reliability coefficients:

115 War in general

4 7 10 13 15 115(sum)

4 War is sometimes necessary l7 War is always a bad thing .12 110 Everyone suffers in war .06 .18 l13 Participating in battle is an “exciting experience” .25 -.29 .09 115 Wars sometimes have good effects .13 -.09 .05 .15 1-------------------------115 sum variable .55 .66 .48 .58 .48 1

Rty = .32DV = 2.10SE = 1.73

116 Own nation’s fight

6 8 17 19 21 116

6 My people have no option but to fight 18 War is good when Israel / the Palestinians beat their enemy .05 117 War has harmed our people .08 .15 l19 War has had a good effect on our people’s life .01 -.15 -.28 121 War has united our people .08 -.09 -.19 .02 l-------------------------116 sum variable .54 .51 .49 .54 .43 1Rty = .28DV = 2.28SE = 1.96

117 Personal loyalties and the sense of duty in a state of war

5 9 12 18 23 117

5 It is an honour to die for one’s country 19 I want to be a good soldier when l grow up .05 112 Orders of which you do not approve must .00 23 1 be obeyed in time of war18 I admire soldiers / freedom fighters .16 .24 .14 123 I should like my father to be a war hero .03 .17 .07 .35 1-------------------------117 sum variable .37 .59 .55 .65 .58 1

Rty = .44DV == 2.11SE = 1.58

118 Attitude to the possibility of peace11 14 16 20 24 118

11 There won’t be more wars when l grow up 114 It is possible to stop the outbreak of the next war .01 116 There will always be war in the world -.13 .12 l20 No-one of us wants to fight any longer .16 .36 -.14 124 Our enemies will always be our enemies -.11 -.34 .24 -.21 1-------------------------118 sum variable .54 .46 .64 .56 .31 1

Rty = .54DV = 2.37SE = 2.03

I - War in general 5-factor solution

4 War is sometimes necessary .507 War is always a bad thing .5210 Everyone suffers in wartime .4913 Participating in battle is an “exciting experience” (.34)15 Wars sometimes have good effects .43115 Theoretically constructed sum variable .87

II - Personal loyalty and the sense of duty in a State of war

5 It is an honour to die for one’s country .359 I want to be a good soldier when l grow up .3912 Orders of which you do not approve must be obeyed in time of war .3818 I admire soldiers .5123 I should like my father to be a war hero .47117 Theoretically constructed sum variable .85

III - Attitudes to the possibility of peace

11 There won’t be any more wars when l grow up .4816 There will always be war in the world .6820 No-one of us wants to fight any longer (.33)24 Our enemies will always be our enemies .38118 Theoretical sum variable .81

IV - Justification of own nation’s fight

6 My people have no option but to fight .478 War is good when Israel/the Palestinians beat their enemy .4117 War has harmed our people .4619 War has had a good effect on our people’s life .4221 War has united our people .3322 Peace will only come if we are strong .33

(The variables 13 and 20 in parentheses had the highest loading in the unspecified fifth factor. The highest loaded variable in this factor is 14 = it is possible to prevent the outbreak of the next war. The factor was also noticeably loaded in variables 8, 12, 21, 23, 24.)

Scales of Fear

(a) The dimensions in the list of fears were defined on the basis of the method used by Scherer and Nakamura (1968). Item inclusion and the use of scales followed the theoretical model developed by Wolpe and Lange (1964) of the dynamics of fears. Scherer et al. tested their lists by factor analysis and item analysis. Since two new dimensions of fear have been formed in this study — fear of war and a child’s fear for his personal safety — the use of scales needs statistical checking.

