by Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz, 25 January 2007
Was it the stun grenade that hit her head, the shock caused by its explosion or the rubber bullet fired by the Border Police? Does it make any difference? Did the Border Policeman intend to kill a child of 11 – or not? What difference does it make? The real question is why Border Policemen come almost daily to Anata, doing the devil’s work, as it were, just when children are on their way home from school? What are they looking for, for heaven’s sake, near a school in Anata, a West Bank town located northeast of Jerusalem? The Border Police come, the schoolchildren throw stones, the police fire and kill another innocent little girl – and nobody is called to account. The Shai (Samaria and Judea) police district is investigating, but not the Police Investigation Department.
In recent weeks we wrote here about the laborer Wahib al-Dik from the village of Al-Dik and about the “horse boy,” Jamil Jabji, from the Askar refugee camp, who were killed for the crime of throwing stones. Now Abir Aramin, 11, has joined them. Death to stone throwers or those around them.
But Abir’s story is somewhat different: She is the “daughter of.” Her father is an activist in Fighters for Peace, an organization of people from both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, who have decided to doff their uniforms, set aside their weapons and talk peace. Aramin has lectured in recent months in dozens of places all over the country, in living rooms and at schools and universities, from Hatzor Haglilit to Kfar Sava. A few days before he lost his daughter, he appeared before students at Tel Aviv University. Now he too is a bereaved father.
The mourners’ tent next to the local council building in Anata blew away this week in the wind. Inside the building they served bowls of lamb, rice and yogurt ladled out of huge pots once used by the Israel Defense Forces, kosher for dairy meals. Dozens of despondent men wandered around, in shock. In the office of the council head, where there is a blown-up reproduction of Yasser Arafat’s passport on the wall, we listened for a long time to Bassam Aramin. Read his painful monologue, listen to what he says. Such words have not been heard for a long time.
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