The Boy in the Picture

by Rod Driver

It took 24 calls to Palestine and Israel to learn the story of the terrified Palestinian boy in the Reuters picture on the cover of the May/June issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Reuters couldn't tell me much, because the Israelis took the boy away before reporters could even learn his name. So I started calling Israeli and Palestinian human-rights organizations. Eventually, by the luck of reaching the right people ¹, I learned the boy's name, Kamal Ali Sa'idah, and his family's phone number.

It was then easy to reach Ali Sa'idah, Kamal's father, by phone. He speaks English fairly well, but is more comfortable in Arabic. So I called back the following day with the help of an Arabic-speaking friend.

Kamal Ali Sa'idah is 10 years old and lives with his parents and his four sisters in Wadi el Joz in Jerusalem. On April 6 near Bab el-Haram – the entrance to Al-Aqsa shrine – Kamal saw some young Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli police and decided to join in. He was closer to the Israeli position than the others and so he was the only one arrested. Kamal was taken to a police station, then prison for two to three hours, then to Al-Qishla detention center.

During the eight hours he was in custody, beatings by the border police left Kamal with a broken arm and bruises on his head and leg. Kamal was released when his father arrived and signed papers assuring that Kamal would not attack Israelis again.

Kamal's father seemed surprised that anyone was interested in his son's experience because it is so commonplace. In fact, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem recently issued a 47-page report titled Standard routine, beatings and abuse of Palestinians by Israeli security forces during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (available at www.btselem.org). The report cites an article from the July 30, 1999 edition of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in which an officer in the border police said that many join the border police "to beat up Arabs."

Being a child gives no protection from the brutality. On April 1, a few days before Kamal's beating, border police broke the hand of Muhammad Ali ‘Odeh, only three years old, for the crime of being outdoors with his father at 8 p.m. Muhammad's father could not take his son to the hospital that night because of fear of further confrontations with soldiers. The next morning, x-rays at Rafidiyeh Hospital confirmed that the child's hand was broken.

I asked Kamal's father if there had been any further repercussions after Kamal's beating. The answer is apparently "yes." Mr. Sa'idah had been unemployed for many months due to the Israeli closures. Then he recently got a job with an Israeli tour-bus company. But after his son's "crime and punishment" became known, Sa'idah was fired from the job.

Mr. Sa'idah said that Arab residents in Jerusalem are immobile because Jerusalem is closed off from the West Bank–and, of course, travel to Israel is very difficult for Arabs. "We just want independence," he said, "and to be left alone." –Rod Driver

Note 1: Kamal's name and phone number were obtained from Mahmoud Jeddah at the Nidal Center and Lulu Sahoum at the Arab Studies Society via Mike Lotze at al-Haq and Anne Kindrachuk at the Palestinian Businesswomen's Association. My thanks also to Hazem Biqaeen for interpreting phone conversations with Ali Sa'idah.