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Exposed,
exploited, dressed in tatters and desperately knocking on car
windows, increasing numbers of Palestinian children are begging for
money on the country's roads.
By
Alit Karp and Jackie Khoury
The
Wadi Ara road was largely empty on the last Friday of the holy
Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. There was hardly any backups of
vehicles at the intersections with traffic lights. On the windows of
the cars that were on the roads, small brown hands knocked
pleadingly, though hardly any of the drivers - mainly women, it
appeared - took the trouble to do a quick search in their purses in
order to give the children a handout. In some cases they had to look
down to see the face of the child: Many of the child beggars of Wadi
Ara are so young that their heads barely reach a car window.
These children, nearly all of them Palestinians from the
territories, cross the Green Line into Israel in order to scrounge
for a few shekels. This is one more manifestation of the economic
plight that exists among the Palestinian society in the territories.
You can see the children at other places, too: at intersections in
the city of Nazareth, in towns close to the "seam line" (a euphemism
for the 1967 Green Line) and also in Arab villages close to Israel's
northern border. Some of the children try to make money by selling
tissues or dust cloths, but most of them just beg for money. All of
them wear plastic shoes and well-worn clothes, and they are very
much in need of a hot shower. The smaller ones are usually
accompanied by their mothers, some of whom take shelter at bus stops
when they send their children - in some cases, at great risk to
their lives - to implore the drivers at the intersection to give
them money. However, it's far from rare to find a 10-year-old child
working the intersections on his own.
Some of the child beggars are out to collect money not just for
themselves: The meager handouts will help support entire families in
the West Bank, who eagerly await their return. School is not part of
their daily routine.
"Because all the other authorities are ignoring the need to deal
with the child beggars, we occasionally round them up, give them a
hot meal and take them back to the checkpoints between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority," says the spokesman of the Israel Police
Valleys District, Superintendent Yossi Hasson. "Because most of them
are below the age of criminal responsibility, which is 12, they
can't be arrested for being illegally present in Israel. Dozens of
children are involved. In November we carried out five operations in
which we collected them from the road junctions and sent them back
across the border."
Are they considered a security risk?
Hasson: "No, they don't constitute a security risk. They endanger
themselves and the safety of the people using the roads."
According to Adel Agbariya, director of the welfare department in
the Umm al-Fahm Municipality, there are profiteers behind the
activity of the child beggars - "people who transport the children
in the morning and take money from them in the evening." The same
opinion is voiced by Sheikh Imad Yunis, the imam of the Islamic
Movement in a mosque in the village of Ara: "I understand the
distress that gives rise to such things, and we are all aware of the
terrible situation that exists in the territories, but to send
children to intersections is not the solution," he says, adding,
"These children are also exploited economically by those who bring
them here, scatter them among the various intersections and
afterward take at least some of their money."
Superintendent Hasson disagrees, however, noting that "if the
phenomenon [of the organized transport of the child beggars] exists
at all, it is very limited. In the past year and a half six files
were opened, in the wake of which people were formally charged with
transporting illegal persons and with extortion. Three of the files
were opened at the Irron [Wadi Ara] station and three in Nazareth.
As a result, the people who do the transporting have become very
careful, and in Nazareth the phenomenon has stopped altogether."
Because of the police crackdown, the people who bring the children
have modified their method of operation, Hasson says: "They no
longer do it every day and they don't take the children all the way
to the intersections," he says. "Instead, they let them off far from
the intersection and leave them in the area for a few days. We know
that the children sleep wherever they can. In fact, only this
morning we rounded up many of them on the Wadi Ara road and took
them to the checkpoint. But it's really a Sisyphean task, because in
the evening, when I went by there again, I saw some of the same
children begging."
They are hungry.
"Yes, I know."
Ramadan was a good month
Rada,
from the West Bank city of Tul Karm, which is just across the Green
Line, and her daughter Nihaya, who is 10, earn their living from the
handouts they get by begging. There are eight members in their
family. Mishas, from Hebron, with two of her eight children, aged
six and eight, has also come here to beg, at the intersection of the
Arara village. Her husband has diabetes and can't work.
