JABALYA CAMP, Gaza Strip, 24 April 2004 — A craving for cookies led nine-year-old Mona Abu Tabaq to dash outside her Gaza Strip home to a nearby grocery store as gunfire echoed in the streets. On her way back home, the Palestinian girl was fatally wounded by Israeli fire. Hundreds of mourners, some chanting vows of revenge, attended her funeral yesterday in the Jabalya refugee camp.
“I ask God to punish the killers. Only seeing (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon’s head on a platter would be enough to console me,” her mother, Shifa Abu Tabaq, said. Mona was one of 16 Palestinians killed during a three-day Israeli Army invasion into northern Gaza to stop militants from attacking Jewish settlements.
Another child killed on Thursday was a four-year-old girl who died of tear gas inhalation inside her home at the site of an army raid in Beit Lahiya. Children on both sides of the conflict have been frequent victims in three-and-a-half years of violence.
An Israeli Army spokesman said soldiers “did not fire at (residential) buildings or children” on Thursday and that they had shot back at Palestinian gunmen who hurled grenades and fired automatic weapons and an anti-tank missile at them. But Palestinians insisted Israeli troops were confronted only by stone-throwers.
Mona’s mother said she allowed her daughter to go out to buy biscuits because she believed the danger was further away. “She found the store closed and as she tried to return home they shot her dead,” Shifa said. She said a bullet fired by a soldier pierced her daughter’s stomach.
“My daughter hadn’t even finished her meal, she went out to buy something and just at that moment the Israeli soldiers opened fire on her and killed her,” she cried, her voice choked by her tears.
Mohammad Nassar, a medic at Jabalya Hospital, said the little girl held her hand over her gaping wound before she died, telling him she wanted to go home because her mother would be worried that she was late.
But the last words she uttered was, “Allah, there is only one God,” the tearful medic added. He wondered how such a young child “knew what people are supposed to say before death.”
Many children attended Mona’s funeral yesterday, among them Ghadir Sakr, also aged nine, who had gone to the morgue beforehand to plant a kiss on her slain friend’s forehead. “I used to play with her all the time. I came to see her for the last time before they bury her,” the weeping girl said.
Ghadir slipped between scores of mourners outside the Adwan hospital morgue to say a last farewell to her classmate. “Goodbye Mona, we will see each other again in paradise,” she sobbed as she finally managed to reach the body of her friend and embrace it.
“I am more afraid than before because they (Israelis) fire from tanks and helicopters on children, even if they are not throwing stones,” said Aed Battah, 13. Jihad Haddaf, also 13, who lives in this Palestinian refugee camp, said he “wanted to die a martyr”. “We throw stones at them without stopping during their incursions, and they respond with heavy weapons,” he added.
Meanwhile, a top aide to Sharon warned his extreme right-wing Likud party yesterday of “dire consequences” for the Jewish state if they reject his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a staunch Sharon ally, chided fellow Likud ministers who reluctantly endorsed the “disengagement” plan but have not campaigned for it ahead of a May 2 party referendum.
Polls indicate Likud approval is far from guaranteed. A survey in the Yediot Ahronot daily showed 49 percent of the party’s 200,000 members in favor and 39.5 percent against.
