10 - 16 January 2002
Issue No.568
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 10 - 16 January 2002 Issue No.568 |
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An unhappy new year
Palestinians were outraged after Israeli authorities handed over the badly mutilated bodies of three Palestinian teenagers brutally killed by the Israeli army near Gaza. Khaled Amayreh reports from Jerusalem
The Israeli army handed over to the Palestinian Authority on 3 January the bodies of three Palestinian teenagers who were apparently summarily executed by the Israeli army near Gaza.
Initially, the Israeli army said in a terse statement that "three terrorists" tried to sneak into Israel on 30 December and while doing so fired at Israeli vehicles. The army's view of events was reported widely in the Israeli media under the title "Israeli troops kill three militants."
On 1 January, the Israeli army changed its story, saying that the three youths were planting a bomb when their scheme was thwarted by Israeli troops who killed them on the spot.
By then, it had been made public that the "terrorists" were actually three teenage boys, aged 14-16, whose families had been desperately searching for them.
According to Palestinian medical sources, the three youths had been badly burned before being killed and one of them had sustained knife wounds. Sources also said that some of the boys' organs were missing, fuelleing anger among Gaza residents and speculation that the body parts were "stolen" to be given to Israeli hospitals.
As it became clear that what had actually taken place was cold-blooded murder, the Israeli army quietly retracted its earlier statements, but made no apologies and did not order an investigation.
Relatives of Mohamed Ahmed Labad, 16, Mohamed Abdel-Rahman Madhoun, 15, and Ahmed Mohamed Banat, 14, said they were "horrified" when they saw the bodies, and that even their sons' faces had been mutilated.
Mua'ya Hussein, the head of the emergency room at Al-Shifaa Hospital in Gaza, told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat, that the "three martyrs were tortured to death." He added that neither Labad nor Madhoun had traces of bullets, suggesting that they had been killed "using sharp objects."
The fact there were no bullets found in the youths' bodies belies Israel's claim that they had taken part in an exchange of fire with Israeli soldiers.
The head of Palestinian police in Gaza, Major General Abdel-Razek Majaydeh, strongly condemned "these serious and horrible crimes against humanity and unarmed children." He added that "this crime violates the simplest human rights standards and all international conventions."
Likewise, international news agencies and Western media in general, which had reported the Israeli army's lies, also consigned the story to oblivion.
Palestinians were confronted with further tragedy during the first week of the new year when on 6 January five Palestinian children were burned to death and the rest of their family badly injured when the tent they were living in accidentally caught fire.
The family had been forced to move into a tent after the Israeli army destroyed their home west of Khan Younis, opposite the Jewish settlement of Nevie Dekailm.
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