302 Letter to the Editor

Nashibi, R. (1988). The peer group relations of latency age, Palestinians during the Intifada. Union of Palestinian Working Women Committees, Presentatie op Conferentie (zie bij M a t ) .

Physicians for Human Rights (1988). The casualties of conflict: Medical care and human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Report of a fact finding mission, Somerville, Mass.

Popular Committees for Health Services (1989). A survey of the health services in the Gaza Strip. Klandestiene organisatie zonder adres.

Swee Chai. Ang (1989). From Beirut to Jerusalem: A woman surgeon with the Palestinians, Grafton Books, London.

UNWRA (1987). Map of UNWRA's area of operations. UNWRA Headquarters, Wenen.

RESPONSE TO PROFESSOR GIEL'S LETTER

Professor Giel should be commended on the keen and scholarly ob- servations he made during his visit to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. His analysis of the psychosocial-political dynamics operating within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is borne out by the recent research evidence compiled by myself and other psychologists. Our research shows that Pales- tinian children suffer from arixiety symptoms, depression, fear, and sleeping disturbances. Furthermore, the prevalence of these symptoms appears to increase with time. The mediation of family (basically mothers) and social support seems to have precluded the proliferation of these symptoms from reaching epidemic proportions.

The subjection of an entire population to protracted and repeated stressors attributable to military occupation has far-reaching consequences not only on the victim but also on the victimizer, as Professor Giel at- tempted to point out implicitly. Consequently, Palestinian psychologists are concerned more with the long-term effects of the traumatic conditions that prevail in the occupied territories than with their immediate conse- quences. This concern is predicated upon the research findings of psychologists who investigated the effects of political and military trauma on children (see e.g., Straker and Moosa, 1988; Rayhida el aL, 1986) in South Africa and Lebanon. Our research shows that the more Palestinian children are traumatized by the Israeli Army, the less they perceive the conflict with cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, Israeli psychologists have noted an increase in violence within the homes of Israeli soldiers following the onset of the Intifada. Hence trauma associated with political conflict appears to have a differential effect on the victim and victimizer. While the victimized population gravitates towards attitudinal polarization, the victimizer copes with the conflict by resorting to what Bandura has termed

Letter to the Editor 303

“moral disengagement.” Professor Giel’s comment on the egg analogy is quite appropriate in light of these findings.

Dr. Ahmad M. Baker, Ed.D.

REFERENCES

Rayhida, J., Shaya, M. J.. and Armenian, H. (1986). Child health in a city at war. In Wartime:

Straker, G.. and Moosa, F. (1988). Post-traumatic stress disorder: A reaction to state The Sfufe of Children in Lebanon, American University of Beirut, Lebanon.

supported child abuse. and neglect. Child Abuse NegL Inf. J. 12(3): 383-395.

REACTION TO THE GIEL LE’ITER

Professor Giel’s observations about the cruel impacts of the Intifada on Palestinians are undoubtedly correct, and his implication of many inci- dents and policies of Israeli injustice and brutality are heartbreakingly cor- rect as well. Israel’s moral errors are clearly painful to him as an idealistic admirer of Israel, as they are for me and for many other hundreds of thousands of us in Israel.

However, his reportage omits at least two major dimensions of the historical drama of the Intifada: (1) ‘the extent of murderous violence by Palestinians, both against Jews and against their own people; and (2) the breadth and depth of the Israeli peace movement which is battling daily against policies of excessive violence, and the sound corrective processes at work in some of Israel’s basic democratic institutions such as the legal system and most notably the press.

Palestinian violence against Jews is not only a matter of just protests for political self-determination. It is part of a general historical tradition in Arab life, and is also a continuation of earlier eras of violences by the Arabs of Palestine against Jewish settlers. The stones of the Intifada are not romantic or heroic protests on behalf of legitimate rights; they are vi- cious killers of innocent Jewish men, women, and children. These lethal weapons were “the first stones to be cast,” and they continue to be the prime cause of the system of brutality into which Palestinians and Israelis are now locked.

The Arab tradition of murder as a relatively first-line weapon of politi- cal expression continues unchecked in the brutalizing murders of Pales- tinians by Palestinians that have now passed the 200 mark, where local self-appointed celebrants of the Palestinian cause pass judgment on “col- laborators with Israel” among their people and proceed to torture-murder- degrade the bodies of their ill-fated victims of the “‘peoples justice.”