In the third part of our series on Gaza, Rory McCarthy talks to Ahmad
Abu Me’tiq, who lost his wife and four of his children in an Israeli
air strike
Her bed is on the third floor of Gaza’s Shifa hospital, where shafts
of warm afternoon sunshine reach in from the window. The ward is
crowded, and the bed on which Asma’a Abu Me’tiq lay is curtained off
from the rest and surrounded by the blankets her sister-in-law uses
when she sleeps on the floor next to her at night.{josquote}”This house is empty. There is nothing for us here.”{/josquote}
It may be the
best hospital in Gaza but even the poorest families, like the Abu
Me’tiqs, must provide extra food themselves. Asma’a’s father, Ahmad,
returns from downstairs with a cheap electric hot-plate, which he
bought on credit from a shopkeeper he knows. He plugs it into the wall
to heat a pot of thin homemade soup for his 13-year-old daughter, but
there is either no electricity or the hot-plate didn’t work. “What bad
luck,” he says quietly to himself.
Then he reaches over to his
daughter, who is coughing and struggling to breathe from the deep wound
in her chest. She hasn’t touched her food since she was rushed to
hospital 10 days earlier: the day an explosion in the street outside
demolished the metal front door of their house as the family were
eating breakfast, impaling her and her younger sister, Shaima, seven,
with shrapnel and killing outright four other brothers and sisters and
her mother too.
“I’m waiting to see you eat,” says her father.
“Later,” says Asma’a. Several minutes passed. “Let me see you eat,” he
says again. “Tomorrow,” she replies.
As is frequently the case in
this most gruelling of conflicts the cause of the explosion that killed
the wife and four children of Ahmad Abu Me’tiq is disputed. Early in
the morning of April 28 there was fighting in Beit Hanoun after Israeli
troops and armoured vehicles raided the east of the Gaza Strip.
In
an air strike the Israeli military fired two missiles into the street
outside the Abu Me’tiq’s house, which they said were aimed at four
armed men who they said were “carrying backpacks loaded with ammunition
and various weaponry.” The Israeli military insists it was a secondary
explosion caused by the “weaponry” that killed five members of the Abu
Me’tiq family.
“The professional opinion of the IDF [Israel
Defence Force] states that the family was hit during the explosion of
the second missile that ignited the secondary explosions or from
objects that had flown towards them from the strength of the
explosion,” it said. “The IDF wishes to express sorrow for any harm to
unassociated civilians caused due to terrorist organisations [which]
operate from populated centres, using them as human shields.”
However,
the family holds the Israeli military responsible for the killings, as
does Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, which said Israel
bears an obligation to distinguish between civilians and those taking
part in the fighting. “Whoever fired the original missile bears
responsibility for the explosion that led to the deaths of the family
members,” it said. “The missile was fired at a militant who was on the
doorstep of a densely populated residential compound, knowing he was
carrying ammunition.”
Abu Me’tiq, 70, said he had received no
direct apology from the Israeli military and no offer of compensation
for the loss of his wife Meyasar, 40, and his children Rudeina, six;
Salah, four; Hana, three; and year-old Mes’id. Their deaths add to the
growing and striking toll of children killed in the conflict in Gaza.
This year alone at least 44 Palestinian children have been killed,
according to a count at the end of April by the Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights. The UN has put the figure at 53 children dead and 177
children injured so far this year.
Despite talks about a
ceasefire the death toll on both sides continues to rise. At least 312
Palestinians, more than half civilians, have been killed this year,
according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. On the Israeli
side six soldiers and six civilians have died, the latest Shuli Katz,
70, who was killed on Monday by a rocket fired by Gazan militants into
Yesha, a village in southern Israel.
The Abu Me’tiqs live in a
simple, single-storey concrete house with only mats and cushions for
furniture and a broken radio in the front room. There was no glass on
the windows and there were large holes in the corrugated iron and
asbestos roof. Several political parties had come to the house
promising money and support, and two Hamas posters and a flag flew
outside. However Abu Me’tiq said he had received no money, and there
seemed no evidence of any financial support for the family. “Just those
damn posters,” he said. He could not remember who he voted for in
elections two years ago, though he thought it was one of the smaller
leftist factions, which now carries little sway in Palestinian
politics.
Abu Me’tiq is from a family of Bedouin and was born
in a village near Ashdod, in what is now Israel. He fled as a boy with
his parents during the 1948 war and lived the simple life of a farmer,
never learning to read or write. Now with the Bedouin traditions all
but gone in Gaza he has no land and no livestock and relies on UN food
handouts and support from his older children, two of whom are married
and in their forties. “We are almost dead. We have no money, nothing.
We are exhausted,” he said.
Abu Me’tiq was was out collecting
medicine from a nearby pharmacy at the time of the missile strike. When
he rushed home the ambulances were still retrieving the bodies of his
children and he collapsed on the ground in front of them. Since then he
has been pressing the Palestinian doctors to send his daughter for
treatment in Israel, but they have so far refused saying they can do
the necessary surgery in Gaza. “Israel must treat her because they did
this thing to us. She’s what’s left of our family,” he said.
His
second injured daughter, Shaima, is less seriously hurt, with her right
leg in plaster and should recover well, the doctors say. The six other
children are staying with one of the older sons, Ibrahim, 42. “The
children can’t sleep here at night. Even I can’t bear it,” said Abu
Me’tiq. “This house is empty. There is nothing for us here.”