Subscribe to Print Edition | Sun., September 14, 2008 Elul 14, 5768 | | Israel Time: 03:03 (EST+7) web haaretz.com   Back to Homepage Haaretz Toolbar Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Car Rental Books Haaretz Magazine Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File

Twilight Zone / Death metal By Gideon Levy Tags: IDF, Israel, Bedouin The middle of nowhere. The narrow highway that crosses the desert was recently widened in order to enable passage of the heavy equipment needed to build the separation fence. But the highway ends suddenly and turns into a gravel road. We keep on driving, raising a long trail of dust. Occasionally we encounter an encampment, occasionally a camel. There is no desert in Israel as arid as this one, the Judean Desert, between Hashem al-Karem and Hashem al-Daraj, on the way to the Dead Sea. Here and there you see a child in a blue school uniform crossing the yellowish expanses on his way from nowhere, where his school is, to nowhere, where his encampment is. One child flees in panic when we try to ask him about the tent of Mukhtar Yussef. Here, in the endless expanses, between nothing and nothing, Israel Defense Soldiers sometimes train, and here the shepherd Mohammed Tabaneh walked, together with his son, Abdel Karim, 14, one day this summer, looking for scraps of metal, unexploded shells, for his living. Tabaneh is the poorest shepherd in the tribe. He owns only six sheep, in a place where there isn't a single piece of grazing land now, only the desert. So he goes out every day to look for scrap metal that the IDF leaves behind, in order to support his eight children. World prices of commodities have plummeted, and this directly affects the fate of the shepherd and scrap collector Tabaneh. Globalization. Following completion of the Olympic facilities in Beijing, prices of metal declined. What does that have to do with Tabaneh, a member of the Dalin tribe? While they were building China's sports facilities, he received a shekel for every kilogram of metal he collected, and now he gets only 80 agorot. Imagine. But copper - that's a different story. For that he gets NIS 18 per kilo, cash in hand, from a merchant in Yatta, his district town. This aristocratic metal is rare in the desert; only in shells that the IDF carelessly leaves behind can it still be found. Advertisement The copper shone from a distance from the case of a shell found by Tabaneh and his son that day in July. The two had walked about five kilometers from their encampment. In his haste to extract the copper, he quickly pulled out the iron hammer and nail he was carrying with him and tried to use them to separate the shell's valuable case. A tremendous explosion shattered the desert calm, and the shepherd fell backward, covered in blood. His son was convinced that his father was dead. Home was far away, and nobody heard the boy's shouts. A group of wrinkled, bearded men, their picturesque, sunburned faces and ragged clothes giving them a biblical look, was waiting for us in the mukhtar's camel-wool tent. There were men of all ages, from the elderly mukhtar to the children. Soon they would serve coffee and tea and roll cigarettes. Mohammed Tabaneh stood out among them with his bandaged hand and forehead. He wore a red shirt and a red kaffiyeh; he is hard of hearing now, since the explosion. Occasionally he bent an ear, asking us to repeat our words. His hand (crushed, two fingers amputated) is in a cast and he is wearing a sling. He went out that day in the morning with his son in an old Toyota, a van without any papers, to the expanses of the desert to gather metal. "It's very old," he says of his vehicle. They say that last May the IDF carried out a large explosion here, and they were convinced that anything left behind would not explode again in their hands. The mukhtar says that it's all because of the poverty, forcing members of the tribe as well as residents of far-off Yatta, to come here to collect anything that glitters. By afternoon, the father and son had collected about 60 kilograms of metal, unexploded shells and other military bits and pieces. Then they noticed the shell with the copper case lying on the ground. It was about half a meter long, and the father quickly stopped his car and got out. Fortunately his son, Abdel Karim, had trailed several meters behind him. Tabaneh approached the shell and began to try to take it apart with hammer blows and the nail. There was an explosion, dust rose, and Tabaneh was thrown a distance of several meters and fell. He says that he was convinced that he had died. His son fled in fear and afterward returned to see his father lying covered with blood. Abdel Karim began to shout for help, but only the desert echo answered him. The boy doesn't know how to drive a car, home was five kilometers away, there was nobody around. "Only us and God," now says the father, who didn't completely lose consciousness. "I saw blood, lots of blood," says his smiling son now. A few minutes later, the boy remembered that his father had a cell phone in his pocket, but only his father knew the numbers. Tabaneh says he tried to dictate a phone number to his son, but his memory failed him. The ground was burning hot beneath him and Tabaneh tried to get up. His hand was completely crushed. With his remaining strength, he managed to stand on his feet, and then he dragged himself to the van. "It's lucky it was my left hand," he says. He started the car and began to drive through the desert, with his son sitting next to him, driving with his one good hand. More and more men arrive at the tent, Bedouin coming to honor the survivor with a kind of local blessing for those rescued from danger. "I wanted to do anything possible in order to reach a place where there were people." Tabaneh managed to drive up to the top of the hill, to the dirt path that leads to his encampment. Then he managed to stop a car that was coming from the opposite direction. The driver rushed to the bleeding man, took him into his car and rushed him to Nasser hospital in Yatta. There, they saw that he needed an operation and rushed him by ambulance to the Al Ahli hospital in Hebron, where he was immediately sent to the operating room. When he awoke he was informed that two fingers had been amputated, that his hearing was damaged and that his hand would probably not function. "I felt that God had given me a new life." A month and a half ago, they say, one of the neighbors' children was burned while playing with dynamite that remained in the area. At the advice of an Israeli friend, the Tabanehs drove this week to the Kiryat Arba police station to try to submit a complaint against the IDF, which carelessly leaves behind unexploded shells, in contravention of army regulations. "Maybe you'll be able to help us get into the police station," the Tabanehs requested. The IDF spokesman's response: "Mohammed Taba'a [sic] entered a firing area described as a closed military zone and this despite repeated briefings given by the civil administration to all residents of the area, emphasizing the dangers of being in these areas. In addition, the IDF carries out monthly sweeps to discover unexploded ordnance and destroys it. Together with this, and despite the regular sweeps, there can be instances where very old shells are deeply buried and are not discovered. "Marking the firing zones in the area is a known problem in light of the fact that signs and fencing marking these areas are often stolen by various factors, including metal thieves." Bookmark to del.icio.us   'I didn't kill Rose' Rose's mother, grandfather request court delay autopsy of body found in Yarkon River. Israeli requests Israel asks U.S. for arms and permission to use an air corridor to attack Iran.   1.   IDF could pay NIS 20 ... 02:37  |  Z 07/09/08   2.   _ 07:07  |  daN 07/09/08   3.   These Bedouin know exactly what they`re doing 07:33  |  Dani 07/09/08   4.   cold indifference versus a real solution 09:34  |  Janet Marks 07/09/08   5.   These Bedouins are hostiles- should not be there 10:52  |  JD 07/09/08

