DREADFUL things happen daily in the Gaza Strip in the violent ritual

of the five-year-old intifada but the escalating number of fatal

injuries to young children is an abiding cause for shame. The latest

statistics from UNWRA, the United Nations agency which looks after

refugee Palestinians, make sobering reading. Between January and

November of last year two children were killed in disturbances in the

area. Since last month 10 children under 15 years of age have been

killed. Five were shot dead by the Israelis in less than a week, one by

a Jewish settler who opened fire when his car was stoned, and four by

the army. Two of the dead were little girls; one aged 10 was shot in the

back with a rubber bullet as she went with friends to school and

another, aged nine, was shot in the back while fetching milk for her

mother. The issues involved in these deaths are complex and need to be

examined closely but nothing can remove the enormity of what is

happening.

It must be acknowledged that using military forces to control

situations of civil riot is a dangerous exercise. The British Army has

recognised the peculiar difficulties such duties entail and has coped

passably well. The Israeli Defence Forces are trained in riot control

and are armed with a series of escalating warnings before any shots can

be fired. Set down on paper they appear reasonable, though it is surely

untenable that shots should ever be fired at children with stones. The

control exercised over Israeli troops in Gaza does, however, seem to be

uneven. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had to order one unit out of Gaza

last month for a series of incidents which led to deaths among

Palestinians in which the open-fire rules appear to have been ignored

completely.

The rise in numbers of fatalities among children, some of whom have

patently not been indulging even in stone-throwing, requires an

explanation. Mr Rabin's Labour-controlled Cabinet contains a number of

Ministers, from the Meretz Party as well as Labour, who are more liberal

than their predecessors and who are becoming increasingly anxious. At

the Cabinet meeting last Sunday Environment Minister Yossi Sarid

complained about the killings and demanded that the army use more

caution to ensure children's safety. His complaint was justified but it

is the responsibility of the Israeli Government to ensure that political

will is applied to the situation and that greater control in Gaza be

exercised over both military personnel and tactics.