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 neighbours‘homes. Every day a few new tents join the raw. His mother tells him how they were deported 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 doesn‘t understand her plight. 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 Nazism in Europe. The fact that the Palestinians still talk about Jaffa，she says，just proves that they want to exterminate 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 conspiratorial 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 it’s 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 doesn‘t 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 don’t want to have.
The child I won‘t have will never feel the guilt 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 won’t 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.
