A sombre silence and aura of destruction enveloped the place
despite the clutter of buildings and dwellers. As far as the eye
could see there were heads straining out of windows and doors
trying to see what was going on. Children started gathering here
and there, and women sat on their doorsteps covering their faces
with their hands. Some hid their faces behind their scarves to cry
quietly out of sight. My feet dragged slowly under me, hardly able
to carry my thin body; but my eyes raced, unable to concentrate on
one image at a time, trying to absorb everything in the space of a
moment.
It was as if my heart was shivering and a question kept rolling
around in my head, "Will I be able to stand firm or will my
sensitive nature get the better of me and fail me?" The distance
started to grow smaller, and I had almost reached the houses.
Little by little, I climbed the hill towards the camp, as the main
street was blocked by an Israeli tank and a number of soldiers
stood around it preventing anyone from going in. I approached the
soldiers and told them that I worked for a human rights institution
and that I wanted to enter the camp. The soldier eyed me with
disdain and said, "Journalists are not allowed into the camp." I
said I was not a journalist but a lawyer and that I wanted to
enter. He glared at me, saying, "Anyone who does not reside in the
camp is prohibited from entering." Despite my repeated entreaties,
my request was refused, making me determined to enter.
I saw an old man sitting on the opposite side of the street, so I
asked him if there was another route into the camp. He said, "Come
with me," so my colleagues and I followed him along a rough and
dusty path, over some hillocks, then through a number of alleyways.
We would take a few steps forward then hide, so that the soldiers
posted on the mountains surrounding the camp would not see us.
Finally, we reached the camp. I suddenly found myself in a city
where time and civilization seemed to have stopped. The old man
informed me, "This is Hawwashin Alley." It was in a state of total
annihilation. I thought, "My God, what a sight!" I approached a
group of young men digging in the ruins of a demolished house. I
did not know what they were looking for, but suddenly one of the
young men shouted, "I've found something!", so everyone ran towards
him. I rushed to see what they had found. A few meters before
reaching them, a horrible stench attacked my nostrils - I had never
smelt anything so foul in my life, the smell still seems to linger
on my clothes to this day. I held my collar over my nose and went
closer, but I quickly covered my whole face, as if the image had
hit me. It was a human head, in fact half a head, with no features.
They held it up with great care and reverence, so it would not
disintegrate further. The reality that this was the stench of death
dawned on me. It spread out in all directions. One of the young men
shouted, "This is X, let us dig further to find the rest of his
body."
They put a blanket on the ground and placed the remains of the head
on it. I climbed off the rocks to catch my breath, because what I
had seen was so horrific. At that moment I lost all touch with what
was going on around me, my eyes looked blankly at the
surroundings.
We went towards another neighborhood called Jorat al-Thahab where
more houses had been demolished and people were again searching
among the debris. A young man approached and he asked me; "Are you
journalists?"
"No, we are from a Palestinian human rights organization, this
group is from foreign human rights institutions, and those are
doctors."
"What human rights are you talking about? Do you really think human
rights are applied to the Palestinians? They pulled the house down
on top of my disabled brother!"
I asked him how that had happened and he answered, "We heard the
sound of a bulldozer, but we were afraid to look out of the windows
to see what was going, because Israeli snipers had bunkered on a
roof top and each time someone peeked out they shot at their head.
We didn't know what was happening outside, but we felt the house
shaking. We ran out to find the bulldozer was destroying our house.
We approached one of the soldiers to tell him there was a disabled
person in the house, asking them to stop until we took him out, but
they ordered us to move away quickly otherwise they would start
shooting at us. A second later, the house became a mound of rubble
and we have been looking for my brother's corpse for the last ten
days. Maybe he will be more alive now! Go and look for human rights
somewhere other than Palestine, than Jenin refugee camp."
I was unable to answer him, but one of the foreigners patted him on
the back and said, "We will investigate the matter and every war
crime perpetrator will be taken to court, never fear!" The young
man laughed sarcastically and said, "Which court? If the judge is
your enemy, then who can you complain to?" After that, I walked
away, unable to hear any more. I asked God to give me the strength
to bear whatever I was going to see next.
