Shattering Image

Family mourns boy, 12, killed in the crossfire

By Matthew McAllester, Middle East Correspondent

Shattering Image — Newsday, 2 October 2000 — Newsday · 2 October 2000

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Bloody Sunday as Arab Israelis join Palestinians in confrontations tacts. "This has been a full-court press to work with 10-year-old boy, were killed. The Israeli army moved both sides to urge them to bring the violence to an tanks toward the area. end," he said.

In Gaza, soldiers at the Netzarim junction used Yesterday started out relatively quietly, with the anti-tank missiles in a strike against a Palestinian major scenes of the previous days' violence mostly police building nearby. Two Palestinians were killed. calm.

But by afternoon, gun battles had erupted in After the attack, Israeli soldiers, unseen but appar- Gaza and the West Bank towns of Ramallah and ently forming a pincer movement from the shelter of Nablus between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian po- nearby trees, fired on the Palestinian police who had lice and young men in plain clothes. been shooting at the Israeli army base.

The Palestin- Both sides used more and heavier weaponry than ians, heavily outgunned, sprinted away to the safety before in what many Palestinians are calling "the of a nearby welding factory that was being used as a al-Agsa intifada." makeshift hospital for the wounded.

At Joseph's Tomb, a holy site for Jews, Israeli heli- "These boys were in the field when the Israeli sol- wounded young men in the factory.

"Earlier I saw a 10-year-old who was shot in the heart." Hospital sources in Gaza confirmed a boy had died of gunshot wounds, though they put his age at 12 Another location of concentrated fighting was the West Bank's largest town, Ramallah.

Large num- bers of Palestinian police and unidentified gunmen in the streets on the outskirts of the town waged a continuous gun battle with Israeli forces for over an hour as the scarlet sun began to dip in the sky.

It was unclear how much control the Palestinian leadership is exerting over the Palestinian protest- ers. copters shot at Palestinian civilians and police, ac- diers shot them in the legs and arms," said Maysa cording to witnesses.

Three Palestinians, including a Abu Zidan, 23, a medic who was attending two See ISRAEL on A19 A7 Shattering Image Family mourns boy, 12, killed in the crossfire By Matthew McAllester MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT Bureij Refugee Camp, Gaza Strip — Mohammed al-Durra's mother will have to clean out the pink birdcage now and feed her son's five pet finches.

"TIll raise them for him," said Amal al-Durra yesterday af- ternoon, as she sat in a white plastic chair in her living room surrounded by dozens of female members of her family, some crying, all somber. "His math teacher gave them to him. He loved them so much." The birdcage that hangs from the ceiling is just one visual reminder of her second-oldest son.

Another will forever be the television images broadcast around the world on Saturday of the 12-year-old's last moments sheltering with his father from a torrent of gunfire. Mohammed died in a crossfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police at the nearby Netzarim junction in Gaza as he accompanied his father back from a trip to the local used-car market.

As the boy sheltered next to his father, Jamal, behind a concrete pipe leading to Gaza's sewer sys- tem, a French television cameraman filmed his death and his father's wounding. It was a shocking image that had no appar- ent impact on the ongoing violence between Israel and the Pal- estinians.

His mother's religion tells her that the footage was the filming of a Palestinian martyr in the making. Her politi- cal acumen tells her that it was the chronicle of a pointless death, just another numbing moment in the decades-long struggle between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

"Nothing new will come of this, " she said, unnervingly calm under medication prescribed by her doctor. "We will still have our martyrs. Things will continue. There will never be a peace agreement. We're used to this. Every once in a while people die and it continues." As she mourned her son yesterday, another Palestinian mother lost her 12-year-old boy in Gaza.

And another lost her 10-year-old in Nablus. At Netzarim, where Mohammed died the day before, a teenage boy ran at the Israeli army base, threw a stone at the same time as a rifle shot sounded, and then crumpled in the street, motionless until an ambulance arrived to scoop him up. The fighting continued past sun- down.

Like most of the victims of the clashes, those boys and Mohammed will soon be forgotten by all but their family and friends. Image From France 2 via AP In this image from video taken Saturday, Jamal al-Durra shouts toward the camera as he tries to shield son Mohammed from gunfire. Moments later, al-Durra was wounded, and the 12-year-old son was killed.

Below, al-Durra recovers in a Shifa hospital in Gaza. Saturday started as a day of great excitement for the ener- See KID on A19 Neweday Photo / Matthew McAllester NEWSDAY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2000

Context added by this archive

A full page carrying two stories: Bloody Sunday, as Arab Israelis join Palestinians in confrontations, above; and the family piece below.

Cite this item

"Shattering Image," Newsday, 2 October 2000. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2000-028. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2000-028

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They could not agree on his name