Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "Questions remain in Palestinian's Pupil's Death"

Questions remain after Israeli unit commander is cleared of Palestinian
pupil's death

Chris McGreal in Rafah

Thursday October 21, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1332219,00.html

The Guardian

The undisputed facts are these: it was broad daylight, 13-year-old Iman
al-Hams was wearing her school uniform, and when she walked into the Israeli
army's "forbidden zone" at the bottom of her street she was carrying her
satchel. A few minutes later the short, slight child was pumped with bullets.
Doctors counted at least 17 wounds and said much of her head was destroyed.

Beyond that there is little agreement between the army top brass and
Palestinian witnesses as to how Iman came to die last week, or even among
members of the military unit responsible for killing the child in Gaza's Rafah
refugee camp.

Palestinian witnesses described the shooting as cold-blooded. They say
soldiers could not have failed to see they were firing at a child, and she was
killed as she already lay wounded and helpless.

"Some soldiers were lying on the ground and shooting very heavily toward her,"
said Basim Breaka, who saw the killing from her living room. "Then one of the
soldiers walked to her and emptied his clip into her. For sure she died on the
second or third bullet. I could see her lying on the ground, not moving. I
can't imagine why that soldier wanted to shoot her after she was dead."

This week an army investigation cleared the unit's commander after some of his
own soldiers accused him of giving the order to shoot knowing the target was a
young girl, and of then emptying the clip of his automatic rifle into her.

On the day she died, Iman left home shortly before 7am for the short walk to
school in Rafah's Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood. The school, facing the heavily
militarised border with Egypt, is under the shadow of a towering camouflaged
Israeli gunpost.

Like almost every other building in the area, Iman's school is pockmarked by
bullets. Last year, a 13-year-old boy was shot dead by the army outside the
school. This year, two pupils and a teacher were wounded by bullets inside the
grounds.

Iman walked past her school with her satchel over her shoulder, crossed the
road and climbed down a small sandy bank to an area that was an olive and
citrus orchard until the army's bulldozers flattened it in April. She had
entered the "forbidden zone" next to the watchtower where any Palestinian
risks being shot.

The schoolgirl kept on walking toward the tower but was still several hundred
metres away when two shots caught her in the leg. She dropped her bag, turned,
tried to hobble away, and fell.

Four or five soldiers emerged from the army post and shot at her from a
distance. Palestinian witnesses and some Israeli soldiers say that the platoon
commander moved in closer to put two bullets in the child's head. They say
that he then walked away, turned back and fired a stream of bullets into her
body.

Iman's corpse was taken to Rafah's hospital and inspected by Dr Mohammed
al-Hams. "She has at least 17 bullets in several parts of the body, all along
the chest, hands, arms, legs," he said. "The bullets were large and shot from
a close distance. The most serious injuries were to her head. She had three
bullets in the head. One bullet was shot from the right side of the face
beside the ear. It had a big impact on the whole face. Another bullet went
from the neck to the face and damaged the area under the mouth."

The doctor said that the nature of the wounds suggested that Iman was already
dead when some of the bullets hit her. The army swiftly blamed Iman for her
own death by entering the forbidden zone. At first, the military said soldiers
suspected the girl was carrying a bomb in her satchel. When it turned out
there was no bomb, it said she was being used by Palestinian combatants to
lure troops from their post.

But some soldiers in the unit responsible, the Shaked battalion, were outraged
at what they saw as a cover-up. One told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that a
soldier in the watchtower had told the company commander that he was about to
shoot a child: "Don't shoot, it's a little girl".

"The company commander approached her, shot two bullets into her, walked back
towards the force, turned back to her, switched his weapon to automatic and
emptied his entire magazine into her. We were in shock. We couldn't believe
what he was doing. Our hearts ached for her. Just a girl of 13," a soldier
told the newspaper.

Other soldiers said that if the company commander was not dismissed they would
refuse to serve under him: "It is a disgrace that he is still in his position.
We want him kicked out."

The accounts of Palestinian witnesses back the claims of the protesting
soldiers.

Fuad Zourob was working at a small brick factory overlooking the area where
Iman was shot. "The girl was walking in the sand. She was shot from the army
post. She was hit in the leg and she was crawling.

"Then she stood up and started to try and run and then she fell. The shooting
went on. The soldiers arrived by foot. One came close to the girl and started
to shoot. He walked away, turned back and then shot her some more," he said.

Yousef Breaka watched from the balcony of his second floor flat. He owns the
12 acres of bulldozed land beside the building which Iman crossed minutes
before she was shot.

"The first shot came from the army post. It hit her in the leg. She was
starting to walk on and then fell. She dropped her bag. They were firing,
heavy shooting. I am sure she died before the two soldiers came and shot her
bag and then her," he said.

Mr Breaka's living room wall is decorated with the holes of nine bullets fired
from the Israeli army watchtower two years ago. A tenth bullet killed his
80-year-old mother, Jindiya.

Neither Iman's father, Samir al-Hams, nor the witnesses know why the girl
walked into the forbidden zone.

"I can't explain why she was there. I've asked everyone and no one can explain
it. Perhaps she just wanted to walk on the sand. Perhaps she was confused. I
don't know," said Mr al-Hams.

Mr Zourob was surprised to see Iman walking at the back of his factory. "I was
astonished. I didn't know why she was there. No one goes toward that area. She
was alone but some of the schoolchildren were calling her: Iman, why are you
there?" he said.

The watchtower sits atop a large hill of sand. It is surrounded by barbed wire
and other defences. Even before she was hit in the leg, it would have taken
Iman 10 minutes or more to scramble up the hill. Once she was wounded, there
was little chance she could have got to the watchtower.

If she was carrying a bomb, it could have harmed Israeli troops had she got
close enough to them. But after Iman was shot in the leg she dropped her
school bag.

Palestinian witnesses say soldiers pumped it full of bullets, establishing
that it was not a bomb, but still went on to shoot the girl.

The Israeli army's rules of engagement permit soldiers to wound a person who
enters a security zone and does not heed warning shots to leave. But once the
person is wounded, soldiers are only permitted to kill if there is an imminent
threat to their lives. Witnesses say Iman was helpless and posed no such
threat.

Her father is a teacher at a primary school neighbouring his daughter's. "The
day Iman was killed, the headmistress of her school called me at 8.15 and
asked why she wasn't at school. I said I had no idea.," he said.

"I ran to the school. The teachers and headmistress told me the army shot
toward a small girl but she was fine, don't worry. I calmed down a bit when I
heard that and thought maybe they shot toward her to make her afraid and
arrested her for interrogation and they will release her. But then they
declared her dead. That was the worst moment in my life."

This week, the officer responsible for the Gaza strip, Major General Dan
Harel, completed his investigation and pronounced that the company commander
had not acted unethically in the shooting of Iman but was being suspended for
losing the confidence of his soldiers.

The speed of the investigation has revealed once again the cursory nature of
the army's inquiries into such shootings. A more thorough investigation
usually only follows if there is external pressure, such as in the case of
three Britons shot dead by Israeli soldiers over the past two years.

The military has quietly dropped an investigation into the killing by an
Israeli sniper of a brother and sister, both teenagers, in Rafah in May. The
army falsely claimed that the pair were killed by a Palestinian bomb and only
began the investigation after journalists found the bodies of the children and
reported that both had a single shot to the head.

Under pressure from the revelations of the Shaked battalion soldiers, the
military police has launched a separate investigation into the death of Iman
al-Hams. The soldiers say they will insist that it is completed.

Guardian Unlimited ) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004