(b) The analysis of correlations and reliability coefficients show that all pre-specified and new scales of fear function well in this material. The same dimension is best measured by the “fear of authority and punishment” category, which has a reliability of .77. The scale related to the fears of a child for his personal safety constructed for this study is also relatively reliable (.72).The item, which on the basis of correlation analysis proved inadequate was “I have to undergo a body search when l go to the cinema or a public building’’. The reason was probably that the cause for this fear was only relevant in the case of the Palestinian group. The correlation between the fears for the safety of home and parents was extremely high. The items of the new scale depicting fears of war in general were also rather closely interrelated, and they can be considered to measure the same dimensions (rty = .70).

(c) Correlations and reliabilities allow for the use of earlier theoretical classifications in the description of the material. Factor analysis of fear items was carried out mainly from an interest point of view, since there was a desire to know if the same explanations were behind the fears of the children living under exceptional conditions as behind those of English children. The advantage of factor analysis as compared to correlations is that factor points express item correlation for the whole category and thus better guarantee the empirical validity of the sum variables.

The fear items were also factorized by the polar-axis method and the right-angle rotations by the Varimax method (Harman 1960,153). There were seven theoretically defined classes of fear. The analysis also produced seven categories of fear when the criterion was taken to be an eigenvalue of less than one and communalities were required to remain below the level of estimated communalities. Seven factor solutions explained 26 % of the variance of fear items. The factor analysis supports the theoretical fear classification used. The clearest and most unambiguous scale was — as might be expected — the fears linked with animals. The direct and indirect fears to do with war formed for the purpose of the study were also almost completely loaded to their own factors when a load of at least .33 on one scale and one scale only was used as the criterion.

Intercorrelations and reliability coefficients of items of fear scales (N = 353):

120 Fears linked with animals

46 52 60 78 93 12046 Mice and rats l52 Snakes .35 l60 Spiders .31 .28 l78 Barking dogs .31 .17 .29 193 Scorpions .41 .55 .41 .30-------------------------120 sum variable .69 .72 .64 .55 .81 1

Rty = .72DV = 4.68SE = 2.46

121 Physical fears concerned with the inviolability of one’s own body

47 50 58 66 77 87 12147 I can’t breathe l50 I have to go to hospital .22 l58 I have to go to a dentist .07 .14 l66 I am wounded or hurt .20 .22 .14 l77 I see blood .12 .34 .18 .34 l87 I contract a serious disease .28 .20 .01 .15 .26 1-------------------------121 sum variable .56 .63 .44 .60 .63 .51 1

Rty = .57DV = 6.83SE = 3.76

122 Fears concerned with war and conflict

48 54 56 57 63 64 69 84 12248 Terrorists / “border guard” and soldiers 154 The police beat me .12 l56 Terrorist attack, bombing or katyusha attack (Israeli) / military attack (Palest.) .31 .26 l57 Ambulance or siren sound .05 .20 .09 l63 Guns and machine guns .19 .37 .35 .20 l64 I find myself in a battle .39 .13 .32 .12 .26 169 Sound of a war alarm siren .28 .21 .23 .12 .24 .23 184 Sound of jet bomber / fighter .22 .16 .27 .26 .43 .26 .24 l-------------------------122 sum variable .55 .54 .61 .34 .68 .57 .56 .46 1

Rty = .70DV = 6.83SE = 3.76

123 Social fears59 67 73 75 76 89 123

59 Other children mock me l67 I find myself in a crowd .24 l73 I have to make a presentation in front of other pupils .20 .24 175 My friends criticize me .38 .26 .07 l76 To be with strange people .06 .33 .20 .32 l89 To wear extraordinary clothes .24 .24 .17 .34 .19 l-------------------------123 sum variable .58 .63 .61 .73 .61 .64 1

Rty = .64DV = 4.16SE = 2.49

124 A child’s own fears in a conflict situation which threatens his own safety

55 70 71 74 82 88 90 92 55 My father won’t come home l70 I’ll be driven out of my home .38 171 l shall be frisked before going to the cinema .16 .21 l74 my father will have to go to the army reserves / prison .31 .40 .32 l82 our home will be destroyed .32 .41 .20 .44 l88 the police will arrest me .24 .20 .19 .18 .33 190 the terrorists / border guard will attack my home .23 .21 .06 .12 .43 .49 192 something bad will happen to my family .24 .21 .03 .17 .41 .34 .43 1-------------------------124 sum variable .60 .65 .47 .64 .73 .60 .58 .55

