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CNN Live Today
Middle East Bombings Affect Both Sides of Conflict
Aired April 25, 2002 - 14:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: One of the recent incidents that put a horrifyingly human face in the Middle East conflict is a suicide bombing in which a teenage Palestinian girl killed herself and a teenage Israeli girl. CNN's Jason Bellini now reports on what it's like for both on both sides, to grow up in this crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Morning assembly at a school in Gaza. One girl reads a poem she wrote. "Our brothers, give us your hand. Your human hand. Come quickly with your guns."
Outspokenness and strength are encouraged here. The timid, easily ignored. Even in a male-dominated society, the girls growing up here now have learned to express themselves.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And sorry to say this, but Mr. Bush has no rights to say that this is -- to Mr. Sharon and give him this green card to do whatever he want. This is not his country.
BELLINI: Evidence in their personalities perhaps, that a generation of young Palestinian women are quickly becoming products of their times.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't give you a secret or I don't tell you a secret, that a lot of girls here want to bombing their -- to bomb themselves.
BELLINI: At an all-girls school in Netanya, the Israeli city where 30 people died nearly a month ago in the Passover attack, growing up here now has made them less carefree, more cautious.
TANYA LANXNER, ISRAELI STUDENT: And our vice principal told us do not sit on the grass in groups of more than four or five girls.
BELLINI (on camera): Like we're doing now.
LANXNER: Yes. This is not -- this is not legal. This is not acceptable. There is dangerous.
BELLINI (voice-over): Most of these girls knew someone who died in the Passover suicide bombing. Tanya Lanxner was supposed to be there herself, but her younger sister told her parents she was too afraid to go. LANXNER: When you're alone, it's dangerous. When you're with a lot of people, it's dangerous.
BELLINI (on camera): It's of course difficult to compare the life of a Palestinian teenager from Gaza to the life of an Israeli teenager from Netanya. The worlds they come from are completely alien to one another.
But all of the girls I've spoken with do share one thing in common, and that's proximity to tragedy. Some experiencing tragedy more closely and deeply than others. But all of them conscious, collectively, that they're growing up in dangerous times.
(voice-over): Ghda Joda's uncle died in Jenin two weeks ago. Not wanting to cry in front of her friends, she's growing isolated.
(on camera): Must be hard for you to be here right now.
"Of course it is," she says. "I am sitting. All the time they are laughing and happy."
(voice-over): The school psychologist asked the girls to draw pictures to show their emotions. Most drew tanks, guns, soldiers and dead and wounded Palestinians.
"In school they try to show how strong they are," the psychologist says. "The rest of the time they are at home taking care of their duties or watching the news on television."
(on camera): Girls don't cry here.
OMINIA ABU-SHALHA, PALESTINIAN STUDENT: No, we don't.
BELLINI: You don't cry in front of the other girls.
ABU-SHAHLA: No, we don't. We don't cry to be strong. But we are crying inside of us for everything is happening here.
BELLINI (voice-over): The young Jewish women at the school in Netanya more readily expressing their fear.
CHEN GINZBURG, ISRAELI STUDENT: We become more defensive. I think if grow up, I'm going to have children, I don't know how I'm going to let them walk in the street, even if things will get better. Even if it will be safer to walk on the street, I don't know. My kid is going to ask me, I want to do this, I want do that. And I'll always have this fright. I'll always be so frightened.
BELLINI (on camera): You're not afraid?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
BELLINI (voice-over): Teenagers in Gaza, in Netanya, are doing what they have to do to adapt in their own way as another generation to inherit a brutal, nasty, long conflict. Jason Bellini, CNN, Jerusalem. (END VIDEOTAPE)
HEMMER: Long indeed. Thank you, Jason.
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