Naif Abu Latifi is on pills. His bottom lip trembles, his face is unshaven, his expression is veiled, a slight shudder passes through his body. His wife asks that we don't upset him. Every so often, he interjects in the conversation and asks, as if disconnectedly, why the soldiers shoot little children and why they don't stop them and why they would shoot a boy at such short range and how can it be that a small, unarmed boy possibly threaten the life of an armed soldier so much that he shoots him to death from a short range, and why are the soldiers there anyway? Tough, disturbing questions here in this tiny living room. And, really, why? What would you say to a bereaved Palestinian father whose child was killed by Israel Defense Forces soldiers? Is there anything that can justify shooting at a boy running for his life?
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This is certainly not an exceptional occurrence around here. Ahmed Abu Latifi is the fifth child to be killed here in recent months - in the same place, in the same circumstances. IDF soldiers versus kids from the Qalandiyah refugee camp, and the score is 5:0 at the half. A live bullet for every stone, a burst of gunfire for every attempt to vandalize the fence that surrounds the now-defunct airport. In the killing fields of Qalandiyah, there are no other ways to disperse children: no hoses or teargas, no megaphones, no plastic shields, not even rubber bullets. Just live fire from a short range and to hell with the rules of engagement and with basic justice, which should tell the soldiers: You don't shoot at children. Period. Ever. No ifs, ands or buts.
"Shooting at an unarmed teenager is clearly illegal," Major General (res.) Ami Ayalon said in an interview about a year and a half ago, but not one of the child-killers in Qalandiyah has been put on trial. After five children have been killed in the same place, it appears that no one in the IDF cares at all about their lives and deaths.
One after the other, they were killed this way: Husam Adisi, brothers Yasser, 11, and Samer, 15, Kusaba - killed 40 days apart, and Omar Matar, 14, killed here five months ago when he tried to knock down a spy balloon.
Omar's picture is all over Ahmed Abu Latifi's house: over his bed, behind the pile of clothes in his closet, on his book shelf, on the balcony and by the entrance to the house. Omar and Ahmed were good friends. Now Ahmed is gone, too. He was shot to death two Sundays ago. A bullet entered his abdomen and exited his chest.
On the day of his death, Ahmed woke up later than usual. There was no school that day because the students had been sent to Ramallah to participate in demonstrations of support for Arafat following Israel's threat to deport him. Ahmed's home is a typical refugee home - small, cramped, poor. Eight children in two rooms and photos of the uncle in America on the wall. On this seventh day of mourning, tension and distress are visible on everyone's face. The family is originally from the village of Sar'a - where Kibbutz Tzor'a is today. Naif, the father, works in Motka Aviv's locksmith shop in Atarot. The women of the house are in the other room, dressed in black and sitting on the floor.
Blood and fire
Before leaving the house that day, the eldest brother, Mohammed, 21, warned his younger brothers Ahmed, 13, and Mahmoud, 15, to be careful and not get into trouble with the army. Ahmed went to buy juice and then the three brothers ate breakfast together. The television was tuned to the news on Al Jazeera: blood and fire and threats against Arafat and checkpoints - the usual fare.
As Mohammed is recounting the events, his father Naif breaks his silence: "Why do they come to the camp and start to provoke the children," he asks. Mohammed got home from work at six that day and asked where his brothers Ahmed and Mahmoud were. His mother told him that they'd come home at four and then gone out to the street again. This is what the children of Qalandiyah have to do with their free time: They go out in the afternoon and throw stones at the soldiers at the big checkpoint at the edge of the camp, the Qalandiyah checkpoint. What else is there to do there? At seven, they turned on Al Jazeera again and Mohammed told his father that the situation was deteriorating.
"The situation was confused," Naif says. As he recited the evening prayer, Mohammed had a bad feeling. Ahmed always came home when it got dark - to drink tea, eat dinner and get ready for bed. It began to get dark in Qalandiyah. Mohammed went out to the middle of the camp to look for his brothers and saw that everything was quiet. His fears subsided and he went with a friend to nearby Ramallah. At eight, his parents called: Mahmoud had come home alone. Ahmed still hadn't shown up.
Ahmed's large, doleful eyes stare out from the death notice on the wall.
Mahmoud told his parents that at about 6:30, there was gunfire near the airport fence and that he hadn't seen Ahmed since. Mahmoud went back to the checkpoint to look for his missing brother. The soldiers had once arrested Ahmed for throwing stones and then released him a few hours later, but at the checkpoint he was told that no one had been arrested. Then Mahmoud saw Israeli ambulances driving around inside the airport area.
