Palestinians Left Homeless in Jabaliya
She takes cover from the elements under a shabby tent fixed loosely at branches of a tree that survived the sweeping Israeli devastation of acres of fertile land.
No wonder that she nicknamed her second child born during the Israeli incursion Al-Shareed (Arabic for the displaced man).
"I named my child Abdul Rahman, but nicknamed him Al-Shareed as a living example of our untold plight," tearful Um Abdul Rahman told IslamOnline.net.
"Now we are left homeless without a livelihood after Israeli military bulldozers uprooted olive and palm trees while chickens and cattle were buried under the debris of our home."
Israel ended Friday, October 15, one of its bloodiest raids into the Gaza Strip, killing 133 Palestinians, including 30 children, demolishing 70 houses and displacing hundreds of families.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers churning through Jabaliya alleyways destroyed at least fifty workshops and shops along the Gaza Strip’s main road.
Lamp posts and electricity cables lay uprooted along roads mangled by Israeli tanks around Jabaliya and Beit Lahya.
Puddles of stagnant drain water permeated refugee camp streets with a fetid smell.
Whole districts were still without water and electricity on Sunday, October 17.
Missing Ramadan
Adel Salem, 13, and his brothers missed fasting the first day of the holy month of Ramadan.
They were exhausted after spending a sleepless night sifting through the wreckage of their home.
"They [Israeli occupation troops] ordered us at gunpoint to leave our home and we saw it crumble right before our very eyes," Salem told IOL.
"We were panicked by the merciless occupation soldiers, who don’t balk at killing anyone even children."
Iman Al-Hams, 13, was riddled with 20 bullets by an Israeli officer while on her way to school in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah.
Another 10-year-old Palestinian schoolgirl died of her wounds after Israeli snipers shot her in the chest while she was sitting inside a UN-run school in a Gaza refugee camp.
