Gideon Levy Like a Safari: Israeli Troops in Jeeps Hunt a Palestinian Teen and Shoot Him in the Head
eturn to Susya
The
killing field of young Laith Abu Naim is an empty lot in the remote
village of Al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah. Someone once planned to
build a house here, but got no further than iron rods and a retaining
wall. The boy ran for his life between the rods, pursued by two armored Israel Defense Forces
jeeps. The chase ended when the door of one of the vehicles opened and a
soldier aimed his rifle straight at Laith’s forehead from a range of 20
meters. He fired one bullet, killing the teen – the same way an animal
is hunted down and bagged on a safari.
A
16-year-old boy who dreamed of becoming a soccer goalie threw stones at
a jeep and suffered the punishment of execution at the hands of a
soldier, perhaps to teach him a lesson, perhaps as revenge. The
rubber-coated steel bullet struck the exact spot it was aimed at – the
boy’s forehead, above his left eye – and had the anticipated result:
Laith fell to the ground and died shortly afterward. The outstanding IDF
sniper could have aimed at his legs, used tear gas, or tried to stop
him in other ways. But he chose, in what seems to be an almost standard
pattern in recent weeks in this area, to fire a round directly at the
head.
That’s how soldiers shot two young men named Mohammed Tamimi,
one from Nabi Saleh, the other from Aboud, wounding both youngsters
seriously. The latter is still hospitalized in grave condition in a
Ramallah hospital; the former, part of his skull missing, is recovering
at home.
Laith Abu Naim now lies in the ground in his village’s cemetery.
The
killing field is located in Al-Mughayyir’s main square, which is empty
of almost anything, other than a grocery store. The proprietor,
70-year-old Abdel Qader Hajj Mohammed, was an eyewitness to the teen’s
killing. Two of Abu Naim’s friends were with him, but they didn’t see
the moment of the shooting – they had scrambled onto the dirt path that
descends from the square toward the homes of the village. The two,
classmates Majid Nasan and Osama Nasan, lean youths of 16, are now
giving testimony to a researcher from the International Red Cross,
Ashraf Idebis, who has come with a European colleague to investigate the
circumstances of the January 30 killing.
he two youths are both wearing
blue shirts on which a photograph of their dead friend has been printed,
and have keffiyehs draped across their shoulders. The signs of the
trauma are still etched on their faces, along with nascent stubble. The
desk Laith sat at in the classroom is empty, and his friends have placed
his photograph on it, as though he is still with them. On Sunday this
week a memorial ceremony was held for him in the schoolyard.
This
is a poor village of 4,000, with residents living mostly on what’s left
of their farming, surrounded by settlements and settler outposts whose
expansion in this region – the Shiloh Valley – has been particularly
wild. The neighboring Palestinian locale, Turmus Ayya, is affluent; some
of its homes are luxury villas, which are locked up while their owners
live in exile in the United States.
Abu
Naim’s two friends and the grocery store owner tell a mostly identical
story about what happened here on Tuesday of last week.
In
the afternoon, a few dozen children and teenagers from Al-Mughayyir
walked in the direction of the Allon Road, about a kilometer from the
village center, where they threw stones and burned tires. Since U.S.
President Donald Trump
recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December, confrontations
have erupted almost daily, even in this beleaguered village.
On
the day in question, Israeli forces pushed the youngsters back using
tear gas, and two jeeps hurtled after them as they retreated back into
town. Most of the youths scattered in all directions. Laith remained
almost alone in the field facing the jeeps. He had decided to throw one
more stone at the vehicles before making his escape. He advanced across
the expanse of iron rods toward the jeep that had stopped on the other
side, threw his stone and started to run. Hajj Mohammed, from the
grocery store, which looks out into the square, relates that one of the
soldiers, apparently the one next to the driver, opened the door, aimed
his rifle and fired a solitary round.
The
hulk of a commercial vehicle that used to belong to Leiman Schlussel, a
distributor of sweets in Israel, now painted brown and serving as a
falafel stand, is perched in the square. When we visited the site on
Monday, the auto’s doors were sealed with locks. Laith apparently tried
to take shelter behind the old wreck but didn’t make it.