Rada
speaks quite good Hebrew. She is 34, and the traditional clothing
she wears, which appears to have the goal of protecting her from
harassment rather than being a sign of religious piety, doesn't do
her justice. She is the mother of six children, one of whom, now 13,
was injured at birth, but was not treated properly and now suffers
from severe motor problems. "School for him costs NIS 600 a month,
and we don't have the money," she says.
Rada was born in the town of Taibeh, in Israel, and had she remained
there she would have been entitled to Israeli citizenship. "But I
married at the age of 14 and a half, before I had an identity card,
and I moved to my husband's village in the territories." Things went
well until the Al-Aqsa Intifada. She and her husband, Moufid, worked
in Israel and supported their family honorably.
Moufid worked for a company that installed aluminum frames for
windows, she relates. "For 13 years he worked for an Israeli Arab in
Taibeh who had a black-market business. He didn't want to pay income
tax or value-added tax, and he didn't arrange work permits for his
employees, so the authorities wouldn't know what he was up to. One
day my husband and this man were driving on Geha Road [near Tel
Aviv], in two separate cars, and the police stopped my husband. They
checked up on him and found out that he didn't have a work permit.
He didn't want to inform on his boss. They took him to Abu Kabir [a
pre-trial detention facility in Tel Aviv]. He was there for two
weeks and we didn't know where he was, and then they stamped in his
ID card that he is not allowed to enter Israel, and since then he
has been at home with the boy."
Rada, too, worked in Israel for some years. Before the Gulf War, she
says, she worked for six years as a cleaner in Assouta Medical
Center in Tel Aviv ("with a regular paycheck and everything").
Afterward she worked at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer ("but in
that hospital, there was a contractor who brought us to work and
didn't give us a proper paycheck and also took advantage of us and
took part of our money - but even so, it was something"). Following
this she worked on a number of farms ("sometimes picking flowers,
sometimes in strawberries"), and finally found work as a cleaning
lady in communities along the Green Line.
"Everything was fine," she says. "We had two salaries, and neither
we nor the children lacked for anything. There was money to build
the house, and in my whole family I was always the first to buy
clothes for the children on holidays and also to slaughter a sheep.
I wasn't ashamed to accept all kinds of things from Jewish
employers, either. One time I got a washing machine and another time
a refrigerator. But now the refrigerator is empty, and I sold the
washing machine to buy an inhaler for the youngest boy, who is ill
with asthma."
The checkpoints, the closures, the curfews and the other
restrictions on movement inside the territories, and from them into
Israel, prevented Rada from working steadily and finally she lost
her job. "And that was that. We have no National Insurance, no child
allowance, no guaranteed income, nothing. If I were an Israeli
citizen, I would at least get a child allowance and maybe we would
be able to get my sick boy into an institution. But now things are
hard."
She approaches a car, puts out her hand and returns with nothing.
"Ramadan was a good month," she explains. "During the holiday people
try to do good deeds, so they give a little more, and a few times
people even let us sleep in their home."
Don't you go back home every evening?
Rada:
"No, it's hard to get by the checkpoint, so if I succeed in getting
through, I stay for a few days."
Where do you sleep at night?
"Either in mosques or between the olive trees or, if we get lucky,
someone takes us in for the night."
Isn't it cold sleeping outside?
"It's cold, but what can we do?"
NIS
500 a month
In
the meantime, Mishas' children go back and forth to the junction.
Sometimes they come back with a shekel or two, sometimes with less
than a shekel, or nothing. Some nights they sleep in abandoned
buildings or near a gas station. Not far from here, at the Kafr Kara
intersection, three members of a family from Jenin are working: Nura,
11, her sister Samar, 15, and their cousin Bassam, 14. None of them
speaks Hebrew. Their parents are out of work, they say. There is no
work. The Israeli army demolished the house of the two sisters
because of activity by their older brother. He is in jail, their
father is dead and their mother lives in a warehouse close to the
ruins of the house.
To
get here they crossed checkpoints ("The soldiers see that we are
kids, so they are less strict," Samar says) and took a taxi part of
the way, hitchhiked part of the way and walked part of the way. They
have been here a month and have been able to save up about NIS 500.
What
do you eat?
"We buy pita, we buy tuna and hummus and we eat."
Where
do you sleep?
"In mosques."
The
mosques, which are never closed, are a magnet for many of the
beggars at night. "Sometimes a car stops and the driver says I
should get in," Samar says. "Just before, one guy stopped and said I
should get in and he would give me NIS 100. I told him that even for
NIS 100,000 I wouldn't go with him."
