While World Watches Deportees, Israeli Forces Kill Children in Gaza

By Stephen J. Sosebee

Israeli reaction to armed attacks against its occupation forces in late 1992 was not confined solely to the deportation of the more than 400 Palestinian Muslims pushed over the border into Lebanon without trial or proof of guilt. A far bloodier response took place throughout the Gaza Strip, where 17 Palestinian civilians were shot dead by Israeli forces in the weeks following the mass expulsions.

Israeli forces went on a four-day killing spree starting Dec. 19 in the refugee camp of Khan Younis, where the Palestinian Islamist movement was galvanized at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada five years ago. It subsided only after 10 civilians, including 2 children and 3 teenagers, were dead and over 60 injured. In a town and camp where Israeli forces have regularly shot unarmed civilians for more than five years, residents two weeks after the bloodletting continued to express anger and despair over what clearly was a rampage of death.

The bloodletting began when a six-day curfew was lifted for two hours to allow the 100,000 camp and town residents a chance to buy food. Hunger in the squalid camp had become rampant. "I was shocked to see so many soldiers in the streets when the curfew was lifted," says Ahmad Najjar, a shop owner near the central market. "They behaved very aggressively toward the people."

Tension in Khan Younis was higher even than its usual fever pitch, as 23 of its residents were among the 22 busloads of Muslims who had just been deported to Lebanon. ''The troops were part of the paratrooper unit that had three soldiers killed earlier and they wanted revenge,'' explains journalist Taher Shat. Revenge they got.

Shortly after the curfew was lifted, eight-year-old Rana Abu Tiyur went with her younger brother to buy milk. She soon returned home in the arms of a neighbor after being shot dead in a rubbish-strewn alley near the main Gaza road. "A soldier told the girl to return home; I saw it all from here, 20 meters away,'' Abu Mohammed demonstrated two weeks later. ''She didn't understand his Arabic at first, but when she finally turned to leave, he shot her from a distance of 10 meters." * Abu Mohammed carried the dying girl to her family with the help of 16-year-old Rizik Al-Farrah. The boy lived at the end of the alley and had seen Rana gunned down in cold blood. Rizik returned home crying to change his bloody shirt as the news of Rana's death enraged residents, who took to the streets to confront the army. Rizik went to the roof of his house to watch the clashes, when a soldier knelt on the spot where Rana was killed 15 minutes earlier and shot Rizik once in the head from 100 meters. His family watched in horror as he bled to death on the roof of his home.

"How can a little girl threaten a soldier?"

Rana leaves a family of nine brothers and sisters in a broken two-room shack. "We were hungry and wanted milk for our children," Rana's mother explained two weeks later. "How can a little girl threaten a soldier? Why do they keep killing our children?''

Five other unarmed Palestinians were shot dead on Dec. 19. They were Wa'il AlQaisi, 17; Adel Abu Hadaideh, 22; Naji Al-Najjar, 22; Mohammed Abu Musa, 17; and Maher Umran, 30. Forty other civilians were injured by gunfire.

Two days after the massacre, Aymon Amer, 12, left his home in the camp to get his sick father medicine at a nearby pharmacy. Khan Younis was again under curfew, but Aymon had gone under curfew to the store many times. This time, as he returned, an Israeli sniper shot the boy on the left side of his chest from a roof 150 meters away. Aymon ran 40 feet, screaming to his family "come save me," and collapsed outside his front door.

"When our neighbors saw Aymon shot down, they forgot all fear and ran to help him. They put him in the car and took him to Nasser Hospital. That is where he died,'' says his older brother Ahmed. The family immediately buried the boy before the army could raid the hospital and confiscate his body.

Renewed clashes broke out following the news of Aymon's murder, and the army was forced to leave the camp. Twelve hours later, at 2 a.m., the Israeli commander for the Khan Younis district visited the Amer family and somberly explained that Aymon's shooting had been a mistake. The family was told that the soldier "must have wanted to shoot in the air or ground but hit Aymon in the heart instead," a cousin of Aymon told the Washington Report.

The authorities offered the Amer family money, and his two surviving brothers were offered jobs to compensate them for Aymon's murder. The family angrily refused the compensation. "They think money will make us forget that our brother was shot down like a dog in the street," the oldest brother told this reporter.

Two days after Aymon's death, Ismail and Mohammed Abdeen were shot dead as they warmed themselves on the roof of their home. A Gaza winter sun had finally come out. Ismail, 27, the father of four, was shot in the head and fell three stories into a pigeon coop below. As he lay face down and bleeding, soldiers tied his hands behind his back. An ambulance was denied access to the dying man for more than half an hour.

On tine' roof of the house, Mohammed, 30, the father of three young girls, lay in a pool of blood. After soldiers stormed the house, family members report hearing shots fired again on the roof.

''When their brother Aymon saw that the army was letting Ismail die, he became enraged and attacked them," a weary cousin said two weeks later. "They beat him down, tied his legs and hands, and put him in the back of a jeep. Soldiers sat with their feet on his head."

Aymon was released three days later to find his two brothers were dead, his mother in shock, and his father a broken man. Israeli newspapers later reported that the two undercover soldiers who killed the two brothers would be removed from Khan Younis, as they were not qualified to handle the work there.

Ten unarmed civilians killed over a four day period. Mothers bury their children, children bury their fathers, and everyone asks how such insane brutality can not only be permitted, but seemingly condoned by the world outside. In Israel, where the killing of Palestinian children has never been of any real concern either to the general public or the political leadership, the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem openly questioned the military concerning the killings in Khan Younis. "How can an unarmed person, standing over 100 meters away from the soldiers, be of any immediate danger?" asked B'tselem's Yuval Gunbar at a Dec. 31, 1992 press conference.

The IDF reply was that Khan Younis "is one of the toughest in Gaza with regard to attacks local residents carry out against soldiers and Israeli civilians." Such explanations may placate those looking for an easy excuse as to why the Middle East's ''only democracy'' continues to kill unarmed civilians in the occupied areas, when only Jewish residents have any democratic rights. To the families of Rana, Aymon and Rizik, however, it is blatant hypocritical whitewashing of the murder of innocent children.

Dead children speak for themselves. Israel talks of peace, but over the past five years Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, a very high percentage of them children, and maimed and crippled tens of thousands. These are not the actions of a people, or of a country, seeking peace and reconciliation with its Arab neighbors.

*In a Jan. 8 account of the killing of Rana Abu Tiyur, Washington Post correspondent David Hoffman quoted an unnamed Israeli soldier as saying the girl was killed in a hail of more than 50 bullets in an atmosphere of ''simple hysteria.''