Associated Press reported that eight-year-old Akbar Zayed was on her way to a clinic to have stitches removed from her chin when she was gunned down by a barrage of Israeli 'defence' forces. The IDF raid left behind demolished homes, damaged cars, three hospitalised and a family devastated by the death of a little girl. It was meant to be a raid to arrest 'fugitives' the army claimed were holed up in a house. However the people to end up being shoot in the West Bank village of Yamoun were those in a taxi going to the clinic in the adjacent street.
Kamal Zayed, the uncle of the murdered girl who was driving the car, said three men ran toward the car and before he could turn off the engine they fired on him. “I saw them behind the fence. There were more than 30 soldiers. The first bullet hit my niece. She got a bullet in the head from the very beginning,” he recalled while talking to reporters from hospital bed where he was being treated yesterday for gunshot wounds in his arm and leg.
When the IDF opened fire gunfire the car had just arrived at the clinic where the young girl was was to have her stitches removed. “I started to yell ... opened the door and started taking her out of the car to get her into the clinic.”
With the girl dead the outrage didn't end there. Kamal reported that when he was placed in an ambulance to be taken away for treatment to his gunshot wounds, the IDF soldiers was him dragged out of the ambulance and interrogated him for more than two hours before finally allowing him to receive medical treatment.
The girl was killed right at the start of the incident. The IDF rounding up the family members and detaining them at an Israeli military base for several hours but the fugitives fled, assuming they were ever really there.
Yesterday, hundreds of people attended the funeral of the girl. Stopping frequently to wipe away the tears, Akbal Zayed’s father, Abder Zayed, said, “How can I enter the house and never see her again?”
Hearing stories like these it is difficult to see why some people have difficulty understanding the motivation of suicide bombers. Place yourself in the shoes of somebody who has lost their daughter, sister, wife, husband, son or brother - murdered in cold blood by people who will never be held responsible or see any kind of justice.
The Israeli army has since said it was looking into the reports that policemen had killed Akbar Zayed, and confirmed that an 'elite Border Police unit' had been hunting down terror suspects and opened fire at a suspicious car that approached an area that the unit had cordoned off.
Meanwhile, the Israeli papers are keen to inform us that on Friday, two bombs were discovered by soldiers on a road leading to Nablus and destroyed by the IDF. They also tell us that at the Hawarah checkpoint near Nablus, two Palestinians were arrested, one in possession of what is described as a homemade gun and the other for carrying a knife.
There is no end in sight for this cycle of violence unleashed as a result of the British shoehorning Israel into the region last century.
The Hamas government looks like it is becoming more hardline as more moderate Palestinian factions are refusing to join the militant Islamist movement in a coalition. Hamas leader-in-exile, Khaled Meshaal, said running the Palestinian Authority would not deflect the group from its overriding goal of pursuing a long-term struggle with Israel.
"We and the Zionists have a date with destiny. If they want a fight, we are ready for it. If they want a war, we are the sons of war. If they want a struggle, we are for it to the end," he declared.
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