Rty = .75DV = 6.71SE = 3.38

125 Fear of authority and punishment

53 62 72 85 125

53 The teacher will send me out of class 162 I will get a bad mark for my examination .40 l72 My parents quarrel .25 .41 185 My father will punish me .40 .50 .36 l-------------------------125 sum variable .67 .72 .65 .69 1

Rty = .77DV = 6.81SE = 3.01

126 Mixed fears

49 51 65 68 81 83 126

49 Shadows and ghosts l51 I get lost in a strange place .37 l65 Fire .21 .26 l88 Thunder and lightning .30 .25 .16 l81 I have to sleep in a dark room .39 .30 .27 .29 l83 I have to be alone .40 .33 .17 .24 .43 1-------------------------126 sum variable .60 .57 .58 .64 .67 .65 l

Rty = .61DV =4.32SE = 2.93

APPENDIX V

CONSTRUCTION OF SUM VARIABLES OF WAR EXPERIENCES

Children were asked if they had anything to do with seven different experiences of wars or conflicts. A weighed sum variable was constructed on the basis of the experiences, as the items were expected to differ from each other with regard to the seriousness of their effect. Ten people with experiences of the Middle East situation and child psychology were asked to assess the content of the variables 33-38 according to the following instructions: “To what extent do you estimate the following experiences to have caused the children traumas, psychological and other suffering and to have had a negative effect on their development’’. They listed the variables in order of importance — the first was the experience which had the most effect and the last the one which was the easiest to overcome. The order of importance is listed below. The weighed points given to the items are recorded here. Maximum number of points of war experience is 15, which means that the child has been through all the estimated experiences. O means that the child has been spared from the traumas connected with war.

Estimated Factor loadingpoint value point value

34 Member of family killed in war or bombing 5 .573

38 Seen or heard bomb exploding (Israelis) been in conflict with border police or soldiers (Palestinians) 4 .383

35 Member of family wounded in war or bombing 3 .526

36 Someone close to the child killed in war or bombing 2 .394

37 Someone close to the child wounded in war or bombing 1 .276

------------------------- Σ15 M 94 Σ.757

The variables describing war experiences were included in the factor analysis (see Appendix 4). AU items except father’s participation in war were loaded to the same factor, which means that they can be considered to measure the same dimension. The factor loadings of the above variables in six factor solutions showed the estimate of the experts and the statistical analysis to partially support each other. In other words, the death of a family member best depicts traumatic experience also in factor analysis. A member of the family being wounded also received a high loading, but a bomb explosion or conflict did not get the second highest loading as they did in the estimate.

APPENDIX 6

ANSWERS OF ISRAELI AND PALESTINIAN CHILDREN TO QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE CAUSES OF AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO WAR AND CONFLICT

Why do we have enemies and war?

Israeli Palestinians Israeli Arabs (Jews) (West Bank) (Palestinians

in Israel)

% % %

1. The enemy wants to take our land and destroy us 48 5 4

2. We have conquered the land of others, and they want it back

3. Our country is occupied and the enemy has stolen our home country 65

4. All people, enemies in particular, hate us and want to destroy us 16

5. The enemy does not recognize the rights of Palestine 22

6. We defend our country, that is why we fight 4

7. An explanation of the Middle East conflict 14 3 tending to neutrality 8. Abstract, moral explanation of the causes of war 11 34

9. Other, l do not know 3 3 22

100 100 100

Examples

1. Because our Arab neighbours are against us and want to establish the State of Palestine, and this is why they want to conquer our land.- Because the Arabs envy us for our land and want to take revenge.- There are wars in our area, because they all want our country, Israel. It is a big and good country, and that’s why they are fighting.

