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. My daughter asked, what is it like to die? I told her, it s just likeclosing your eyes.JANUARY 23Sometimes I come across quotes that go some way to explaining whatwas going on in the minds of the soldiers who perpetuated some ofthese horrors. AFTERMATH 125I believe that it should have been even stronger! Dresden! Dresden!The extermination of a city! After all, we re told that the face of warhas changed.No longer is it the advancing of tanks or an organizedmilitary.[& ] It is a whole nation, from the old lady to the child,this is the military.It is a nation fighting a war.I am calling them anation, even though I don t see them as one.It is a nation fighting anation.Civilians fighting civilians.I m telling you that we [& ] mustknow [& ] that stones will not be thrown at us! I am not talking aboutrockets not even a stone will be thrown at us.Because we re Jews.[& ] I want the Arabs of Gaza to flee to Egypt.This is what I want.I want to destroy the city, not necessarily the people living within it.Reserve Colonel Yoav Gal, an Israeli Air Force pilot,on army radio during Operation Cast Lead (January 11, 2009)JANUARY 25This morning is the second that I woke to quietness; no shelling fromthe sea.Eva and I went to see our Jabalia friends, Fatima s family.Theyare back in their house, one of the few standing in Azbet Abd Rabbo.This is only the case because it was again occupied by the army duringthe land incursion.Israeli soldiers don t clean up after themselves sothe family has been cleaning for a week solid without running water.It was so good to be able to sit in the sun with them and drink teaand watch the children playing in the garden.I d not seen the childrenin a state other than fear, nor in a location other than the basement.Abu Nasser (the husband of Sara who was killed in the first attackas she was out looking for bread) came through the whole thing okdespite refusing to leave the neighbourhood when the rest of the familydid.He has been ill, not surprisingly, and was feeling chilly despite thesun.He described coming back to the house as soon as he thought itwas possible, and watching the Israeli soldiers dancing as they left.Healways reminds me of a wiry old fisherman, with a white beard, bright 126 GAZA JANUARY 17 FEBRUARY 2, 20095.6 A whole landscape of Jabalia family houses were bombed, then mined.Sharyn Lock AFTERMATH 127eyes, and a woolly hat on.He says, and apparently other Palestinians intheir eighties agree, that these attacks have been worse than anythingthey ever saw before.This is the fourth attack on the Jabalia area inthree years.On the way we dropped into the Jabalia Red Crescent centre that wehad to evacuate on the first night of the ground incursion; one room isburnt out, it has a lot of holes in, and the windows are all broken, butit could be worse.All the guys were there working hard to clear up.Even Hassan was there, limping and still sounding a bit shell-shocked.Our friend Abu Hozeifa took us around a part of Azbet I didn tsee the other day, and we recorded some more stories.We begin withAyman Torban s house, where he and his brother s family lived, a totalof 17 people.I was immediately intrigued because under the rubblewas a paper on midwifery in Palestine and I spotted more crumpledmidwifery books.It turned out this was an extensive medical andscience library put together by his sister Amal (her name means hope )who did her midwifery masters in London, and taught here in Gaza,but now lives in Dubai.We sat in the flimsy shelter Ayman has constructed and heard whathappened.He told us this house was first shelled on January 4, whenonly the women and children were there in many cases the menfeel their families are safer without them because of the Israeli army stendency to regard all men as militants.He said their home was attackedwith two Apache rockets and five tank shells.Two days later the relatives realised everyone in the basement wasstill alive, and one of the women went to tell them it might be ok tocome out.First she brought out the children, and three tanks came toconfront them.But she went back, waited with the women inside fortwo hours, and then they all came out and reached safety.Two days later the army went into the house and laid mines, whichcollapsed it completely.This was the pattern for most Jabalia houses,which appears to be why the devastation is so complete.A young man 128 GAZA JANUARY 17 FEBRUARY 2, 20095.7 Homeless Jabalia families create temporary shelters out of the fragments of theirhouses.Sharyn Lock AFTERMATH 129sitting with us said, Before these attacks I wanted to travel.But nowI want to stay in our land.Who will protect it if we all leave?Next to the Torban house are the Badwan and Ayoub houses.MaherBadwan (who had taken most of the family to his cousin s house), toldus that Mousa Ayoub fl ed his own home and went to the Badwanhouse, where he hid with Maher s mother in the kitchen while thebuilding was hit with tank shells and phosphorus.Both died; Maher smother survived a short time but no ambulance was able to reach her.The army then planted mines in the house (black crosses on the pillarsto mark the best place for them are still visible) and collapsed it withthe bodies still inside.Mahoud Abed Rabbu lived in a three floor, six apartment building.On January 6 it came under shell attack from 10.30am.At 2pmduring the 1 4pm ceasefi re , the army dynamited a wall open andtold Mahoud and his family: Leave here, go into the town, we ll killyou if you return. Everybody walked towards Jabalia centre, untilthey reached a mosque, when other soldiers took all the men about60 of them and put them in an animal shelter.Women and childrenwere allowed to leave.They took the IDs of the men, made them strip, and then used themas human shields as they continued to dynamite houses open andenter them.Finally the army released the men at about 10pm (againwarning them not to return or the army would kill them) except forten who they arrested and who are believed to still be in the IsraeliNaqab (Negev) prison
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