Read & React Palin: U.S. shouldn't 'second guess' Israeli defensive measures Responses: 282 Ahmadinejad: Iran will support Hamas until collapse of Israel Responses: 198 Antony Lerman / The bogus concept known as Jewish 'self-hatred' Responses: 79 Abbas to Haaretz: Peace deal would have to include right of return Responses: 166 More Headlines 02:47 Abbas to Haaretz: We will compromise on refugees 02:56 Security officials vow tougher line against settlers 22:33 Peace Now: Revoke gun licenses of settlers who attacked Palestinians 02:18 U.S. to sell Israel Air Force new bunker-buster bombs 21:03 Report: Palestinian teen shot dead in clashes with IDF 02:31 Jewish World / Photo essay: Fugee Friday in Tel Aviv 21:30 Iran basketball team quits Paralympics, possibly over match against Israel 09:36 ADL: Religious groups' plan to break bread with Ahmadinejad is a 'betrayal' 09:15 Fayyad: World support for peace is meaningless unless Israel halts settlement expansion 20:59 Kadima MK Ben-Israel: Barak is Israel's worst minister ever 10:41 Forensic experts identify body found in Yarkon River as Rose Pizem Previous Editions Select Day 12 sep 11 sep 10 sep 09 sep 08 sep 07 sep 05 sep 04 sep 03 sep 02 sep 01 sep 31 aug

Special Offers Advertisement Fattal Hotel Chain Perfectly located hotels on best resorts of Israel. Eldan Rent a Car Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on all online reservations Jewish Singles Personal Ads Find the love of your life on JDate.com Israel's Premier Real Estate Website www. israel-property.com Hebrew Summer courses From $39.95 ISRAEL BONDS Build Israel Israel bonds - a multi-purpose way to celebrate Israel's 60th Junkyard Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt

Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | Underground | Site rules |

Real Estate in Israel | Travel to Israel with Haaretz | Hotels Israel | Restaurants Israel | Tourist attractions Israel | Shops Israel

birthright Israel | Search engine marketing

Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.

© Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved