Celebrating
Life In Rafah
By Ramzy Baroud
02 June, 2004
Znet
Rafah,
Jenin, Khan Yunis, Zeitun: Foreign sounding names of so distanced and
disturbing a reality. All that we know of them is what the media has
selectively determined to impart, if we are even interested in hearing
the story.
The Rafah refugee
camp, a small strip of land at the southern edge of Gaza was the target
of Israels most ruthless attack in years. Between May 17-20, forty
three Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians. Among them, nine children,
most of them struck by missiles while protesting peacefully with flags
and banners. End the Siege on Rafah, declared a white banner,
torn and saturated with blood.
Media reports said
Israel was responding to the killing of 13 of its troops by Palestinian
militants.
Homemade land mines
killed the Israeli soldiers. However, the blasts were exaggerated by
the large amounts of explosives hauled by Israeli armored vehicles,
apparently on their way to blow up Palestinian homes somewhere in Gaza.
Even before the
Rafah atrocities subsided, US President George W. Bush told AIPAC lobbyists
that Israel had the right to defend itself.
Can logic be any
more fallacious?
Israels murder
of civilians is sanctioned as self-defense; Palestinians, once again,
are labeled terrorists.
Israel can assassinate
any Palestinian at the time of its choosing with a ready-to-serve verdict.
It killed and wounded hundreds of civilians in those targeted
killing sprees. Yet, Palestinians are condemned if they show the
mere desire to respond. Even the targeting of occupation soldiers is
taboo.
So what is it that
Palestinians are permitted to do in self-defense, in accordance with
the so twisted pro-Israeli Bush doctrine?
How about marching
in a peaceful demonstration?
In Rafah, that too
could not be tolerated. It was handled with resoluteness and vigor,
the same way any terrorist threat deserves to be handled.
A missile fired from a US-supplied Apache helicopter was all it took
to eliminate that option of resistance.
Photos below
are too graphic, read a warning posted on a Palestinian website
of images of dead civilians in the tragedy-stricken refugee camp. They
were of the dozen bodies piled up in a local farmers cooler since
the hospitals morgue was overfilled with victims.
One picture refuses
to escape my mind. An olive-skinned child with slightly opened eyes.
Dead. An unknown hand, holds the childs wholly disjoined arm closer
to the dead body, as if he is telling the camera: This arm belonged
here. The boy was nameless. I quivered. The feeling of being that
boys father is horrifying.
In the case of Israeli
victims of suicide bombings, reality can be equally gruesome. But Bush
dares not use the same logic when Palestinians fall victim: Palestinians
too entail the right to defend themselves. Never once has he uttered
these words. So what else should Palestinians attempt, now that even
peaceful protests are crossing the line?
Peter Hansen, the
chief of the United Nations agency for refugees in the region confirmed
that in Rafah refugee camp, homes were toppled on their dwellers.
Even as Hansen himself
walked through the camp assessing the damages, Israeli soldiers were
still shooting. We have now confirmation from the hospital that
a girl was shot and killed in one of the two gun bursts we heard,
he said.
She was Rawan Abu
Zeid, a 3-year-old girl from Rafah. Her peers said that she was skipping
in her way to the candy store. Two bullets struck her, one in the head
and the other in the neck. Was she taken to the same makeshift morgue,
or did her tiny body find room for itself in the local hospital?
This time I implore
an answer: What must Palestinians do to stand up to the Israeli occupation
without being blamed for their own misery, now that suicide bombings,
fighting occupation soldiers, protesting peacefully, huddling in fear
with ones family in ones own home, or coveting a piece of
candy from a nearby shop warrant so violent an Israeli response? Of
course we are expected to pay little attention to the Palestinian victims,
to ask who are they and who will pay for their death. In fact, few of
us bother to find out what can be done to help those fortunate enough
to evade the bullets and the bulldozers.
But enthusiastically
we indulge in analyzing Ariel Sharons motives, as if such senseless
murder might possibly adhere to some kind of logic.
Is it blatant revenge
that compelled the killings? Is it another campaign of ethnic cleansing
of areas adjacent to the border with Egypt to establish yet another
Israeli security zone? Is it a round of muscle flexing,
such as South Lebanons defeat complex, prior to a partial pullout
from Gaza?
Whatever the reasons,
the fact is, Sharon will not cease his murdering of Palestinians with
impunity. His logic, however twisted, will prevail as long as the United
States government continues to supply him with all the weapons, money
and political clout needed to defy international law. His victims will
maintain their status among the unimportant people, and
shall be reprimanded if they even dare to vent violently, because by
doing so they veer off from the teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther
King.
In a few days, the
name Rafah shall concede to make room for more important headlines.
It might be a few more days before another foreign sounding Palestinian
name, associated with tragedy and death was introduced, and with it
a long list of Israeli pretenses, coupled with a quote or two made by
President Bush somewhere on his fundraising trail: Israel has
the right to defend itself. The chances are, the Rafah morgues
shall be emptied and dusty yellow bulldozers shall remove the debris
of over 230 destroyed homes. Whose morgue shall be filled next is hard
to predict.
As for the refugees
of the devastated camp, left alone atop the debris of their homes, scores
of death certificates and hundreds of wounded to care for, they, astonishingly
have a way to cope. For one, they insist that there are millions of
people around the world who care about them. Someone chanting for their
rights and freedom anywhere in the world feeds them with urgently needed
hope for one more day.
Speaking to Gazas
Voice of Freedom Radio, Moawiya Hassanein, a physician in Gaza City
told the station that by the time 40 Palestinians were killed in Rafah,
39 others were born. I am so happy because the births were some
compensation for the human loss, he said.
A Palestinian friend
of mine, who is living far away from home, told me that as she witnessed
the images of the victims of Rafah, she felt a strange and overpowering
sense of pride. She said, If I had not been born Palestinian,
I wouldve wished to be. I understood, and I too felt the
same.
-Ramzy Baroud is
a Palestinian-American journalist.