We entered narrow alleyways that coiled like a snake and were told
this neighborhood was called Haret al-Sumran. There were women
standing in the alley, surrounded by children. I sat on a rock
because I felt that my feet could not carry me any more. I felt
numb. Not tired despite the long distances I had walked, but I felt
at that moment that my strength was failing me. Two children came
up to me and asked, "Are you a foreigner?" I said I was Palestinian
like them but my colleagues were foreigners. Then I asked, "Were
you in the camp when the massacre took place?" A child called Sami
said, "Yes, and I saw everything."
"What do you mean by everything?"
He answered, "I saw the soldiers, they killed my little
chicken."
"What did they kill?"
"I had bought a small chick and raised it until it became a little
chicken that followed me wherever I went in the camp. It was
standing on the roof, so the snipers killed it. I heard it
screeching and saw it fall to the ground. I am so sad to lose it, I
loved it so much!". I looked at the child with pity, but I was
saying to myself, "Thank God they kept you and your family
alive!!"
I walked to the end of the neighborhood when a young man from the
camp said, "This house has experienced a catastrophe, come in!" We
entered a yard, which housed a blacksmith's shop. I saw an old man
in his sixties and around him sat a number of women, youths and
children. I introduced myself and my colleagues, and they brought
us some chairs. A man in his late forties, wearing a hearing aid,
came in. He looked at me and repeated, "They killed our children,
they killed our children!" while hitting his head. I said "What?",
so he dragged me by the arm saying, "Come, come. Let me show you
what they've done." I followed him through another doorway. A
horrible stench filled the air. Pools of coagulated blood on the
ground were covered with hundreds of flies. The man pointed to the
wall saying, "Look, look here." I looked and saw something black on
the wall. I asked what it was, so he said "Come closer." I felt
ashamed and was unable to tell him that I couldn't go nearer
because of the smell. I felt terribly sick, but I held my breath
and went closer. When I looked carefully I saw something full of
blood and hair. I asked him what it was, so he answered "These are
the remains of my son's brain. They killed him here, in front of my
own eyes, and I was unable to do anything. They killed me with him,
yes, they killed me with him!"
He continued his story with great emotion: "The soldiers knocked
violently at our door, so I opened it. About 50 soldiers came in,
armed to the teeth, their faces covered with black paint. They
said, "All of you must leave the house," so we went out, along with
the women and the children. I went out with my son, wife and five
grandchildren. My son's youngest is only five or six months old and
his father was carrying him. They ordered us to stand at the door
and asked, "Whose house is this?" They also pointed to my
neighbor's house , so I told them his name. Then they ordered me to
go to his door and ask them all to leave the house. They had their
guns pointed at me so I had no choice but to knock at their door.
My neighbor answered my knock, and I told him to come out with the
rest of his family. He saw the soldiers, so he called everyone.
They came out and we all stood in the open. Then they ordered the
women and children to go back inside. They crowded into a room in
my neighbor's house and the soldiers locked it. Some soldiers
searched the rest of the house, then left. My son was still holding
his baby in his arms. The soldiers suddenly realized and said, "Why
are you carrying this baby?"
My son answered, "He's my son, I came out of the house carrying
him." The soldier told me to take the child into the house and give
him to the women. I took the child, who was crying fearfully and
gave him to his mother. The soldier locked the door again and told
me to go back where the men were standing. Four of us - me, my son,
my neighbor and my neighbor's son - stood next to each other. The
soldiers asked my neighbor to go into the house with them. They
searched the house again but my neighbor did not come out with
them. The soldiers asked us to raise our hands, so we did. One of
them, who seemed to be an officer, asked us to stand up against the
wall. He had long blonde hair and a full face and kept ordering the
soldiers around. We turned, hearing the officer say, "Kill them,
Avi," in Hebrew. I understood what he was saying. Bullets flew at
us from all angles and I found myself lying on the ground with my
son to my left and my neighbor's son to my right. I felt water
running down over my head and body. The shooting stopped. A soldier
approached us and put his foot on my son's head, kicking it aside.
It was very dark, as the electricity had been cut off in the camp.
