JUNE 2004
jerusalem
day......i got out of the taxi about one mile from the old city, and slowly made my way through the thousands of children, teens, and families waving Israeli flags, singing songs, and dancing in the street. In silence, i cried. I thought about shouting to these people, only to realize that they would not understand, or maybe they just wouldn't care. Twenty children dead in Rafah is a world away, and not their concern.
Jerusalem day- the celebration of a united Jerusalem, the day Jerusalemwas taken in the 1967 war. As the taxi driver explained this, my look of disbelief must have been obvious. How on earth can this be? .
i walked through the old city, thinking i would have some coffee and maybe a smoke, but all the shops in the Arab quarter were closed. Army, police, security, and guns were everywhere. One guy, carrying his small boy on his shoulders, dancing and laughing, had a 9mm pistol in his waistband, another boy an M16 slung over his shoulder. The entire old city was flooded with celebrants. i imagine this is the united Jerusalem many people wish for. A Jerusalem devoid of Arabs, a Jerusalem for just one people. Today was their day to dream "what if"..... Anonymous
photos...Johm Barber, and AlJazeera
In Rafah"The operation is continuing as usual until we reach all the targets we've set for ourselves," the commander in charge of Gaza, Brig. Gen. Shmuel Zakai, said at a briefing in Tel Aviv.
Rawan Abu-Zeid's uncle Khader said the 4-year-old, who had been cooped up inside since Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rumbled into the camp Tuesday, had just left the house to buy something from a nearby shop. "She took half a shekel from her father and left the house. As she left we heard heavy shooting and when we went out we found her on the ground, two bullets in her neck and head," said Abu-Zeid, noting Israelis snipers were positioned near the home....../The distraught brother of three-year-old Rawan Mohammed Abu Zeid told the Associated Press that she was killed as she walked with some other children to a nearby sweetshop. "We were playing in the house when she told me she wanted some candy," the 19-year-old brother Diyab Abu Zeid explained by telephone, sobbing. "The older kids in the neighbourhood were going to the store so I let her go with them. "There was no one in the street but the kids, not even other adults," he added Reuters / BBC
……. The doctor, Ahmed Abu Nikera, had had enough of these questions. In the dank, shadowy room, he yanked and pulled to open the bloodstained white cloth wrapping one of the bodies as tightly as a mummy "This is a child," he said, after he revealed the pale gray face of Ibrahim al Qun, 14. "This is the exit wound." He pointed at the ragged, softball-sized black hole where the boy's left eye had been. A sniper's bullet entered at the back of the boy's head, he said. NYTimes
The demonstration started when a group
of people brought some food and water from their own
houses hoping that the army will allow them to enter the
area. The number of people was increasing on the way to
Tal Elsultan until it became about 3000 people. Most of
them were children under 18 years. When the demonstration
was about 500 hundred meters away from the first tank in
front of Tal Elsultan, a tank fired a shell exactly at
the first line of the demonstration. 30 seconds later an
apache fired one missile at the middle of the
demonstration. When an ambulance's teams thought that the
shelling would stop and moved to carry the injured and
dead, the same tank fired a second shell at those still
standing alive.
Chris McGreal in Rafah.... The tiny hole buried under Asma Mughayar's thick black hair, just above her right ear, is an illusion, according to the Israeli army. So is her family's insistance that Asma, 16, and her younger brother Ahmed, were both shot through the head by an Israeli soldier as they fed their pigeons and collected the laundry from the roof of their home in Rafah refugee camp……………….These are the kinds of lies they tell all the time," he says. Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaria"They say all the dead are fighters. They say they do not deliberately kill children, but about a quarter of the dead from the first day of shooting are children. The evidence is here in the morgue. Does this girl look as if she was blown up by a bomb?"……………. He was a small boy who could not easily be mistaken for a man. Dr Nkaria rolls the child over to show a tiny round hole in his forehead, just above his fringe. There is a much larger hole at the back of the head where the bullet came out. Neither Asma nor Ahmed show signs of any other injuries….."This is Ibrahim Alqun. He is 14 years old. He was shot in the back of the head………Saber Abu Libda, 13, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he left his home in Tel al-Sultan in the morning to find water for his family. Dr Nkaria's finger probes a tiny hole in the small child's back which masks the devastation done to his heart as the bullet shot through it. "No one can say this child was a fighter. Look at the size of him and look where they shoot him - in the back, not coming to attack someone," the doctor says. photos Johannes Abeling is based in Amsterdam. Since 1999, he has worked as a freelance photographer for several newspapers, magazines and organisations. Abeling can be reached via his website at www.abeling.nl
Ashraf Alkhapeed, 26, an emergency medical technician for the Palestinian Red Crescent, shuttled between treating the injured near Tel Sultan and trying to reach his own family, besieged in Brazil. Once his wife phoned while he was giving oxygen to a wounded 13-year-old. "There are Israeli tanks right outside the door," she said. "Please come and get the baby out."Alkhapeed borrowed an ambulance and tried to enter Brazil four times, but the vehicle was shot at by tanks posted at the entrance to the neighborhood. He told his wife over the phone: "Don't be afraid. I'm going to come to help you. Don't anybody go to the window or the door. Don't make noise." But the baby wouldn't stop crying. When the Brazil area opened Friday morning, Alkhapeed had to work for several hours before he could break away and look for his family. When he could, he rushed home to find everyone fine but his house riddled with bullet holes. He arranged to send the family out of town, and he went back to work.
Longing
sand yearning
tritran ©
I long for peace to shimmer,
I dream for freedom glitter,
I yearn for joy to dazzle
And love to hold tranquility within my world.
Mornings, without death,
Evenings, ablaze my gloom,
Nights, without wounds,
Midnights, serene and silent.
Wars and battles,
Rebellions and fighting,
Hatred and vengeance,
Why must I suffer from pain?