Sheikh Yunis notes that the phenomenon is very well known and very
regrettable, mainly because the Arab communities in Israel collected
large amounts of food and clothing, which they sent to the
territories in an organized way. There was enough for every home, he
says. Moreover, he adds, as a cleric he has more reasons for
objecting to begging.
"The first reason," he says, "is that the children do not go to
school and are not part of any educational framework. The second
reason is that the neglect they are suffering endangers them
physically. Third, a few children have already been run over in
villages when they were begging. We don't want to encourage this
phenomenon and cultivate a culture of begging, and that is why we
have also started to close the mosques at night. And also because
the beggars dirty the mosque and the surroundings when they sleep
there."
As
a solution to their distress, Sheikh Yunis suggests that these
children and their families approach the imams, who are connected
with the rescue committees that were established during the intifada
with the aim of assisting the residents of the territories with
clothing and food. In certain cases, he says, the committee adopts
an entire family, "but that is conditional on proof of the genuine
hardship of the family."
In rain and shine
On
the eve of Id al-Fitr, the feast that marks the end of Ramadan, Amal,
a 22-year-old woman from Tul Karm, is standing at Arara Junction.
She seems very gentle and wears traditional garb that covers her
from head to foot. She speaks Hebrew. Before the intifada she worked
as a cleaner in a kindergarten in the town of Hod Hasharon, near
Kfar Sava, and everything was fine.
"When the closure and the curfew and the big mess and the
checkpoint started, I couldn't get to work. I have seven younger
brothers and sisters. Father has diabetes and Mother is sick like
this," she says, and demonstrates her mother's illness by breathing
heavily. "There is no food; there is nothing. The Jews are good
people," she feels the urge to add, as though in apology, "but there
is nothing."
Many "good Jews" are upset by the phenomenon of the beggar
children. Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, chairman of the National Council for
the Child, says he gets dozens of calls and letters from people who
see the children as they drive on the Wadi Ara road. One letter,
which arrived at the end of last month, described the situation: "A
few days a week children stand at different junctions in Wadi Ara
and beg for money from the cars that stop at the traffic lights. The
children are less than eight years old. They stand there in rain and
shine, and one day I even saw a child sleeping on a traffic island
... I was told that the children come from the West Bank. They are
neglected, dirty and always wearing the same rags."
Kadman
says he also receives reports from many other locales, such as the
French Hill intersection in Jerusalem, the entrance to Nazareth and
the outskirts of the town of Shfaram, near Haifa.
"These children are very young," he says. "Some of them do it at
their own initiative, and others are run by procurers, which makes
the situation even more difficult. We know that in some cases there
are suspicions that these children are being sexually abused,
especially in Nazareth. No one wants to deal with them; all the
authorities we have approached have effectively shrugged off their
responsibility.
"The welfare services say the children are not Israelis, and I
can't blame them for that reaction, because they can barely deal
with Israeli kids. Just because a child is standing on the road next
to Umm al-Fahm doesn't mean that the Umm al-Fahm Municipality has to
look after him. The unit that enforces the labor laws doesn't deal
with them, because they are not working. And as for the police, it's
not clear to them who exactly to arrest, and if they send a patrol
van to collect a few kids and take them to a checkpoint, they are
back again the next day."
So what's the solution?
Kadman:
"We have tried, through all kinds of mediators, to get the
Palestinian Authority to find them alternative employment, or even
to get them to go to school, but the situation there is so dire that
there is simply no one to talk to. A few days ago, we decided to try
to convene the representatives of the police, the Ministry of Labor
and Social Affairs, and organizations that are operating in the
field, such as UNICEF, in order to find a solution, because this is
a terrible phenomenon and we must not ignore it. The fact that these
are Arab children, or children from the territories, is not a reason
for us to allow ourselves to let such things go on under our very
nose without doing anything."
A
kilo of sugar
Rada, from Tul Karm, returned home for the holiday and has been
unable to get back into Israel since. "Things are bad," she says by
telephone. "I wanted to go yesterday, because we have no food left,
or money either, but they wouldn't let me because of the closure.
