NABLUS: While kids worldwide collect pictures of Hollywood stars or football champions, the craze in the restive Palestinian city of Nablus is a sticker album depicting scenes of the bloody intifada.
While Jewish organizations and the Israeli media see the "intifada album" as part of an attempt to inculcate a "shahid (martyr) culture" in children, many Palestinians here believe it has done more to cement unity around their cause than all the official speeches.
The cover sports a picture of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem with the words "Intifada album" written in flaming stones while the back is a less aggressive watercolour of the disputed holy site by David Roberts.
The well-crafted glossy album is dedicated by the governor of Nablus and bears 229 numbered rectangles where the players have to stick the pictures. Prizes such as televisions, computers or cash will be awarded to the first who complete the album.
"My favourite is the number one picture, because you can see Al-Aqsa mosque and there's a masked fighter holding a gun," said Ibrahim Aswad, a 12-year-old from Nablus' refugee camp of Ain Beit al-Ma.
"I like these stickers because they show places we know and I also know some of the people on the pictures," said his friend Saleh, who carries his dog-eared, beat-up album everywhere he goes and has already collected 212 cards.
Abu Yasser, who owns a little convenience store and is the neighbourhood's intifada cards retailer, points to a copy of this season's football sticker album gathering dust on the bottom shelf.
"It may be sad, but the kids don't care about football here. Our soap opera is the intifada," he said. "What is happening in this conflict affects all of us, so this is like a big collective photo album for the Palestinian people".
"I don't mind the scenes of violence in the album, at least this game keeps them off the streets," said the father of four, who admits the intifada game has become a favourite family activity.
Since he launched the game at the end of 2003, Majdi Taher said that 40,000 albums and 12 million stickers have been sold. The cost of an album is half a shekel (10 cents).
The stickers, which are sold in boxes shaped like tanks "to remember the suffering they bring us", go for one shekel a packet of 10. From his squalid workshop in central Nablus, Taher, who employs 28 people for the project, would not reveal his turnover but admitted that "business is good". -AFP
