[Dryerase] "We Only Have the Choice to Die": Gaza Residents Brace for More Terror

[annie v]

"We Only Have the Choice to Die": Gaza Residents Brace
for More Terror 
by Kristin Ess 

GAZA STRIP, NOV. 14 — Today in Rafah an elderly woman
sits in a chair in a narrow dirt alleyway, the same
spot she sat in yesterday when she still had a house,
uninhabitable though it was from the stench of
flooding sewage. In one day, her eyes have gone from
bright to dull. She is now both stateless and
homeless. 

Israeli tanks ripped through her house yesterday,
along with those of over 100 Palestinians. The woman
next door holds my hands, kissing my cheeks. She is
imploring me to do something to save her damaged home,
to stop the Israeli soldiers from shooting at her, to
stop the sewage from seeping through the creases in
her cement block house. 

As we wade through the floor, she is crying as she
leads me through the broken glass. She points to the
tanks and bulldozers just outside her window, and
holds her hands up to the sky. The streets are full of
flies. The 8-meter-high security wall Israel is
building out of dirty reddened steel is getting longer
everyday. 

Israeli soldiers targeted a 2- year-old boy yesterday.
Even they could not come up with an excuse for
shooting him in the head. At his funeral today, Fatah
Youth flags flew in the breeze, the baby’s body
covered in purple- pink flowers. He was carried on a
stretcher along side another small boy, nine years
old, who died from 2-day-old injuries. 

In Gaza City, Israeli Apache helicopters are shooting
missiles at the same building they already destroyed
two nights before. This is a reminder to everyone here
that they are never safe. In violation of
international law, Israel continues to practice
collective punishment. 

The Gaza Strip, already like a prison because people
cannot move in or out, is being used as a dumping
ground for the family members of "wanted"
Palestinians. Many are saying that as soon as Israel
banishes all Palestinians to Gaza, it will simply bomb
the Strip out of existence. 

In Rafah this morning, a family was eating its Ramadan
breakfast in the one room remaining in its destroyed
house. The house had already been partially bulldozed
days before, but there was nowhere else for the family
to go. 

An Israeli tank passed by, firing inside. The mother
and father grabbed their children and began to run.
The father, carrying two of the children, escaped. The
mother holding her 3-year-old son, but was injured as
she tried to run away from the Israeli tank fire. She
was taken to the hospital. The father found their
3-year-old son with a 50mm shell in his chest. 

A friend who has two young children and another on the
way phones me and says, "This is a small body, a
3-year-old’s body. This bullet is big; it’s for walls,
or to fight tank to tank, not for children." I ask
him, "What can anyone do to defend themselves, to
resist?" He tells me, "We have the choice to die. This
is the reality. We can’t escape this." 

Later, I’m watching satellite news. A hundred tanks
are plowing through Nablus, a West Bank city still
under curfew. On Al Jazeera, I see a boy in a t-shirt
and jeans running behind one of the tanks, trying to
insert a Palestinian flag.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com