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On Sunday, June 6th
2004, at seven-thirty in the evening, 31 year old Arafat Ibrahim Yakob
from Qalandiya refugee camp was just having coffee with a few friends,
sitting on the pavement near a kiosk, made up of tin sheets, not far
from the entrance of the camp, about a kilometer away from Qalandiya
checkpoint. Towards Ramallah.
A hummer (a kind of an armored jeep) appeared, some children threw
stones, and soldiers fired live bullets, from fifty or sixty meters
away. The road and pavement were full of people many of whom were
children and at least five bullets pierced the kiosk's fragile walls,
five holes, as high as a standing figure and lower down; naked
testimonies to what happened.
We saw. We were there.
He had just lifted a cup of coffee in order to drink, they say, when one
of the bullets perforated one of the kiosk's walls, then another,
penetrated his scull and he died immediately.
In the first intifada he had been shot in the back (attempting to sue
the army ever since) become paralyzed in both legs, confined to a
wheelchair. Then a widower, married again, and had three children, a
six-year-old girl, a boy five years old, and a baby of eight months.
During this intifada he had been shot again in his upper abdomen, but
recovered.
He was a taxi driver. Drove a white Opel. Played basketball with the
children and helped other cripples. People looked up to him, we were
told, loved him.
We got to know his brother when we came over to pay our respects, to
ask, to hear more.
There are a few practices that pervade and become the law and the norm
for the army of occupation:
The malignant ease, and approval with which it has become easy and
accepted to kill or murder (depending on who is speaking) a person when
Palestinian, because of being Palestinian.
Investigations as to what has happened don't happen automatically, just
because someone has died. Only if there is a demand for an investigation
(it's not enough if by family members or witnesses when Palestinian) is
launched by an organization preferably not Palestinian, does there exist
a theoretical possibility that such an investigation may occur.
And that too, only if it has been filed within three month since a
death. After three months, there is no possibility to sue the army for a
death, no matter who or what were the circumstances.
Another practice is that in addition to all the many arbitrary and
intentionally blur reasons for which most of the Palestinian population
are forbidden and denied the possibility to acquire a magnetic card
(which is the secret service's claim of not guilty) and is the only way
to (maybe) be permitted to work in Israel, but not only for that.
Anything really; permission for traveling in the west bank, a merchant's
permission, a teacher's.
Most people who the secret service has rendered them 'prevented'
(presumably because of reasons that concern the secret service and
thereby denied a magnetic card) are not accused of anything, are not
judged, the authorities don't seem to be looking for them, they aren't
questioned or arrested
Forbidden; to work and support there families, and move from one place
to another in Palestine.
They are prevented a life.
As an aim, so it seems.
The only criterion, not blurred, which isn't 'secret', and said openly,
overtly, without the known words 'there are reasons'; never explained,
or justified by the army, is, that if one of your family has been
killed/murdered by the occupation forces, you and your family
necessarily become 'prevented'.
The testimony of a bereaved brother. |
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