"Have mercy on our children"
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz, January 30, 2004
After one of their sons was killed on the roof and a nephew shot to death in a funeral procession, their eldest son blew himself up with an explosives belt. A week in the life of the Al-Masri family.
Abir al-Masri was sitting on a window sill in her house in the center of Nablus and watching her son Amjad, 15, who was on the roof of the adjacent house chatting with his brother and some friends. Suddenly she saw him falling onto his side. A fatal bullet hit him before her horrified eyes.
The next day, death struck again. Abir's nephew Mohammed, 18, was shot during Amjad's funeral procession. A week later, there was another tragedy: Iyad, her eldest son, 17, blew himself up in front of soldiers. Thus Abir al-Masri, 34, lost two sons and a nephew within a week.
The mother of the boys maintains a frozen expression. She doesn't cry, doesn't raise her voice. Well-groomed in black clothes, with a gray head scarf, she doesn't move a muscle in her face as she tells about the killing of one of her sons and the explosion of the other. She had four sons; now only two sons and a daughter remain. Their home is in an apartment house in the center of Nablus, behind the cauliflower stalls, a typical middle class apartment on the second floor, with velvet sofas, rugs, and porcelain figures in a glass case.
Amjad was a student in the 10th grade in the Amr bin al-Aas school in the city. On the day of his death, January 3, he woke up early to prepare for his civics test. On that day the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) was in the old city of Nablus, but here, in the city center, it seemed to be quiet.
Amjad left at 8 A.M. A short distance from the school, he noticed the soldiers, turned around and went home. Impatient, he tried once more after a short time; but again returned home. The IDF was in the area; there was no exam. He climbed to the roof of the neighboring house, a stone apartment building like his own, to see whether the soldiers had left.
A small Palestinian flag now waves on the roof of the neighboring house, where Amjad was waiting to go to school. Two palm saplings are planted in his backyard, a small monument to the fallen boy.
Abir says she saw the children talking on the roof just before Amjad was killed. The IDF spokesman has a different version: "Amjad was killed as he was throwing rocks from the roof of the building on an IDF force, during the course of a disturbance in which he was involved. The force was engaged in operational activity, because of warnings of the intention of terrorist organizations to send five suicide bombers to carry out attacks in the heart of Israel. In the operation, four suicide bombers were caught, as well as dozens of wanted men. During the course of this activity there were many attempts to harm the IDF forces by throwing Molotov cocktails, throwing down cinder blocks from the roofs of buildings, and even shooting and throwing bombs."
Abir just managed to shout "What happened to you?" and her son managed to answer: "Nothing" before he fell. She didn't see any rocks or any bottles. A neighbor called an ambulance, the mother rushed to her son as he lay on the roof, unconscious. She didn't see blood. Iyad rode with them in the ambulance. Next to the City Hall building, the ambulance was delayed by the soldiers, and after a while it arrived at the hospital. Amjad was buried the same day.
Abir didn't go to her son's funeral. But Fatma al-Masri, her sister-in-law, did. Fatma says that Amjad wanted to be a pharmacist; long ago he began to spend hours in her pharmacy, helping run the business. Amjad's father enters the room and wraps himself in silence. An accountant, he has been unemployed for a year and a half.
During the funeral procession, says Fatma, there were suddenly shots in the direction of the stretcher on which the dead youth was being carried. She says this was the first time in the history of the city that there were shots at a funeral procession. One of the pallbearers was Mohammed al-Masri, Amjad's 18-year-old cousin. Fatma, who was Mohammed's aunt too, says that one of the bullets just missed Iyad's head and hit his cousin, Mohammed. He fell, and died.
The IDF spokesman: "A violent disturbance took place during Amjad's funeral too, during which Molotov cocktails and stones were thrown at IDF soldiers. Mohammed, Amjad's cousin, took part in the riots, threw Molotov cocktails at the soldiers and endangered them. The force fired in his direction and in that of another terrorist, who was armed with a pistol."
