Amir Hass : One Killed and Dozens Wounded at a Palestinian Refugee Camp, All for Two Pistols
Palestinians in the al-Fawwar refugee camp conclude that the Israeli army’s raid
this week was an exercise for soldiers. The gap is enormous, the
residents believe, between the number of soldiers – three battalions,
according to Israeli newspaper reports – and the raid’s meager results:
two pistols found in house searches, a commando knife and military
equipment like a canteen, flak jacket and helmet the troops probably
forgot in previous raids.
According
to Israeli news reports, the raid’s goals included arresting wanted
people or suspects. Two of the arrested are a father and son from the
house where a pistol was found. The father is a garbage collector for
Hebron. His wife says he found the gun years ago, and it’s broken. The
third arrestee was found in possession of the helmet, according to camp
residents. An initial inquiry was unable to determine if and where the
second gun was found.
Are
these the wanted men for whom hundreds of soldiers were sent for almost
20 hours? Likewise, it was announced that the raid was intended to
issue summonses for investigations. B’Tselem and Haaretz didn’t find the
camp residents for whom three battalions were necessary to issue
summonses.
The camp
The
land that UNRWA, the UN refugee agency, leased when it founded the camp
in 1949 covers a bit more than a quarter square kilometer. Its houses,
that climb up the mountainside, have become crowded over time.
Over
time more land was purchased around the camp, and more houses have been
built on it. About 10,000 people live in the expanded camp, originating
from 18 villages like Faluja, Iraq al-Manshiyya (today’s Kiryat Gat),
Dawayima, Ajjur, Tal al-Safi, Beit Jibrin, Summil and Majlis. An army
pillbox on Route 60 has a commanding view of the camp’s main entrance
and the southern entrance to Dura to the north.
The raid
Camp
residents don’t remember such a large number of soldiers. Hundreds,
maybe a thousand, raided the place Tuesday at around 4 A.M. They didn’t
enter in military vehicles but by foot, and not from the main entrance
above Route 60 but from the mountain east of the camp, from the
direction of the Beit Hagai settlement and from the southeast entrance.
They
set up in a few key areas. Afterward, some armored military vehicles
and two bulldozers parked on the camp’s southern and western edges,
blocking its entrances. The dirt road has been blocked since the area
was placed under closure last month.
When
they entered the camp, the soldiers began invading the houses. Musa Abu
Hashash, a B’Tselem field worker who is originally from the camp,
entered it a few hours after the raid began. He has the names of 20
families upon whose homes the army set up observation and sniper posts.
He believes there are more. Those soldiers stayed in those makeshift
posts on top of people’s homes for many hours.
Abu
Hashash’s initial check found that the soldiers also conducted searches
in dozens of homes, probably 100. When they went from house to house,
they moved quickly, keeping to the walls and fences, and fired to
provide cover. The forces left the camp at around 9:30 P.M. – also by
foot, creating a shield of intense tear gas.
Resistance
The
stores remained closed, and most of the residents stayed home. The
parents were busy dealing with their terrorized children. Youths
descended into the streets or climbed roofs and resisted the raid by
throwing stones up at the roofs the soldiers had converted into posts.
The
army spokesman said firebombs were thrown at the soldiers. Abu Hashash,
who risked his life walking around the camp during the raid and filming
the confrontations, says he did not see any firebombs thrown. Most of
the time, the soldiers were on the roofs, and firebombs could set houses
on fire with the people inside.
Soldiers
shot mainly live fire at youths in the alleys, (the army spokesman said
soldiers used Ruger rifles), but also tear gas and rubber-tipped
bullets. The soldiers also shot and pierced water tanks on the roofs.
The casualties
Four
Palestinian ambulances were in al-Fawwar’s main street. Some 50
volunteers of the camp’s local council, the Red Crescent and UNRWA put
their own lives in danger when they carried the wounded on stretchers
from camp alleyways below to the ambulances. Thirty-two wounded by live
fire were brought for treatment to Hebron hospitals. One or two who were
in more serious condition were taken to Ramallah. Fifteen lightly
wounded (from rubber-tipped bullets and teargas) were treated on the
spot.
It
was impossible to save Mohammed Abu Hashash, 18. He was killed at
around 5 P.M., about 13 hours into the raid. He was shot at the entrance
of his family’s home and wounded on the left side below his armpit. He
fell, got up and fell again. The bleeding was internal.
One
of his sisters said she went outside when she heard the shooting. He
said, “My back, my back.” One of his neighbors said Mohammed was on a
roof when a relative called him. He went down to the house in the center
of the camp and was shot.
Another
version is that he was in the street with 10 other youths. Because of
the heavy tear gas he ran to close the windows in the apartment below,
where his elderly grandmother lives. He was shot at the house’s
entrance. When he was shot, he wasn’t throwing stones at the roofs,
where the soldiers with their helmets and guns were positioned.