2. Because we have conquered areas, and terrorists and the Lebanese want us to return them. Israel does not agree.- Because all Arab nations want to get back the areas we have conquered from them.

3. They took our country and our freedom. We were driven out of our home. Our land is occupied and many Palestinians have died.- Because the Jews won the war and took our land.- As long as the Israeli and the soldiers are here, the war will continue.- Our freedom has been taken and much blood has been shed.- Because they have done much bad to us.

4. Because they envy us and want to throw us into the sea to die.- We are a small country surrounded by numerous enemies and they all hate us.- Because the Arab states want to annihilate all Jews.- Because the Arabs want to murder the Jewish people and they wage war to get our land and to destroy us, as in the TV series Holocaust.

5. Because Palestine is occupied.- Because they do not recognize the rights of Palestinians.- Because we have to free Palestine.- Because the Palestinians cannot live with the occupiers.

6. Because we have to free Palestine.- Because boys and girls are organizing strikes and demonstrations.- We want to get Palestine back and we fight against the enemy, the soldiers.

7. Because the Arabs want to turn Eretz Yisra’el into the State of Palestine (a state inhabited by Arabs, and some Jews and Arabs are also in Control of it). But we don’t want to give up Eretz Yisra’el.- Because once in our early history we were a wandering nation, and Palestinians also lived here for a while. This is why we want this country, and the Palestinians want it too, and they are trying to solve this all by war.

8. There are various reasons for wars in this area, but the main reason is envy and quarrels over certain regions.- Because there are historical disagreements, envy and struggles for certain areas.- We have wars because the relations between states are in a mess.- The reasons for war are perhaps geographical location, religion, political, moral and economic contradictions.

What should we do to the enemy?

Israelis Palestinians Israeli Arabs% % %

1. Fight them, wage war on them and strike back 9 55 9

2. Kill, torture, exterminate & them, etc. treat them 19 20 in a bloodthirsty manner 3. Make absolute peace with them 44 32

4. Make conditional peace with them, if they are not willing, start a war against them 17

5. Negotiate with them, try to understand the enemy 9

6. Solve the question of Palestine, free Palestine 15

7. Set up demonstrations and operations against them, stone them 11 8. All above means mixed 11 189. Other, l don’t know 32 ----------------------------------

100 101 100

Examples

1. Stick together and fight them.- Attack them so that they would leave us and our country alone.- Throw the enemy out of our country. Start a war against them.- We should give them what they deserve, they should be bombed for a long time, and we could stay in shelters until the Israeli army has exterminated all of the Lebanese.- We should fight our enemy and never give up, even if it would cost us our lives.

2. Kill them, exterminate them, murder them, terrorize them and bomb them — in a word, hurt them.- They should not be killed but taken in captivity and tortured, since there are a lot of Israeli prisoners in the enemy countries, thus we could negotiate with them and exchange prisoners.- Kill them all.- To my mind they should all be exterminated, one by one, until no-one would be left.

3. Try to take them in a peace treaty. We should make a treaty with the enemy, so that we would not have to suffer so much.- In my opinion we should make peace with them. We could give them some areas, and later on they could build a state of their own.- We should make peace with them and explain to them that Israel belongs to us.

4. Either fight them to the bitter end, or make a peace treaty with them.- Either try to make peace, or if there is no other alternative, wage war.- I think we should try to subjugate them by fighting, or if this is not possible, make a peace treaty with them.

5. Treat them wisely, by power and politics, so that they would return the Palestinians the rights they have lost.

6. Force them to recognize the Palestinians.- By joining our ranks and fighting to free Palestine.- By building Palestine and not minding the enemy.