Mohammed was buried next to Amjad the day after his cousin's funeral.
Iyad, who was on the roof with his brother Amjad, rode with him in the ambulance, and was almost killed at his funeral, seemed to go back to his usual routine. His mother says she didn't notice any special signs of distress, nor did she hear any talk of revenge from him. Nevertheless, there was something worth mentioning in his behavior, she finally admits. At the end of the four days of mourning for the death of his brother, he asked her not to rush to end the mourning. In the coming days he hardly left the house, stayed shut up in his room. He also began to smoke, something he hadn't done before. His aunt, Fatma, told him that his duty now was to take care of his mother.
On Sunday, January 11, exactly a week after the funeral, Iyad left the house. He told his parents he was going to work; he worked occasionally in construction. Abir didn't hear from him again.
In the afternoon, the Hezbollah television station, Al Manar, broadcast news about a young man who had blown himself up in front of soldiers in an open field, at the exit from the village of Jinsafot. In the family home, they hadn't turned on the TV yet, because of the mourning for Amjad, and that's why they didn't hear the news. They found out only in the evening.
Where was he heading? What was he planning? Why did he blow himself up in the open field? Did he get lost on the way to the Qalandiyah checkpoint, which is far from there, get scared when he saw the soldiers at the Jinsafot checkpoint and therefore blow himself up far from them, as residents of the village reported? The IDF spokesman: "Iyad al-Masri, Amjad's brother, blew himself up near the village of Jinsafot, near [the Jewish settlement] Kedumim. He was on his way to carry out a suicide attack in the center of the country."
The family received no information about what happened. The next day, Haaretz published a report to the effect that the father of the family, Bilal, had expressed anger at Islamic Jihad for recruiting his son. "We are a patriotic family that has sacrificed its part in the intifada, but the group that recruited Iyad sent him without thinking about the fact that they sacrificed him for no reason," the father was quoted as saying. The announcement by the family, who according to the report asked the Palestinian Authority to investigate the circumstances of Iyad's recruitment, also said that "the family condemns the exploitation of the young man's emotional state in the wake of the killing of his brother in cold blood. The youth was sent on an operation with no goal, with the result a forgone conclusion. He was sent with an explosives belt, without his dispatchers taking an interest in his chances of success, although they were familiar with the army's security measures."
Bilal shifts uneasily when confronted with the quotations. "They twisted my words," he says hesitantly. He only turned to the PA with a request that they ask Islamic Jihad for information about what happened to Iyad. Then he decided to express his opinion: "Sending my son was a big mistake. We want to live, and anyone with a conscience will fight the occupation in his own way."
What if Iyad had asked you?
"There's no father in the world who would agree."
Are you angry at the Jihad?
"We are believers. It's something that happened and that's that. The conditions and the timing were not justified."
What do you think happened to Iyad?
"If he thought of going to those organizations, it was only in order to avenge the deaths of his brother and his cousin, and of his friend Raad Khaled, who was also killed."
Bilal would at least like to have his son's body. The IDF isn't returning it. The IDF spokesman: "All the bodies of Palestinian terrorists are returned to the families for burial. In those cases where a decision is made not to return the body of a terrorist to his family, it is done for reasons of security and after taking into account all the circumstances relating to the matter."
Iyad didn't leave explanations. No letter and no video cassette. Surprisingly, neither the Islamic Jihad nor any other group issued victory posters to commemorate him.
The younger son, 11-year-old Islam, looks puzzled, as though he doesn't understand what the fuss is all about. Their little sister, Alaa, saw Amjad killed on the roof.
"Our 1- and 2-year-old children know that there is death and killing and shooting. Every one of us expects to fall at any moment," says Fatma. "Have mercy on our children. Just as you love your children, we love our children."
"Put pressure on your sons to stop the killing," says Abir to Israeli mothers. "Mothers allow their children to kill, and then come with complaints about suicide attacks. As long as their sons continue to kill our children, they shouldn't expect an end to the killing on our part."