Maybe tomorrow, we'll see." The next day she answered our call just
before the checkpoint, and after she got through she reported: "I've
just passed through, you can come, but I'm staying close by. I have
a sick boy and I have to get home fast. We'll meet at the mosque in
[the town of Kalansua]."
From afar, wearing a gray dress, she looks like other religious
women who have come to the mosque for the Friday prayers. But Rada
is not praying. She is busy with more concrete things. She has a
family to feed, and has managed to collect only NIS 24 since the
morning.
"It was a hard holiday. My boy was sick and there was no way to get
out. Even today I barely got out. I told the soldier that someone
was supposed to be bringing me money for work I did. He said, `Okay,
but stand here,' and when he wasn't looking I ran away and came
here, but there's nothing here, either. This is a small place.
People don't want to give, and in the mosque people say that they
have already sent everything to the territories and that we should
go there. But our mosques give out things to the people they know,
not to the people who are in need, and I don't get anything."
Doesn't the Red Cross distribute food?
Rada:
"Yes, they did. Once my mother-in-law got a kilo of sugar and a
chicken from them."
How
do the soldiers treat you?
"The soldiers are all right. The young ones are better than the
reservists."
How many people from the territories beg for money in Israel?
"A
lot. In our neighborhood a lot of people do it, and at the
intersections I meet a lot of people from other towns. There is no
food where we are."
The Umm al-Fahm Municipality and Sheikh Yunis from Ara say that the
children are being extorted. Is there anyone organizing this? Is
there a contractor who brings young children and then takes their
money?
"No, we're alone and there's nothing to give, anyway. If I go
north, to Wadi Ara, I can sometimes collect as much as NIS 150 in a
day, but here there is nothing."
The money she collects is barely enough for food, she says. She can
only dream about other basic necessities, such as shoes.
How do you pay the water and electricity bills? How can you take
the children to the doctor when they're sick?
"Water isn't a problem, because they only write letters - they don't
come to shut it off. But with electricity, they wrote me that I owe
them NIS 5,000, and last Monday a guy came, climbed a ladder and was
going to cut off the power. I told him that if he did that he would
find himself in the hospital, so he left it and went. Maybe he was
scared. They cut off our telephone a long time ago, because we
didn't pay. We have this mobile phone from the time my husband
worked, and we use it only for incoming calls. We only go to the
doctor in the hospital, which costs NIS 5 or 6. A week ago, Nihiya
said she had a toothache, so I took her to a doctor. He pulled out
the tooth and asked for NIS 15, but I didn't have it."
Do you heat the house?
"No, that's impossible. We use electricity only for the refrigerator
and here and there."
In
the meantime, the worshipers are emerging from the mosque and going
their separate ways.
How did you get here?
"The usual way," she replies. "Part of the way I hitchhiked and
part I walked."
How far is it from here to the checkpoint?
"Two hours by foot, but only 15 minutes by car."
Next to a side road leading to the checkpoint is a sign put up by a
contractor directing prospective buyers to a model apartment in one
of the nearby settlements. On the left is the separation fence. On
the Palestinian side there is a line of people - not very long just
now - including women carrying babies, men and children, all
waiting. Rada checks out the line and comments: "This is nothing,
there aren't many people here, but in the morning it was so crowded
that if you were to pour salt on the heads of the people in the
line, not one grain would hit the ground."
From the Israeli side passage is free. A large number of yellow
cabs wait on the Palestinian side for arrivals, along with drivers
who have mules hitched to carts, for those who can't afford a taxi.
"That's where I live," Rada says, pointing to a group of houses,
"close by."
What to say to a hungry child
The director-general of the welfare ministry of the Palestinian
Authority, Mahmoud Matir, says he is familiar with the phenomenon of
children and women begging on the roads. It's one of the harsh signs
of the occupation, he observes.
"At the ministry, we do what we can under the current conditions to
help the needy families in the territories. In the West Bank alone,
about 50,000 families receive support and assistance from our
ministry, or from the Red Cross and the World Food Program. There
are also another 14,000 families that receive support from the Gulf
states.
"But with all that, our help in money and basic commodities covers
only 40 percent of the needs of these families. Sometimes they have
no choice other than to send the woman or the little boy to beg. We
absolutely do not support this phenomenon. We are trying to stop it
by means of publicity, but when you have hunger, no one listens to
us. There is no way to persuade a hungry child: He will prefer to go
begging rather than go to school."
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