Source of the shooting
Residents
believe that Mohammed Abu Hashash was shot from an opening the soldiers
had made in a wall of the living room of the Ghanim family (Bahajat,
Shadan and their five children).
“They
came at 12 noon,” Bahajat Ghanim told Haaretz. “There were about 10 or
20 soldiers. They entered the apartment without knocking. We sat in the
living room. I told the soldier: ‘Can I help you with something?’ He
told me: ‘No. Hand me your jawwal [cellphone] and your wife’s, and go
into the bedroom, all of you.’ We went in. Some soldiers went up to the
roof. Others were below next to the entrance.”
Ghanim said their youngest child Ward, 2, was sitting on his lap and fell asleep.
“Two
soldiers sat on chairs outside the room and guarded us with rifles
aimed at us. They switched every once in a while. One of them, kind of
nice, moved the gun when I asked him so as not to scare the girl. I
spoke with them in Hebrew because I worked in Israel in construction
until 2000. I asked them if I could go out to make coffee, and they let
me only if I took the water cooker and the coffee to the room,” Ghanim
said.
“When
I went out to the kitchen I saw tons of soldiers – I couldn’t count –
spread out on the couches and the floor and mattresses in three rooms
and the kitchen. They were sleeping, their rifles next to them. ‘We
worked all night. We want to sleep,’ a soldier told me. When I went out a
soldier in front of me and a soldier behind me guarded me. I told them,
‘Don’t be afraid, I won’t do anything to you.’”
Ghanim
recalled that at around 4 P.M. they heard something being broken. “I
asked them what it was and the soldier told me, ‘What do you care? It’s
not your business.’ I answered, “How is it not my business? It’s my
home, not yours.’ Only later did we see the hole in the wall.”
From there you could see exactly the place where Mohammed was killed.
“At
some stage, my wife said to the soldier, ‘Yalla, I’m fed up. Enough, I
want to bring in some food,’” Ghanim said. “And the soldier told me:
‘Tell her to shut up, not to raise her voice. If she won’t shut up, I
will break her hands.’ He put it in those words.”
Ghanim
said that after coordinating with the soldiers, they finally let his
wife bring over a little food from her brother’s house across the way.
“Afterward, my brother came to bring me cigarettes,” he said.
“My
wife went down to take them. At around 5:30 P.M., they shot Mohammed.
His uncle came to the soldiers at the entrance of the house and said:
You’ve killed a young boy. The atmosphere is tough. You’d better get out
of here so you won’t kill more youths. The officer said he was sorry.
They left after 15 minutes.”
The
Ghanim home was still a mess on Wednesday afternoon, almost as the
soldiers had left it. A closet was broken, the furniture upside down, a
pile of mattresses, the sink full of dishes the soldiers had cleared to
make room on the tables.
House of mourning
The
men, among them the father of Mohammed Abu Hashash, gathered after
Mohammed’s funeral in a public hall west of the main road. Mohammed’s
mother received condolences in the lower level of the family home, five
meters from where her son was killed – sitting on a mattress, leaning
against the wall, her eyes dry and red.
A
nonstop flow of women offering their condolences entered the home to
comfort the family’s women. Some stayed to sit in the room, either on
the floor, the chairs or the sofas. Most wore black djellabas. The older
ones wore embroidered village dresses, with big white kerchiefs on
their heads.
Everyone
one who entered kissed the bereaved mother and turned to the others to
shake their hands. Relatives in the room spoke of the double tragedy.
The first wife of Mohammed’s father Yusuf did not give birth. With her
consent, and at an advanced age, he married his second wife, Zahira.
Their first son was born ill.
Mohammed
is the second son, the mother’s pride. The first wife was like a second
mother to him. She sat now on the mattress, not far from the biological
mother. Mohammed had four sisters. One of them, her eyes red, told last
Wednesday what the children in the men’s mourning house also said
proudly, that Mohammed was a good soccer player. She pulled out her
cellphone and showed a picture of her brother holding a gold cup.
The
Israel Defense Forces spokesman said in a statement: “The goal of the
operation that took place this week in the al-Fawwar refugee camp was to
thwart and damage terror infrastructure in the camp’s streets, and
included thorough searches for weapons, the handing out of investigation
summonses and the arrest of five suspects.
“During
the operation live fire was used against the forces, and violent
disturbances erupted that included the throwing of stones, cinder blocks
and dozens of explosives and firebombs. The forces responded with
demonstration-dispersal methods and Ruger fire. During the disturbances,
a number of Palestinians were wounded and one was killed. The IDF is
investigating the circumstances of his death.”
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