AIDA REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank They wake up screaming, damp bed sheets twisted around their legs, or they tremble under the covers in terror -- the nights of Palestinian children are haunted by 10 months of fighting with Israel. Their sleep is not disturbed by witches or monsters, but by dreams of Israeli helicopter gunships, armed soldiers and tanks. Those not directly exposed to the fighting have seen graphic images of the bloodshed broadcast on their television sets. A Palestinian boy dreams he is decapitated by an Israeli missile as he walks home from school, his satchel on his back. An 11-year-old girl dreams that she detonates a bomb strapped to her body at an outdoor market, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his predecessor Ehud Barak. They are killed, but she miraculously survives. The dreams are among 300 collected by Palestinian clinical psychologist Dr Shafiq Masalha who concluded in a study that 78 percent of Palestinian children have political dreams and 15 percent dream of dying as martyrs. Masalha gave 150 children in several West Bank refugee camps coloring books and crayons with which to document their dreams both in writing and through drawings. He deciphered the notebooks filled with pictures, drawn in angry reds and blacks, of Israeli military might. Sometimes they dreamed of becoming heroes, forcing Israel to end its occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. One 11-year-old girl dreamed that she found an unexploded Israeli missile and used it to fire on a Jewish settlement. "Many Israelis died in the attack. Because of the missile I found, the police learned to make similar missiles and they fired every night at another settlement until the number of settlers decreased," she wrote. Masalha said some of the children scribbled next to their pictures: "We wish we were like other children". He said the misery wrought by Israel's security blockade on Palestinian areas, and the deaths of about 485 Palestinians, scores of them teenagers, since the Palestinian uprising erupted last September, frightened many Palestinian children. ---- Television Spreads Trauma ---- The trauma, he said, spread to those who, while lacking personal experience with the violence, watched frequent Palestinian television footage of mangled bodies, Israeli missile strikes on Palestinian security compounds and clashes. Palestinian psychiatrist Iyyad al-Sarraj complained in vain to Palestinian officials about the "horrific images of blood and killing and murder and burst abdomens and blown up brains and cut off limbs which the Palestinian TV...put on the screen". "They should not put these kinds of pictures which spread fear and trauma among children," the Gaza-based doctor said. The Aida Refugee Camp near the West Bank city of Bait-ul-Moqaddas is home to hundreds of Palestinian children whose nights have been terrorized by the bloodshed since the Intifada (Uprising) broke out during stalled peace negotiations with Israel. Their school is near an Israeli-controlled shrine for the Biblical Matriarch Rachel where gunbattles between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen have taken place. The bullets often hit the walls of the refugee camp's school. Palestinian social worker Imam Saleh helps the traumatized children deal with their fears, and teaches them practicalities such as how to crawl to safety along the classroom floor when the school comes under fire and to sing songs to distract them from the bullets. "Fear, most of the feeling is fear, fear at everything". Mothers come to her with complaints that their children are bed wetting, fighting in the school playgrounds or at home, vandalizing street lights and receiving poor marks at school. Their lives are immersed in the revolt. It is taking a psychological toll. Some of the children play stone-throwers while others armed with more powerful slingshots, symbolizing automatic weapons, pretend to be soldiers. Sarraj believes children touched by violence via television images or the distant noise of tank shells exploding have not been psychologically scarred, but rather frightened. Those whose houses were demolished by the Israeli army, have witnessed people die or suffered death in their families "are the children who are really traumatized," he said. "They express it in behavioral changes in the form of violence by themselves. Some of them have become preoccupied with the incidents of the Intifada and it has affected their scholastic achievements. They do not concentrate enough." "Many have bed wetting as a cardinal symptom," he said. Sarraj, who runs eight mental health clinics in the Gaza Strip, does not know how many Palestinian children have been scarred by the violence. But he said if they are not healed, it could cause long-term problems in their society. "If that energy is not channeled in the right direction, it will definitely lead to tribal fighting, factional fighting and individual violence," he said. ---- Children Grow Up in Pressure-Cooker ---- Sarraj said Palestinian society is like a pressure-cooker for children who grow up with intense political awareness, especially since the revolt. Israeli military blockades have served to tighten bonds in closely knit communities. "We don't have an innocent childhood," he said, adding that the children "are highly politicized and very influenced by the situation in the sense that they somehow express what they have been told they have been exposed to". At the Aida Camp, 13-year-old Shatha Yousef wants to be an agricultural engineer to "prevent Israeli land confiscations" when she grows up. Her nine-year-old brother Sarey wishes to be a fighter in the Lebanese Hizbollah guerrilla group. The sleep of both children is disturbed by bad dreams. Shatha dreamed that a Palestinian boy killed in a Gaza gunbattle at the start of the revolt was calling for help. Her brother dreamed of his friend Mo'taz's body hanging on a scaffold and riddled with bullets. Sarey actually saw the body of his friend, killed by Israeli soldiers several months ago, on television and watched the 13-year-old buried as a Palestinian hero. He sometimes wishes he could be a martyr like Mo'taz but may become instead a soldier to "protect Palestinian houses from demolition by Israeli soldiers". "My father has told me that anyone who dies as a martyr will go to heaven, so I told my dad when I turn 17, I will go out to throw stones. But mother says she will smack me if she sees me throwing stones," Reuters quoted nine-year-old Sarey as saying. Sarraj said Palestinian children grow up believing that dying as a martyr for their people's cause is "the highest ideal". "It is a form of glorification which the society approves," he said. "As long as the Israeli occupation is there, as long as there are settlements, I expect there are people who are ready to die and become suicide bombers," he said. CAPTION Palestinian doctors attempt to resuscitate 15-year old Palestinian, Rafat Nahal, who was shot by Israeli army forces in Rafah Refugee Camp. He later died.