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| Congressman Frank
Wolfe |
By
Maha Abd El-Hady, IOL Palestine Correspondent
NABLUS,
April 14 (IslamOnline) – As the ancient Palestinian city of Nablus
witnessed the most aggressive Israeli military offensive, many
heartbreaking stories of surviving Palestinians have surfaced.
It
never crossed the mind of Sheikh Abdullah Mohamed Al-Shaabi, 65, that
he would be the only survivor in his ten-member family after being
buried under the rubble for eight days following strikes by Israeli
Apache helicopters that targeted his house in Yasmina alley on April
5, 2002.
“We
were sitting together at home when we found ourselves suddenly being
hit by several Israeli rockets from all directions, until the house
turned into a heap of rubble under which my entire family and I were
buried,” Shaabi said.
His
father Omar Al-Shaabi, 85, his sisters Fatma, 57, who works as a
teacher, and Abeer, 37, who is a renowned resistance activist, his son
Sameer, 45, and his pregnant daughter-in-law Nabeela, 40, and her sons
Abdullah, 9, Azam, 6, and Anas, 4, were all killed in the attack.
Sheikh
Abdullah remained alive under the rubble with his handicapped wife
Shamsa Al-Tahan without food or water for eight days. Their tongues
never stopped glorifying Allah throughout the entire eight days. “My
wife and I were expecting death any second and we were prepared for
it, but I didn’t know that our saying ‘there is no God but
Allah’ would save us because they were heard by a group of youth who
came to the alley during the three hour lifting of the curfew,” he
said.
This
scene of Abdullah Al-Shaabi’s family was repeated with many other
Palestinian families who lost their lives during the Israeli attacks.
What
happened to the family of Sheikh Hamid Al-Betawy, head of the
Palestinian Scientists Committee, is another example of the aggression
of the Israeli occupation force.
Israeli
tanks surrounded the family house, blasted the door open, and soldiers
ordered all those inside the house to surrender. They destroyed
everything in the house as they searched it. They then abducted Sheikh
Hamid’s three sons and threatened to destroy the house if Sheikh
Hamid, who was not home, did not give himself up upon his arrival.
The
same happened to the family of Hamas resistance activist, Mahdy Yaeesh.
Israeli occupation forces threatened to abduct his young sons, all of
them below the age of 12, and bomb his house over his family if he
didn’t surrender.
Even
journalists faced the same fate. Several Israeli tanks surrounded the
house of the journalist Nawaf Al-Amer, who works for the Kuwaiti news
agency. Nawaf, the father of seven, was abducted for no given reason.
The
houses of the widows of martyrs in Nablus were also attacked. For
instance, the house of Umm Jamal Al-Hodhod, the widow of Gassan Al-Hodhod,
who fell martyr during the first intifada in 1987, was attacked. The
occupation soldiers completely destroyed the house and stole Umm
Jamal’s jewelry and money.
Medical
sources in Nablus said that the number of martyrs in Nablus during the
past ten days exceeded ninety and the wounded are more than one
hundred.
As
for the amount of damage and destruction, it is immeasurable.