We
go up to the roof of the building where the grocery store is located,
some of whose apartments remain unfinished, and observe the arena: the
Allon Road, the surrounding settlements and outposts, including Adei Ad
and Shvut Rachel, and the vacant construction site with the sprouting
iron rods.
The
earth is still bloodstained where Abu Naim fell, and littered with
shreds of a memorial poster with his picture on it. According to the
grocer, the soldier who fired the shot walked over to the dying teen and
turned over his body with his foot, apparently to check his condition.
The soldiers ordered the grocer to get back into his store and close it.
They left without offering the victim any medical assistance. A taxi
rushed the youth to the clinic in Turmus Ayya, from where he was taken
in a Palestinian ambulance to the Government Hospital in Ramallah.
A
large poster bearing Laith’s photo, along with banners of Palestinian
organizations now hang on the front wall of the unfinished building,
next to the spot where he fell. On the day he was killed, his two
friends relate, he left school at about 10 o’clock, as he wasn’t feeling
well. They met up with him again around 4 P.M., in the village square.
He did not take part in the stone throwing next to the Allon Road,
joining the protesters only when they reached the square.
Abu
Naim’s grandfather later told us that Laith was on his way to soccer
practice in Turmus Ayya. When he left the house that afternoon, he took
his training bag with him. The bag hasn’t been found, and at home they
think that possibly someone took it as a “souvenir.”
The
family’s home is at the edge of the village. Laith’s mother, Nora, died
of cancer when she was 26 and Laith was 2. His father, Haitham Abu
Naim, remarried and moved to Beit Sira, a village west of Ramallah.
Laith was raised by his paternal grandparents Fat’hi and Naama, in the
house we are now visiting together with Iyad Hadad, a field researcher
from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.
Until
he was 10, Laith wasn’t told that his mother was dead; he thought his
grandparents were his parents. Even afterward he continued to call both
his grandfather and his father “dad,” using different terms: “Yaba” for
his grandfather, “Baba” for his father.
Haitham
works for an infrastructure company in Modi’in. He would see Laith
every weekend, when the boy would go to Beit Sira. He saw his father for
the last time four days before he was killed. On that fateful day last
week, Laith’s aunt telephoned his father to say that the boy had been
wounded. Haitham rushed to the hospital in Ramallah, where he witnessed
the physicians striving in vain to save his son’s life.
We gave him everything,” says Fat’hi, Laith’s
grandfather. Fat’hi studied cooking at Tadmor, the veteran school for
hotel management, in Herzliya; the signature of Rehavam Ze’evi, the
former IDF general, who was then the minister of tourism (and was
assassinated in 2001), is on his graduation certificate. Until recently,
Fat’hi, who is 65, worked as a cook in Jerusalem’s Metropole Hotel.
Someone
brings Laith’s goalkeeper’s gloves – green and white and much worn from
use. He liked to have his picture taken; his father shows us photos. He
was a beautiful boy with black hair that spilled onto his forehead.
Here he is at the water slide in Al-Ouja. He was the goalkeeper of the
school team, a fan of the Barcelona club, and he also liked to swim.
Like all the children in this area, the only beach he ever saw was at
the Dead Sea.
His
grandfather says that whenever clashes broke out in Al-Mughayyir, he
would go out to summon the boy home. He didn’t do that last Tuesday,
because he thought Laith was at soccer practice.
Fat’hi,
his face a study in dejection, asks: “Is there an army in the world
that, after shooting someone, puts a foot on his body? They shot him in
cold blood in order to kill him. It was a liquidation, an assassination.
They could have arrested him, wounded him – but not killed him. To kill
a Palestinian is nothing for them. They have no human feelings. Doesn’t
the officer who fired have children? Did he see Laith as a boy like his
children? The Israeli soldiers have lost all restraint. Every soldier
can kill anyone according to his mood.”
Then they show us more
Then they show us more photographs on the
father’s cellphone. Here’s Laith smoking a narghile with friends; here’s
his funeral. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called and thousands
attended, and this has been a source of solace for the family.
Gideon Levy
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