Murder
On Rucarb Street
By Eliza Ernshire
31 August, 2006
Counterpunch
Ramallah.
August 29, Pre-dawn.
It is only now that the gun-fire
saluting the killed young man has become sporadic and no longer constant,
and that the verses of the Koran, chanted in farewell to him, has ceased.
But the streets are full; and full too are the hearts of all who had
to witness an attack that should only have been imaginable in the darkest
back alleys of some underworld city.
At 9 pm, the 28th, undercover
Israeli Special Forces walked down the main street of Ramallah. They
wore civilian clothes and Palestinian police-caps. They carried M-16s
as all the police force does. No one looked at them twice. They walked
straight past us where we stood at Al-Minara discussing work with a
third colleague.
They walked straight passed
the Palestinian Police Force as well who is always stationed there.
They continued walking straight
down Rucarb Street until they were opposite the famous Rucarb Ice-cream
shop where families gather every evening in the summertime.
Then they opened fire.
They opened fire after they
failed to catch two 'wanted' men who were also in Rucarb Street along
with half the population of Ramallah. The two men wouldn't come when
called and so the undercover Israeli Officers opened fire.
It is not easy to explain
the horror of seeing the cold-blooded murder of the young man who had
turned to escape on realizing the situation.
It is not easy to explain
the horror of hearing the name of the killed youth spreading from mouth
to mouth until the whole of Ramallah knows that the young man killed
was A. from the village of Deir Ghassan. Nor is it easy to explain the
horror of rushing with everybody else who knows an A. from that village
or a nearby one to the hospital.
The relief if the body pulled
from the fridge is not your A.
The anguish if it is.
Grown men falling on the
ground to beat at the dirt and cry.
The parents of the killed
man stumbled into the hospital at midnight. The father could not even
see his son because he was temporarily blinded by the shock and the
screams of the mother could be heard from the street.
Young men were also in shock,
wandering around and wondering why they had not even had a chance to
fight back. There was an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness.
Palestine has been so reduced
and so humiliated that it is now a country where the Occupying force
can walk into a main city on nightfall, can walk down the main street
of that city and kill a man and then walk away again as if that is a
damn right of theirs and no one is going to blink an eye at it.
It is not their damn right
to come and terrorize the people of a city night after night after night
on some hyped up 'security' reason! This is no human being's right.
I have been accused of not
understanding how people are feeling on the other side of the Wall.
People have written to me 'You don't know what it is like to be driving
behind a bus when it explodes' and I say this is true. But I do know
what it is like to see fifteen thugs walk down a main street of a city
at nightfall and murder in cold-blood outside a family restaurant and
then walk away again.
I call that the worst kind
of terror.
The boy they killed was just
a village boy, and the children who witnessed this killing were just
children. As in all parts of the world, children who had begged their
parents for an ice-cream before going to bed.
Nhow they must live with
this violation of their sensitivity forever.
And the thugs could just
walk away! They did not even need jeeps to perform their action of terror.
These men were not desperate.
Not one of them would tie an explosive belt around his waist.What I
am most afraid of is that they enjoy what they do. To them and to too
many others, the lives of Palestinians are, at most, only countable.
There was a three-second
coverage of this news item on BBC. 'Three militants killed in the West
Bank. One in Ramallah and two in Nablus; all were from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigade.'
One second for each man killed.
I won't begin a discussion
on why, by naming the Martyrs Brigade, the West is somehow justifying
the deaths, because the purpose of this article is only to register
horror at the nighttime terror that came in so particularly a disgusting
way to the streets of Ramallah four hours ago.And also to say that now
the city is angry.
The young men who have been
gathering for hours in groups on street corners are angry. Some have
been crying, and all have been voicing their disbelief at how on earth
Israel can continue to get away with their inhuman actions; not only
nightly midnight raids and arrests but also this gangster plot that
has left the main street of their city stained with blood again.
In the past two weeks Israeli
forces have come to Ramallah every single night. There is now a vigil
in the dark hours of these nights; from 2am till 5am half the city is
awake watching and wondering where Israel's eyes are turned and what
neighborhood they are targeting.
In the past week Israel has
made daily incursions into Nablus and has destroyed houses and killed
16-year old boys in broad daylight, and has raided the city every night.
For the past month the whole village district of Ramallah and Nablus
have been enduring invasions and raids, house-searches and arrests.
While Olmert is taking a
few blows about his conduct of the war in Lebanon, the Palestinians
are having to endure being his 'dog-under-the-table'.
How on earth is he and Israel
getting away with it?
Eliza Ernshire
can be reached at [email protected]