I am thirty-three years old，and I am so happy that I am not a mother. I do not hear a biological clock ticking，only the nerve wrecking1 ticks of bombs yet to explode. My friends are leaping whenever their cell phones ring.Where are you？No，you cant go out. No，I dont care if all the other children are going。How na？ve children are when they tell lies. What mother in Israel now would believe thatall the children are goinganywhere？
And where are the children going？Where will their fears take them？In many places in the world children are afraid of the unknown，of the unreal. You know that you live in a war zone when you realize that the greatest fears of the children are of what they know only too well.
Two years ago，when my younger brother was ten，he came home from school，and as he opened the door he heard the familiar sound of explosion rising from the street he just left behind him. Sitting in front of the television five minutes later，he could see his friend wandering blindly in the street，which was covered with body parts and injured people. The friends father，who picked him up from school and took him for a pizza，was killed in front of his eyes. My brother refused to talk about it.This kid wasnt really a friend of mine，is all he would say，I dont really know him that well。That evening he told my father that he is afraid of Freddy Kruger，a monstrous2 murderer from a common horror film. My father didnt know whether to laugh or cry，but I suspect he felt some relief. How good it is to caress3 your childs hair and to tell him that Kruger doesnt really exist. But the man who exploded himself in the centre of a busy street did exist. And the man who will explode himself in another one of our busy streets in a few years is now my brothers age. His mother doesnt have to worry about the dangers which lurk4 on the way to school. There are no schools anymore. We have demolished5 them all，when we crushed the infrastructure6 of the Palestinian Authority. His younger brother was killed when our soldiers exploded their home. Our soldiers exploded their home because his older brother was awanted person。Exploding his familys home was our way to insure that he will soon turn from a wanted person into an unwanted body，torn to a thousand pieces，surrounded by his victims.
The young terrorist to be sleeps now in a tent provided by UNRWA. What is he afraid of？Not much to fear anymore. The worst already took place. But the bulldozers are still around，demolishing the neighbourshomes. Every day a few new tents join the raw. His mother tells him how they were deported7 from their home in Latrun in 1967. His grandmother tells him it was nothing compared to what she had to go through when she was driven away from Jaffa in 1948，carrying his screaming mother，then a newborn，in her arms.
My grandmother doesnt understand her plight8. It had never occurred to her to go back to her home in Poland，which she had to flee as a refugee，haunted by the rise of Nazism9 in Europe. The fact that the Palestinians still talk about Jaffa，she says，just proves that they want to exterminate10 us. Whenever a suicide bombing strikes our cities，my grandmother calls me and tells me of her secret plan.I am an old woman，and I have nothing to loose，she says in a conspiratorial11 tone.I will wear rags like their women，and go and explode myself in the centre of Nablus. This will teach them a lesson. I will show them what its like.I am trying to tell her that they already know what it is like，that the number of their dead is three times bigger than ours，that the fear and terror we spread in their lives is much bigger than ours. But my grandmother doesnt hear me，because she is crying.They are not human beings，she says.What people can do such things，kill children like this？De-humanised people，I want to answer，but I keep my mouth shut，and think about the child that I dont want to have.
The child I wont have will never feel the guilt12 of being an occupier，or the fear of becoming a victim. I will never tell him not to be scared，when fear is the only rational thing to feel. I will not have to teach him that the Palestinian child is a human being just like him，while everybody else will tell him that it is not so. The child I wont have will keep sleeping，curled in a secret corner of my mind. The child I will never have is going to be the only safe child in the Middle East.
