Day 11: Child Targets in Shati Refugee Camp

At around 11am on 6 January 2009, during the Israeli declared 'humanitarian ceasefire' hours, Abdel Jaleel Hassan Abdel Jaleel Al-Halees, 8, and his brother Ahmed, 14, went out to play ball by a nearby UN school.
There was no fighting in the area, which is far from the borders with Israel.
As they were walking back, they were directly targeted by an Israeli missile.
Abdel Jaleel was killed instantly and Ahmed seriously injured.
Their mother Samia’s health has significantly deteriorated since the attack.
Their father, Hassan, 45, is still trying to understand why his 8-year-old was killed.
Al Mezan interviewed Hassan a year after the attack to see how his family is coping.
    Why Then? “The police car had been sitting on the side of the street, abandoned, for six days.
I don’t understand why they targeted it as my boys were walking past,” says Hassan in a shaky voice.
“They had just wanted to go out to play ball for a while and it was during the Israeli declared hudna (ceasefire).
”   Hassan was preparing to go to the mosque to pray when he heard the explosion.
“I felt something was wrong straight away and so I ran out into the street.
I saw some young boys standing there who told me that a child had been killed.
”   When Hassan reached the site of the attack, he was unable to see because of the dust and smoke.
“I still didn’t know if it was one of my boys who’d been killed.
Then a shopkeeper came over and showed me a sandal covered in blood, it was Abdel Jaleel’s.
I’d bought it for him just two weeks before.
When the dust settled, I saw him lying on the ground.
His neck had been torn apart, four of his fingers ripped off, and a piece of shrapnel had gone into the front of his head and out from the other side,” he says.
“I’ll never forget that sight.
”   Caring for Ahmed Abdel Jaleel was taken to the morgue in Shifa hospital while Hassan searched for Ahmed.
Despite being severely injured in both legs, he had managed to stagger to a nearby relative’s home who took him to the Swedish Clinic (UNRWA Health Centre).
“He’d been injured with shrapnel all over his legs,” explains Hassan, “We had to take him to hospital each day for 14 days.
He should have been admitted but there wasn’t enough room because of all the other thousands of casualties.
In the beginning he would wake up every night begging me to bring his brother back from the cemetery.
My wife is very ill and so couldn’t really look after him.
It was his grandmother who had to explain.
She kept saying, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, you’ll see him again in heaven.
’ I think he’s a bit better now, but he’ll never forget what happened.
None of us will; Abdel Jaleel’s blood is still there on the ground by the school; we see it every day.
”   Hassan doesn’t believe his wife, Samia, will ever recover from the shock.
“She became hysterical when we told her that Abdel Jaleel had been killed, screaming and crying for days.
She suffers from really bad asthma and has to use three different types of inhalers.
When the inhalers stopped working properly, the doctors had to give her injections.
Now, she feels like she’s suffocating all the time and I’ve had to find the money to take her to a private hospital.
Even little Maria, who is only four, still cries when we talk about her brother.
I took her to the cemetery to help her understand that Abdel Jaleel is in heaven now.
”   Hassan has been following the UN investigations set up to probe violations of the laws of war (international humanitarian law) perpetrated during Operation Cast Lead, but has little hopes for justice.
“I think there might be compensation as a result of these investigations,” he says, “But it’s impossible for an Israeli soldier to be tried in an international court.
As long as America supports the Israelis, they’ll find a way to stop it.
”