The flashlights the soldiers had with them allowed me to see some
of their faces. One of the soldiers put a gun in our faces. The gun
had a light at the front so I did not move an inch. After that, I
heard the soldier say, "They are all dead." The soldiers stayed for
another 15 minutes or so. They kept going in and out of the house,
then there was silence.
When I could no longer hear any noise, I lifted my son's hand a
little, but it fell lifelessly down to the ground. I held my
neighbor's son's arm up to find the same result. I could not see
them to find out if they were alive or not because of the darkness
enveloping us. I felt that water was pouring onto us, but I did not
know where from. Someone came to the door, went back into the
house, then footsteps came towards me and I felt something being
placed over me. I lay there for some time. When there was silence
again, I crawled on my belly towards the steps of my house. When I
finally reached the door, it felt like I had been crawling for
hours. I entered my room and started feeling my body to see if I
had been injured. I changed my clothes and sat in the corner of the
room, shaking with fear and crying bitterly. My voice kept rising
and no matter how hard I tried to keep it down, there were some
moments when I felt like I was going to choke if I did not express
my feelings. I wanted to lower my voice so the soldiers would not
hear me. I stayed in the corner of the room, my body shaking all
over.
I awoke to find a hand on my shoulder and someone saying, "Pull
yourself together." It was my neighbor. He said, "Don't sit here on
your own, come with me and don't tell the women about anything so
that they won't cry. They have killed your son and taken my son
with them." Then he added, "But there are three corpses, whose are
they?"
I looked at him and cried again, so he said, "I heard some shooting
last night and the sound of soldiers in the hallway. After that,
there was silence for hours, so I went out of the room where the
soldiers had placed me and made sure that the women and children
were okay. Then I went to the entrance of the house and saw three
corpses lying on the ground. I knew that your son was one of them
from his curly hair, but I could not tell who the other two were,
so I went to the house to bring something to cover them up. At
daybreak, when there was more light, I looked in the direction of
the entrance to your house and saw blood on the steps, so I thought
there was someone injured in the house. I followed the blood trail
and found you here - are you alright?"
I said, "Yes, nothing happened to me." But then I looked at my
clothes and realized they were drenched in blood. What I had
thought was water was really the blood of my son and my neighbor's
son. After that, I went with my neighbor to the entrance of the
house where the bodies were. My neighbor said, "Here they are, let
us see who they belong to." He lifted the cover and shouted, "Where
is the third body?!" My neighbor knelt down and held my son's head
between his palms and kissed him, then started to cry.
I was afraid he would suffer severe shock when he saw the next
body, so I said, "Don't cry! God help us bear this catastrophe." I
went closer to him, held him and said, "They have killed our sons."
My neighbor looked at me, pushed me aside and ran towards the
second corpse, shouting, "My son, my son!" He held him to his chest
while I held my son to mine and we both wept for them. It was a
dreadful, indescribably hideous nightmare. After crying for some
time, we covered the bodies, but did not carry them into the house
for fear that the women's wails would bring the soldiers back, and
they would definitely kill us this time. A little blonde girl with
brown eyes came and stood near us. She was also crying and shaking,
so I went to her and held her hands, pleading with her not to cry.
She answered miserably, "The soldiers killed my father. After they
shot him, they came into the house and gave us chocolate with a
picture of a cow on it. They said, 'Children this is for you.' It
was cold. I clasped the chocolate in my hand. I was so terrified
that I could not cry or even move. I just looked at the faces of
the soldiers that had killed my father. My father had not done
anything! Why did they kill him, why? They left him here for ten
days, until he rotted and gave off a horrible smell." At that
moment, I could only weep and embrace the small child."
I left the refugee camp that day carrying a profound pain within
me. I had come to carry out the task of documenting human rights
violations. I left the camp on the first day, having only witnessed
the external destruction and heard this story. I had come to
document the crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupation's
soldiers within the Jenin refugee camp. What documentation? Do
these crimes have to be documented for them to be proven? Where is
the world's conscience, where is justice? What do the human rights
conventions and the high courts of justice have to say to these
children? Collect the evidence so that we can try your fathers'
murderers - store all the information in your memory and do not
forget any details that could lead to the perpetrator? Do not
forget the faces of the soldiers who killed your fathers? Do not
despair, we have pledged to preserve human dignity and the rights
of nations!