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Twilight Zone / Young faces of death By Gideon Levy Tags: Jalazun refugee camp  If you happen to visit Jalazun, north of Ramallah, in the next few days and ask passersby where the shaheed (martyr) lived, they will ask you which shaheed you mean - the first or the second. Two weeks ago, the refugee camp buried two of its sons within 24 hours: Abdul Qader Badawi, 17, and Mohammed Ramahi, 21. Badawi was a senior in high school. Ramahi was the son of Jamal Ramahi, whose mother, Esther Yaakov Shihrur, was Jewish and who has an aunt in Haifa. Both young men were shot to death at a distance of several hundred meters and in less than 24 hours of each other; both were shot by snipers, whose bullets struck each victim in the heart. A valley full of olive trees, which we visited this week, separated the two from the Israel Defense Forces soldiers. At that distance, there is no chance that they were endangering the lives of the force, or of the settlers next to the fence of the adjacent Beit El settlement. In both cases, other means could and should have been used against the two, even if the IDF Spokesman's claim that they were throwing Molotov cocktails is correct. Tear gas? Shooting into the air? A bullet in the leg? No way. Only lethal, live fire, one bullet, perfectly aimed - all in order to kill. Execution without trial and without sufficient cause. One incident, on October 14, involved soldiers from the Lavie Battalion; the second involved the Kfir Brigade, so we are informed. In both cases Israeli soldiers, "lions" every one (as the units' names suggest in Hebrew), again took the lives of young Palestinians in vain. Advertisement "Do you know how a soldier kills? Excuse me if I tell you: The soldier crosses one leg over the other, smokes a cigarette, drinks coffee - and kills my son, like you kill a cat. I am his father and my heart is burning," Jamal Ramahi, the son of the Jewish woman, the bereaved father, lamented tearfully this week, his dead son's photograph hanging on his chest. The older Ramahi works as a driver for UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency); his late son did odd jobs. Their small hut, at the edge of the camp, is home to 10 souls. Mohammed's cousin, who had the same name, was killed here in the late 1990s. He was 17 at the time of his death. On Wednesday October 15, Mohammed returned from another day's work in a clothing warehouse in nearby Jifna, and sat down for lunch. His father was sleeping. He liked rice, the father says. Mohammed then left. He missed the funeral of Badawi, the martyr from the day before. He headed in the direction of the camp's education compound - two well-maintained facilities run by UNRWA, one for girls, one for boys, which face each other on the main road at the entrance to the camp, opposite the tiled roofs of the homes in Beit El. The students were holding a protest demonstration over the killing of their friend. They were burning tires and throwing stones, possibly also firebombs, using improvised slingshots, which probably could not propel an object across the valley and certainly could not have hit the soldiers in the armored tower or the armored military vehicle parked across the valley of olive trees. Mohammed was the eldest of the demonstrators and was surrounded by dozens of schoolchildren. His younger brother, Suheib, 17, who was with him, recalls that Mohammed told him to take their young cousins away from the scene, so they would not get hurt. Suheib says he suddenly heard two shots: One struck a wall, the other went straight into his brother's heart, entering from the back. A moment earlier he had seen his brother waving his hands and shouting religious slogans. A passing car rushed the mortally wounded Mohammed to the government hospital in Ramallah, where he died on the operating table seven hours later. The family's mobile phones already have the usual permanent display of death images on their screens. Here is the hole in Mohammed's heart, here he is wrapped in a shroud, his face ashen and peaceful. Jamal, the father: "My mother is Jewish, I worked for Jews and I like Jews and Arabs, and I want to say, for all the world to hear, that I never heard of anyone from the camp shooting at soldiers or settlers. The small children went away and did not approach the soldiers. They shouted, which is usual, and they burned tires, which is also usual. You know, just the day before someone fell here. The blood of our children burns every time someone is killed here. So they demonstrated. But why more blood? That soldier, who saw the boy pick up a stone or a bottle, took his M-16 and shot him. Is that a shame or not? Did my boy do something dangerous? What did my son do? He did not pick up a weapon or a knife. Just because he raised his hands and called out 'Allahu akbar' [God is great]? Every day they kill one of us. "Look," he continues, "this is my little son and this is my daughter's son. Small children. They go to school and I am afraid for them. Tell me, are these children a danger to the soldiers? Now they are afraid to go to school and be killed like Mohammed. When I heard that Mohammed had been wounded, I almost put the bread I was eating into my ear - I went totally crazy. When I got to the hospital, I knew he was done for. The doctors told me he would be all right, but a father knows. I saw him and I knew he was a goner. I still have not woken up from it all. I cannot believe it. I did not do anything, my son did not do anything, and only God knows what is in the heart of the soldier who killed him. "I worked in Beit El. I worked in the restaurant of Ezra, from [the settlement of] Ofra. He loved me like his son. His daughter Hamutal and his son Aharon - they all know me in Beit El. They know [me,] Jamal, who has a Jewish mother. I brought food to the soldiers in the restaurant. Sometimes they forgot their rifles and I would return them. I watched over the weapons. I made falafel and salads for them. They liked my food, the soldiers did. What is the name of your big leader, the biggest one? Olmert. I tell him this from Jalazun, from a human being whose mother is Jewish: Enough, enough, I tell him." A short ride through the camp's alleyways and here is the second house of bereavement. The images are the same: a group of grim-faced men in the mourners' room, photos of the dead youngster on the walls, huge posters on the outside wall, held down at the bottom by bottles of water. The questions are the same, too; very disturbing. Did these children endanger the soldiers' lives? Is there no other way to deal with these situations? Why did this happen? The mourners here seem more sullen, though the bereaved father seems less distraught than Jamal Ramahi. But the photographs on the screens of the mobile phones are similar: Another body wrapped in a shroud, a terrible hole in the chest, and the young face of death - in this case, even younger. Taxi driver Mohammed Badawi-Zayad was on a trip to Aleppo, Syria, when his son Abdul Qader, the high-school student, was killed on October 14. They say Abdul Qader wanted to be an automotive electrician when he grew up. Like Mohammed, he too was killed across from the walled settlement of Beit El, secured and guarded, and located on the opposite side of the valley of olive trees. The event occurred in the evening. Abdul Qader was hanging out not far from school with an unknown number of friends - maybe two, maybe three, no one knows. In fact, nothing is clear. His father says he heard that his son lit up a cigarette in the dark and that immediately afterward the lethal bullet tore through his chest. By the time his uncle, who was summoned to the site, arrived, army and police forces were already there, along with an ambulance. The uncle told the soldiers that he was the father, but they would not let him approach. Two hours later the family received Abdul Qader's body. Mohammed returned from Syria the next day in time for the funeral, at 3:30 P.M. - about an hour and a half before the next victim in the camp was struck down. "The past few months have seen an increase in the number of events involving the throwing of Molotov cocktails in the Binyamin sector," the IDF Spokesman said. "Just last week there were three instances, two of them in the Jalazun area, in which IDF troops hit terrorists who were holding flaming Molotov cocktails in their hands, prior to throwing them. The IDF Spokesman wishes to note that a Molotov cocktail is a weapon in every respect, which endangers life. "In both of the cases referred to in the article, IDF troops identified terrorists holding lit Molotov cocktails, ready for throwing at a local IDF position and at homes in the settlement of Beit El, thus posing a threat to the lives of the soldiers and the residents of the settlement. Accordingly, the shooting was necessary, in order to avert risk to life. The IDF will not ignore a threat to the lives of soldiers or residents of the area, and will continue to act to provide security to the residents of Judea and Samaria." 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