By Mohammed Omer
Tamer was nine, and no child soldier. He did not live in the
area from where home-made rockets are launched into
Israeli territory. The day he was killed, he was at least
two kilometres from the place Israeli troops had
entered Gaza, and met with return fire by
Palestinian resistance.
His tragedy was that the family home was near
Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, close
to the area the Israelis have set up as their
Kussfim base.
"We were all inside the house when shooting started,"
Tamer's aunt Etaf tells IPS. "It was right after members
of the Palestinian resistance stopped shooting at Israeli
troops," she said, pointing towards the scene of those
clashes a couple of kilometres away. But the Israelis
marched into this area as well, hardly for the first time.
Members of the family decided to crawl out into the
rain after a bullet hit a gas cylinder, Etaf said. "But
Israeli soldiers continued to fire on us from a tank
and Hummer military jeep." After some time,
seeing that the gas cylinder had not exploded,
Etaf said she crawled back into the house. Tamer
followed, but never made it. "I saw Tamer shot,
with a bullet in his head."
"He wanted to become a doctor when he grew up,"
says his mother Sabah Abu Shaar.
Like Tamer, other children are dying, and their mothers'
dreams with them. A six-month infant named Mohammed
al-Bourai was killed when an Israeli missile crashed into
the house Wednesday this week, moments after he'd been
fed. The family house happens to be close to the offices of
Gaza's ministry of interior, and to the house of de facto
Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Hanyieh.
The same day, three other Palestinian children were
killed in an air strike. The following day, four Palestinian
children were killed near the Jabaliya refugee camp
while playing soccer. Two of the boys, all aged 7 to 14,
were from the same family. A child's body was found
in eastern Gaza, a victim of Israeli shelling.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human
Affairs says in a Gaza fact sheet that 80 Palestinians
were killed in January of this year, and 82 were injured.
The January deaths included four children and five
women. The Israeli casualties through the month
were nine injuries from home-made rockets.
Just over the past three days, Israeli air strikes have
killed at least 35 Palestinians, among them nine children.
Many more are injured, and some are in critical condition.
Following Friday prayers, tens of thousands of Gazans
came out on the streets in protest against the Israeli
air strikes. Matan Vilnai, Israeli deputy defence minister,
has said that Gaza faces a "holocaust" if the home-made
rockets do not stop. Since May 2007, these rockets
have killed one Israeli.
Emergency medical care is now threatened. The head of
the ambulance department at Shifa hospital says he has
just 20 litres of fuel left in stock for the ambulances. Once
this runs out, little help will be available to victims of
the next Israeli attacks.
Israeli attacks and firing are now so continuous that many
in Deir al-Balah say they cannot sleep. "We can't feel safe
here," says Tashaeel, one of Tamer's elder sisters.
"If we'd also left with Tamer, their bullets would
have made a harvest of us all."
The family has tried in vain for UN help in moving
to another area. "Bullets chase us day and night,"
says mother Sabah. "We can't go out, and we
have nowhere else to go. No money to move to a
safer place where I could save the lives of my
children.
"Last week Israeli soldiers had attacked out house,
and ordered my seven daughters, two sons and myself
into the rain, with their dangerous dogs scaring us
away," Sabah said. "Then they ransacked our house
for several hours, leaving it in total chaos before we
were allowed back in." Such raids are common,
she said.
Tamer was killed in the next one. The grieving family
is now without water after bullets punctured the
overhead tank. The walls of the house are pock-
marked with bullet holes. And all the time they fear
that Israeli bulldozers will bring down this too.
As Palestinians in Gaza wait for more Israeli attacks,
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has expressed
strong concern. "These events underscore the
urgent need for a calming of violence, and must
not be allowed to deter the continuation of the
political process," he said. But such statements
mean little on the ground, and people in Gaza
see no international action to stop Israel.
"Gaza today faces a real war, a crazy war,"
Haniyeh said during Friday prayers near
the Shati refugee camp. He also criticised
the U.S. for accepting Israeli claims of 'legitimate
self-defence'. Despite Israel's best attempts at
ostracising Haniyeh, his popularity seems only
to have increased.
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