States are there to protect. But so are fathers!
Sele Media Africa www.selemedia.org
Reported by David Joshua | Sele Media Africa Reporter
Abdel Aziz Majarmeh was standing next to his 13-year-old son, Islam, as he was shot dead by Israeli forces this month at the entrance to Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank.
“My son fell to the ground, and then I heard the sound of a shot,” he said. “An army jeep came up and five or six soldiers pointed their weapons at me, telling me to leave. I didn’t even know my son was martyred. I started dragging him away.”
Abdel Aziz said he had gone to the camp – occupied by Israel’s army since January – to retrieve family documents from his home there.
“There is no-one for me to complain to,” he told me. “They control everything. The Palestinian Authority can’t even protect itself – it only implements the decisions of the Jews.”
As a Palestinian, Abdel Aziz is resigned to his powerlessness. As a father, he’s tormented.
“In my mind, I keep asking that soldier, ‘why pick on a 13-year-old boy? I’m standing right next to him. Shoot me. Why are you shooting children? I’m here, shoot me’.”
Israel’s army said it had fired to neutralise a threat posed by suspects who had approached them in a closed military area, and was examining the incident.
It refused to clarify what threat the teenager had posed.
Cities like Jenin were put under the full control of the Palestinian Authority three decades ago, under the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Peace Accords.
They were meant to be the seeds from which statehood would grow.
But Israel says it was terrorism that flourished there. In January, it sent tanks into Jenin and the neighbouring city of Tulkarem to crush armed Palestinian groups, saying it would apply lessons learned in Gaza.
Since then, Israeli forces have remained, razing large areas of the camps in both cities, and demolishing buildings in other areas.
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