16 August 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza Strip
Selma Al Sawarka, or Um Ahmad, is an active woman, a mother of seven, and a grandmother of 35, who has never quit working. August 10, 2011 dawned like most days do for her; she went out to graze her family’s goats. She took her neighbor with her, 15 year old Keefa Al Bahabsa.
They went to the same land they usually go to. At 9:30 that morning they saw an Israeli tank and an Israeli jeep near the border. Not an uncommon sight. The tank and jeep left. About 30 minutes later, the jeep returned, three soldiers got out, and opened fire on Um Ahmed and Keefa. Um Ahmed was shot in the leg, Keefa fled to get help. The soldiers also shot ten of the families goats.
Um Ahmed is used to being shot at by the Israelis as her land is only 600 meters from the border. Usually, she says, the soldiers shoot around her, or into the air, trying to drive her from her land; she doesn’t know why today was different, why they shot directly at her, why they shot her in the leg. Her scarf also has bullet holes in it; only through the grace of God is she still here.
It took half an hour for Keefa to return with help, they loaded Um Ahmed onto a donkey cart, and went to the main road to meet a taxi to take her to the hospital. When I met Um Ahmed she was laying on a mat on the floor, recovering from being shot. A pale blue scarf covered her head. Bracelets adorned her wrists. Her daughter sat next to her. The room was simple, some mats on the floor, two chairs for the guests, a dresser, and small stand with a TV.
On the wall was a picture of her son Mustapha. He was killed by the Israeli’s on Dec, 15, 2004. Sometimes, the soldiers, or even the settlers themselves, would close the road near Netzarim settlement, the only way to go anywhere was to leave the road, and walk on the beach by the sea. Mustapha was shot and killed as he walked on the beach. The house we are in used to be Mustapha’s house. Beside the TV is another picture, another of her sons, this one has been in prison for the last ten years. He has eleven years left on his sentence. Um Ahmed, like all Gazan mothers, is not allowed to visit her son in prison, for four years this has been a blanket Israeli policy. Instead, she looks at this picture, she thinks about him in prison, while her leg heals.
“I only have you to count on. From now on, my children depend on you.”
This was the desperate call of a man who sees no way out for himself and his children, and we ISM members who came to his phone call, received it in helpless silence. It is not the first time that we have visited this family, and every time we go home more horrified.
The last time we were there was on the 14th July 2010, a day after his wife died; was murdered, there is no other way to say it. Nasser Jabr Abu Said lives in Johr al-Dik, 350 meters away from the border with Israel. On the evening of the 13th July, Nasser’s wife was in the garden with two other women from the family when they were fired at with artillery shells from a nearby tank. They used flechette shells, which explode in the air so that five- to eight-thousand nails shoot out of them, piercing everyone and everything in a cone of 300 by 100 meters. They are also illegal under international law.
Nasser's damaged house
Nasser’s wife was not injured, but the Nasser’s sister was wounded in the shoulder, and a third woman, Sanaa Ahmed Abu Said, 26, was wounded in the leg. The family took shelter in the house and called an ambulance, which was unable to approach because it was stopped by machine gun fire from the nearby Israeli soldiers. At this point, the 33 year old wife of Nasser, Nema Abu Said, realized that the youngest of her children, Jaber, was asleep in the garden. As Nema ran outside to bring him to safety, she and her brother-in-law were pierced by the nails of another flechette shell. It took four endless hours before the ambulance finally got the permission to help the family, but by then Nema had died.
When we first visited the family, no one had yet had the heart to explain to Jaber that his mother had died. He kept asking for her while we were there, but how do you explain something like that to a three year old child?
When we went this time, all the children knew only too well what had happened. Nasser explained that he could no longer live in the house because of the almost daily incursions; bombs and shootings have destroyed their damaged psyche and now they wake up every night, screaming from nightmares and having wet the bed. UNRWA rented a tiny apartment for the family – right next to the cemetery where the mother is buried. “I couldn’t get my children away from their mother’s grave. It happened more and more that I suddenly noticed at night that one of the children had gone, and I found them crying in the cemetery, I knew I couldn’t stay there any longer”, Nasser told us.
His alternative is disconcerting. He has pitched a tent, funded by the Red Cross, a few hundred meters away from his old house. The Red Cross also brought three blankets. When Nasser requested more aid he was told that he had already been helped. UNRWA told him that they could not finance a new house. Although they also recognized that the danger was too great to stay in the old house, they said that the old house would first have to be destroyed. Until the house is destroyed, they won’t act.
The tent in which he has to live
In this tent, amid the rain of the winter, Nasser now sleeps with his four sons and his daughter, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10-years-old. They sleep on only two mattresses because he has to burn the old mattresses every few weeks, as every night they are wetted by the children. There is not enough money for new mattresses, for a sufficient amount of blankets, clothes and school uniforms for the children, or for their transportation to school. He doesn’t dare to send them to school before it’s light, which means that they miss two hours of lessons every day. “They urgently need psychological care,” says Nasser quietly; he didn’t know where to start when we asked him what he needed the most. They received psychological care for a short while, and the psychologist diagnosed that they remained mentally in the state which they were in when their mother died. When a few days ago the bombs fell – one of them near the house – the children’s screams woke up their father.
They need the continuous care of their father, but that is not the only thing that prevents him from earning money. Nasser can’t farm his land any more: it was too often flattened; it is situated mainly in the inaccessible buffer zone; and he lacks the resources to be able to start farming the rest of his land. He doesn’t have the money for seeds to plant something. “I would love to plant eggplants again, cabbage and watermelons. Also, sheep would be a big help. But my water system is completely destroyed from the bombs, and I lack the money to rebuild it.”
“I am an old man,” Nasser Abu Said says, 37 years old, “to me it is no longer important, but what about my children? Don’t they have the right to life, the right to grow up in safety and with some joy?”
“From now on, my children depend on you,” this sentence stays in your mind. And so I do what is in my power. I write about it. Nasser’s misery concerns all of us. This wasn’t fate, that wasn’t a natural disaster. A few years ago, Nema and Nasser Abu Said were a happy and content family.
