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Last update - 23:21 07/05/2009
By Amira Hass
The request relates specifically to the killing of Akram al-Ghul, 48, and of Mahmoud, the 17-year-old son of Akram's cousin Salah al-Ghul, in an aerial bombardment. Akram is the father of Fares al-Ghul, consultant to Human Rights Watch in
For everyone outside
Salah al-Ghul knew that the IDF, the Shin Bet security service and the Civil Administration were well-acquainted with him and his extended family. He was sure there was coordination and communication between these bodies. Tanks had entered the area before and never fired a single shot at the house. "They went about their shooting while we roasted corn in the yard," he says.
With a few keystrokes, any IDF commander could bring up all the information collected about them by the Civil Administration and the Shin Bet: These were refugees from the village of Harbiye (now the site of Zikim), one of whom leased a large tract of land from the Egyptian authorities in the 1960s, which was divided among his family over the years. Some of the refugees built houses among the orchards and fields. During the second intifada, these homes and their approximately 180 inhabitants were subject to a state of confinement in their own village, due to their proximity to the settlements. The Civil Administration and the IDF were in direct contact with one of the Al-Ghul family members, to coordinate the residents' comings and goings, to bring in food and to pass broken water pumps through the checkpoint. They exchanged phone numbers. The database should also show that one house was once hit by a Qassam, but the occupants were not harmed.
Salah al-Ghul knew that the computer also contained other information: which members of the family belonged to which Palestinian organizations, who had been arrested (he himself spent 14 months in prison in the 1980s, for membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of
But the computer surely revealed something about Al-Ghul's upward mobility: When in 1994 he registered as a businessman and owner of a rental-car company. Every request for a business permit, to import a vehicle, to make a bank transfer, to leave the Gaza Strip for Israel, the West Bank or abroad, every telephone number - everything is recorded in the detailed database accessible only to the Israeli security authorities.
Before 2005, Al-Ghul could not build on his land because of its proximity to the Jewish settlement of Dugit. Right after the disengagement, he began building his "paradise on earth," as he called it: No military patrol could have failed to take notice of this house, in which he invested much hope and money. He installed powerful spotlights, which he bought in
'Covered in blood'
When the aerial assault began, on Saturday, December 27, his wife and his other children were in their apartment in the Sheikh Radwan refugee neighborhood; they couldn't join Al-Ghul. His son Mahmoud was studying for exams and his father preferred that he come to the farm, because he sometimes got into fights with Hamas activists in the neighborhood.
Akram Al-Ghul was a judge in the Palestinian Authority, but after the Hamas military takeover of
The aerial assault caught them as they were caring for their cows (many of them pregnant) and camels. On January 3, at around 4 P.M., Salah and his coworker Nasser were in the cowshed, about 50-100 meters south of the house. Mahmoud and Akram had gone into the house to make coffee. Suddenly, recalls Salah, "I heard the noise, darkness covered the earth, I thought a Qassam rocket or a tank shell had landed, I yelled to
Since January 3, he can't get the thought out of his head: "An F-16 doesn't take off by mistake. It's not random. A decision was made. A lone house, with a few hundred meters away from other houses. And only this house is hit? What makes it so dangerous that, unlike other houses in the
Haaretz sought to understand, too. A question was first sent to the IDF Spokesman's Office on March 25, along with a precise description of the location. On April 8, this answer was received: "We cannot conduct an in-depth investigation of these claims on the basis of a general description of the area, without receiving exact information regarding the location of the building that was hit."
On April 20, Haaretz submitted the GPS information for the house's location. This week, on May 5, the IDF Spokesman provided this response: "An investigation conducted by the Southern Command shows that the target in question was identified as a Hamas observation post directing attacks at IDF forces and therefore it was imperative to operate against it. Being aware of Hamas' mode of operation, the IDF planned the attack beforehand in order to minimize the damage to the noncombatant civilian population."
Fares al-Ghul, Akram's son, said in response to the IDF statement: "Armed militants didn't dare to enter the area because the residents always stopped them. There was no violence in the area at the time of the bombardment [aside from the IDF bombardments - A.H.]. The killing of my father, a Fatah member, and of young Mahmoud does not prove there was any Hamas presence there."
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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