7. Throw stones at them.- Organize operations to make them leave our country.

8. I believe we should not do anything to the enemy as long as it is peaceful here (in Kiriat Shemona). We should not disturb them in this case, but if they attack us because of our relations with Egypt, we should beat them. We should destroy them if they will not let us live peacefully in our own country.- We should give them a lesson: put explosives in that country every day, until they have got enough of it and want to make peace with us.

How can the outbreak of new wars in the area be prevented?

Israeli Palestinians Israeli Arabs

% % %

1. By making preparations and fighting a victorious war 9 17

2. By re-conquering the land we have lost, by armed resistance 7

3. By being strong and defending the borders (Israeli) 7 By uniting the whole people (Palestinians) 17 7

4. By making peace and an alliance of friendship with the enemy and the neighbours 63 25 27

5. Conditional peace, negotiate but not agree to demands 14

6. By solving the question of Palestine, by setting Palestine free 4 23

7. Hatred will persist, nothing can be done 4 6 6

8. By continuing the struggle, by stoning the enemy, by resisting occupation (Palestinians) 6

9. Other, l don’t know 23 ------------------------------ 100 101 100

Examples

l. By uniting Arab fronts and forcing Israel to withdraw.- Resist and fight them together.- We can prevent wars by fighting them, the enemy, because that is what they deserve.- By preparing for war and by always being ready for war.- We should go out and fight - either part of our soldiers or all of them — and the Israeli civilians could stay in shelters.

2. Stick together and fight them, and never give up.

3. We must always he on our guard and stop any attacks from the very beginning.- By uniting Palestinians into a struggle to throw the occupier out of the country.- By joining the Arab ranks.

4. It is important that we give Palestinians what they want, whenever it is possible.-To try to sit down together and negotiate and give up something to satisfy the other party (as we did with Egypt).- To make friends with people and trade with them.- To speak friendly to them, not by wars. Compromise.

5. There is only one way to reach peace — to give up and return to Arabs the areas which we have taken from them. But l will not give my consent to divide our land, even if it were the only way.- To negotiate and talk with them, make them give up their claims and show them that there is no use in fighting us.- To try to make peace with them, and if they are not willing, show them that we have a strong army so that they will learn their lesson and withdraw.

6. Freeing Palestine will bring peace. Only after Palestine has been set free there will be no wars in this area.- To unite and solve the problem of the Palestinians.- There will be peace when the Israeli have been forced to recognize Palestine.- When the Feda’iyeen have won the struggle for Palestine.

7. We should organize demonstrations and drive the occupier out.- By stoning soldiers.

8. This is a question we should hand over to the Ministry of Defence, which should solve it.- We should make peace among our own people, too.

APPENDIX 7

FEARS RELATED TO AUTHORITY AND PUNISHMENT, AND OTHER FEARS

Mean Values of Fears Related to Authority and Punishment Among Israeli and PalestinianChildren. Scale 0-4, Theoretical Mean 2

Teacher expels me from the class

My parents are fighting

I get bad marks in exams

My father punishes me

Mean Values of Miscellaneous Fears Among Israeli and Palestinian Children. Scale 0-4, Theoretical Mean 2

Ghosts and spooks

I get lost in a strange place

Fire (house “burning)

Thunder, lightning

I Sleep m a dark room

I am left alone

Mean Values of Social Fears Among Israeli and Palestinian Children. Scale 0-4, Theoretical Mean 2

Other children mock me

I am in the middle of a crowd

I am performing m front of other pupils

My friends criticize me

I have to be together with strangers

I have to wear odd and extraordinary clothes

Mean Values of Fears Related to Animals Among Israeli and Palestinian Children,Scale O- 4, Theoretical Mean 2

Mice and rats

A snake

Spiders

Barking dogs

Scorpions

Mean Values of Physical Fears Among Israeli and Palestinian Children. Scale 0-4. Theoretical Mean 2

I can’t breathe

I am taken to hospital

Going to the dentist

I am wounded

I see blood

I contract a serious illness