This airport, which once served all the flights to and from Eilat, in a demonstration of Israel's eternal sovereignty over Jerusalem, is now a magnet for trouble. No flight has landed here for several years now. Children from the camp go up to the electronic fence, taunt the soldiers who are patrolling on the runways, gazing at the other side of the biggest checkpoint in the West Bank, and keep at it until the soldiers fire their weapons to chase them away. The camouflage netting spread over the former terminal, makes the place look like an abandoned military barracks.
When Ahmed hadn't returned after 8 P.M., everyone started to worry. His mother, Rali, also went out to look for him. The UNRWA director of the camp told her that someone from the camp had been wounded.
Naif: "I want to ask something: Why did the soldier shoot at him? If the boy did something, why didn't he arrest him? And why did they take off his clothes and keep him there for an hour and a half?"
Naif called Mohammed in Ramallah and asked him to hurry to the hospital there, to see if perhaps Ahmed had been wounded and taken there. The women listening in the next room keep their eyes cast down toward the floor.
One or two bullets
Mohammed rushed to the hospital and there he saw several guys from the camp. He asked them what happened. Nothing, they told him. But Mohammed knew that someone had been taken there so he asked the nurse where the injured person was. The nurse told him: "He's already in the refrigerator." Mohammed didn't have to be told anything more. He says he knew for certain right then that the dead person was his brother. The next day, they buried him in the camp cemetery, not far from the graves of the four other boys.
Ahmed spent his last hours in the refugee camp. He had a light lunch from the kiosk and then he planned to go with his friends to the swimming pool in Ramallah. Ahmed loved to swim. His father and brothers say that the kids didn't have enough money to buy a ticket for the pool, so they went first to the area near the airport fence. There, they collect electric wires and sell the copper in Ramallah. They wanted to earn enough to be able to go to the pool. Maybe they touched the electronic fence that surrounds the airport, maybe not. Maybe they threw rocks at the soldiers on the other side of the fence, and maybe not. Ahmed's friends said the soldiers took them by surprise, that they suddenly appeared behind the group of rowdy 10- to 15-year-olds who'd expected them to approach from the front, and started firing at them.
They all got away, except for Ahmed. Maybe he was holding a bunch of wires - they say that he'd already managed to find some. Maybe, in his fright, he got confused. The kids said that instead of running away from the soldiers, he actually moved closer to them. They say that the soldier shot him from a distance of 10-15 meters. One or two bullets. A hole in the abdomen and a hole in the chest. The soldiers picked up Ahmed, who was either wounded or dead. This was at about 6:30 in the evening. An hour and a half later, a Palestinian ambulance was called to come get the body. The ambulance driver told the family that when he asked the soldiers why they killed they boy, one of them replied threateningly: Get out of here or we'll shoot you, too.
The IDF spokesman: "The IDF is aware of the boy's death and the investigation into it has not yet been concluded. The initial investigation of the incident indicates that a number of Palestinians infiltrated the grounds of the Atarot Airport, which is a military zone, and that they were tearing and destroying the separation fence there, which is part of the security fence on the Seam Line and meant to prevent the infiltration of terrorists to the Jerusalem area. An IDF force that was at the location acted to disperse the disturbance and to arrest the vandals. Apparently, the boy was mistakenly wounded as a result of this action. At that stage, the force did not identify any wounded from the gunfire.
"Only some time afterward, when the force returned from the action in the adjacent Qalandiyah refugee camp, was the body of the Palestinian boy discovered on the airport grounds. The force called a military medical team, as well as an ambulance from the Red Crescent, and also tried to resuscitate the boy. Despite the soldiers' attempts to save him, the boy was pronounced dead by a military doctor who was summoned there, and his body was transferred to the Red Crescent crew.
"It should be noted that this was a group of teenagers, some of them in their late teens, who for the past two months have been taking part in disturbances at this location on an almost daily basis. In these disturbances, a number of IDF soldiers were injured and serious damage was done to the separation fence."
An elaborate explanation, but not one word of apology.
A young second lieutenant was standing at the Qalandiyah checkpoint this week and roughly pushed a young peddler who ventured closer to the checkpoint than is permissible. Another soldier yelled at the people standing in line, "You're pressing me."
Ahmed Abu Latifi loved a Syrian television program called "Hawali." Every afternoon at two he would be glued to the TV, just like Israeli children with their favorite programs. His father planned to enroll him in the vocational school across the road, so he could learn a profession. A month ago, they bought him a used computer. He saved all the articles he could find about his best friend Omar Matar, who was killed before him.
Here is his bedroom: a small space with two beds and a narrow space between them. One bed was Ahmed's and the other is Mahmoud's. Picture of Omar are on the wall. Ahmed decorated the door of his closet with tiny pictures of tanks, helicopters and Jeeps - some from the IDF. Outside, on the wall of the house, a black scrawl: "They killed him out of fear, they killed him out of hatred, they killed him as revenge. Peace be upon you, Ahmed.
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