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'Collateral damage' By Catrin Ormestad Tags: Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Israel There were still mourning tents in almost every street in Jabalya on Thursday, a few days after the Israel Defense Forces pulled out, but life was slowly returning to normal. Repair work was already underway. Tanks had chopped up the streets, houses were damaged by missiles and bulldozers, and hundreds of meters of telephone and electricity cables were knocked down. On the main street, the Abed Rabbo family's supermarket was destroyed by a bulldozer. Their home was struck by a missile, which passed through the children's bedroom before it slammed into the neighbor's house. Ten-year-old Nael Abed Rabbo was the only child sleeping in the room at time. Physically unharmed but shocked, he was hiding under a mattress for two hours until his parents finally dared to enter the shattered room. Advertisement In Gaza City, Nasra Ayweder's home was also destroyed. Some shrapnel from a bombed building nearby tore down the roof and the walls of the shack where she still lives with her 11 children, aged 8-18. Her husband left the family two years ago, and now lives with another woman in Khan Yunis. He doesn't give them any money. Not even after the Palestinian television station broadcast a story about their distress did he offer to help them. "People have been kind," she says. "They give us food and a little money. Sometimes we have, sometimes we don't." She quietly bursts into tears. "I don't know what to do. I have nine daughters." The bomb that ruined her life was dropped on the home of the Attalah family on the afternoon of March 8. All that remains of the three-apartment house is a huge pile of concrete gravel. The wanted Hamas brothers Khaled and Ibrahim Attalah were killed in the attack, but their families were also buried in the debris. Miraculously, their wives and five children were rescued from the ruins, however their elderly parents, Abdel Rahim and Suha, and their two unmarried sisters, Ibtisam and Raja, died. "If they wanted to kill Khaled, they could have done it when he was alone," says a relative of the Attalah family who lives in the same street. "Why did they have to bomb the whole house?" They were digging until noon the following day to retrieve all the dead. One of the bodies they pulled out of the ruins was Khaled's three-week-old baby, Ansa. They were sure he had died, but somehow he was resuscitated at the hospital. Muhammed al-Bori, six months old, was not quite so lucky. He was killed in another Israel Air Force strike at the Hamas-run Interior Ministry on February 27. The relatives of 12-year-old Safah Seif were still gathering in her mourning tent in east Jabalya. Red-eyed and chain smoking, he father, Raed Abu Seif, slowly and painfully recounted the events of that fateful Saturday, when the Israeli soldiers came to their street, took over houses and put the whole neighborhood under siege. Raed, who shares a house with his brother, gathered their families in his apartment on the first floor. There they huddled together, listening to the shooting. But Raed suddenly noticed that his brother was missing; he had stayed behind in his apartment. Safah ran upstairs to find out what was keeping her uncle. Suddenly, an explosion in the street caused the window to swing open, and in the building across the street an Israeli sniper got a clear view of a target. Downstairs, Raed heard his brother's screams and ran up the stairs. There he saw his daughter lying on the floor in a pool of blood. They tried to get her to a hospital, but the ambulance drew fire from the Israeli soldiers and was unable to approach the house. Raed tried to stop the blood himself, but it kept pulsing between his fingers. Safah lived another three hours, slowly bleeding to death in her father's arms. The fighting in their neighborhood ceased in the evening, so Raed's wife and eldest daughter made an attempt to bring Safah's body to the ambulance, which was still waiting on Saladin Road, a few hundred meters from their house. They slowly walked toward the Israeli tank but when it fired a round into the ground, they dropped the body and ran, panicking. Risking his life, Raed went out in the street, picked up his dead daughter and carried her home. A few days later, in the mourning tent, Raed is trying to understand why his daughter had to die. Who is the resistance? "We saw on Israeli TV that they did this to stop the Qassams," he said. "My daughter is the resistance? Our donkey is the resistance? They shot him too. The neighbors' kid is the resistance?" Raed nods to the mourning tent further up the street. There sits the family of 15-year-old Muhammed al-Mahbour, also the victim of a sniper. His father and brother were also shot when they tried to reach Muhammed's body, and are now recovering in the hospital. The al-Mahbour's neighbors also lost a son, 22-year old Hassan Abu Safi, or "the groom," as the people in the neighborhood call him; Hassan got married just one week before he died. In another part of Jabalya, Dib Dardouna's 11-year-old son, Dardouna, was one of the four children killed by a missile while playing soccer on February 27. Dib was having tea on the terrace when he received the news of what had happened. In spite of this, her husband was still talking of peace with Israel. "I don't hate the Israelis," Dardouna says. "We are cousins." As a day laborer in Israel back in the 1980s and '90s, he helped build Moshe Katsav's house in Kiryat Malakhi. Katsav brought the workers food and Coca-Cola and Dib shook his hand. Dardouna also met former foreign minister David Levy when he built an office building in Petah Tikva. "I want those days to come back," he says. "I want us to live together. I think we have had enough killed." Bookmark to del.icio.us   My three homelands French Vogue chose Lizzie Doron as one of Israel's influential authors. President Barghouti Jailed Tanzim leader says he's considering running in next PA presidential elections.   1.   "colleteral damage" 14:35  |  e 10/03/08   2.   reply to #1 e 15:03  |  Said 10/03/08   3.   Usual blah,blah bought by Swedish "progressives" Catrin is 15:11  |  Absolute Sweden 10/03/08   4.   ?? 16:27  |  Marvls 10/03/08   5.   What does this mean to you? 16:30  |  Some Random Guy 10/03/08   6.   END OCCUPATION. LIVE AS A HUMAN. 16:35  |  mert 10/03/08   7.   MERT QUOTES SLOGANS LIKE A PARROT 17:25  |  JOE 10/03/08   8.   Pathetic 17:41  |  Israeli 10/03/08   9.   On the other hand, all of Hamas` targets are cvilians 19:14  |  Joe Sittizen 10/03/08   10.   `On the other hand, all of Hamas` targets are cvilians` 19:56  |  Colin Wright 10/03/08   11.   they are not all so nice 20:20  |  judith 10/03/08   12.   Catrin, you know of course all the truth and nothing but..... 20:35  |  Israel Hazak 10/03/08   13.   haaretz you are foolish by these articles 21:02  |  reuven 10/03/08   14.   E is unbelievable 21:47  |  Pete 10/03/08   15.   Not Victims, Not Idiots 21:54  |  MP 10/03/08   16.   they are the only ones who can stop this happening in future 22:07  |  zionist forever 10/03/08   17.   Emigrate 23:16  |  Realist 10/03/08   18.   Proof 13:49  |  Diodor 12/03/08

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