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IMEMC
 “My father was not a fighter. He was not armed. The [Israeli] soldiers
took him from our house and tortured him without any mercy, they
killed him and gave us his body, my brothers and I are orphans now.
Where is the international conscience, where is the United Nations
that puts the victim and the attacker on the same scale? My father
was a peaceful man supporting his six children.”
With these words, Mustafa Husny Fayid, 13, started talking about the
tragedy that beset his family when the Israeli army carried out the
Jenin refugee camp massacre in 2002, during an invasion that Israel
calls “Operation Defensive Shield”.
Five years after the massacre, the child was finally able to talk about
what happened when he was seven. He expressed his anger that “the
world is still unable to stop the Israeli atrocities”.
“The world is talking about justice, peace and human rights but when it
comes to us, and to what Israel is doing to us, they change their
concepts and principles. We are refugees dreaming of a stable life,
a country and a humble home”, Mustafa stated, “Where is the world
justice, were is the international law, how come the committee set
up to investigate the massacre in our camp was never allowed to be
formed? They should come here and see how we are living, and the
destruction inflicted on us and on our future. The occupation is
the cause of all our problems, but nobody wants to see the truth,
they want us to be silent”.
The misery of the child and his family started when the Israeli army
invaded the camp in April 2002. “When the army invaded the camp,
soldiers started occupying homes and started ambushing the fighters,
then they started shelling all the houses after totally surrounding
the camp”, Mustafa said, “Everything became dangerous, danger was
all around us. We were hiding in one room for a whole week, while
planes and tanks were firing shells and missiles at the whole camp.
We lived in fear and my younger brothers never stopped crying the
whole time. My father asked us not to be afraid, and he read us
verses of the holy Quran”.
At that, Mustafa stopped talking for a while. His eyes were filled with
tears as he looked at his fathers’ picture hanging on the wall.
Finally he continued, “Several days after the invasion began, we
knew that the soldiers had the whole camp surrounded, and that the
invasion was getting more violent and fierce. Then the shelling
intensified and the soldiers shelled the mosque near our house”.
The next morning, the army started advancing into the camp, and the
soldiers started knocking on the doors ordering all men to leave the
houses and surrender themselves to them.
“We heard violent knocking on our door, and we became so scared. My
father opened the door and saw more than 30 military jeeps outside
on the street. The soldiers then broke into our house and started
searching it, they stepped with their dirty feet on the bread, and
started breaking the dishes, smashing the windows and then they
started hitting my father violently before taking him to the yard,
we heard him screaming from the pain, before they took him away”.
According to other eyewitness accounts, Mustafa’s father was used as a
human shield by the soldiers, who forced him to knock on the doors
of neighboring houses before they broke into them and abducted the
inhabitants.
“Later on, the soldiers returned. They had my father and my uncle, and
locked them in a small room in our house. The soldiers saw drawings
that my kid brothers had painted on the wall in our house, maps of
Palestine and other drawings, and the soldiers were angry and said
that those drawings are maps for the fighters to escape and started
hitting my father on his head”, Mustafa added.
“They were violently hitting my father on his head, and were screaming
and shouting at him, he started bleeding and they took him out in
spite of his injuries and pain”.
Eyewitnesses told Mustafa that they saw the soldiers torturing his father
as they were taking him to an armored vehicle, then they transferred
him to a location where the soldiers gathered with their vehicles.
According to local accounts, Israeli troops took dozens of residents
to the temporary camp where Mustafa saw them taking his father.
There, the soldiers tortured and interrogated the men. At one point,
according to eyewitnesses, Mustafa’s father pleaded to be taken to a
hospital, but the soldiers refused to provide him with any medical
treatment.
Later on, soldiers took the man to an unknown destination; some residents
said that they saw him at a Civil Administration Office which
belongs to the Israeli army. The residents said that they heard him
screaming, and then he stopped.
“He wasn’t breathing, and the people told me when that happened they
started shouting at the soldiers, he is dead, the man is dead”,
Mustafa said, “Then the soldiers gave him first aid and took him to
a hospital, after that we never knew where he was”.
“We were told by the army that my father was at Al Foula Israeli
hospital, but when we phoned the hospital, they told us that he was
not there, we contacted the Red Crescent and the Red Cross and they
told us that the soldiers took my father to Ofer prison. We searched
for him for three months”.
“The Prisoners Society, the Red Crescent and several organizations helped
in the effort to locate my father. They were informed by the army
that my father was taken prisoner, but when medical institutions and
the lawyer of the prisoners’ society contacted the army officers,
they said that his name was not among the list of detainees”.
Different stories regarding the destiny of Mustafa’s dad increased the
worries of his family, and three months later, after extensive
efforts by the family and several institutions, the army admitted
that the father was dead.
“We lived through tough times, as the army was waging its cruel war
against the camp, against us, we were unable to hide our fears, our
tears, my little brothers and I were crying day and night”. Mustafa
stated.
But when the news finally arrived about the whereabouts of the father, it
was shocking to know the truth, that he was a dead body at Abu Kbeer
Israeli morgue. When the army handed the body of the father to his
family, their grief was even greater, it was in a closed coffin.
Nobody was allowed to see him because his body was severely mutilated and
deformed. And now, five years after his father was killed, Mustafa
is speaking.
“I insist that those responsible for his death should be prosecuted, I
appeal to the international organizations to adopt the case of my
father and file charges against the Israeli army, I want to know how
did he die in their prisons, he left the house on his feat, and
return to us a dead body, they took him away from us, forever”.
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