http://alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=494&Itemid=1
Written by Ahmad Jaradat
Ahmad Jaradat is coordinator of the settlements violence project for the AIC.
Tuesday, 08 August 2006
Each morning, Hussein Ali Mardawi would leave his home, and the ten members of his immediately family would wait for him to bring back food for the next day’s meals. As usual, on Sunday morning, 6 August, he left his family to spend the day driving to various markets, distributing beverages produced in his factory in Hableh, just south of Qalqiliya. Hussein’s 19 year-old son Ameed assisted him and kept him company. Under the hot summer sun, Hussein and Ameed went from shop to shop in the city of Jericho, selling cases of juice from the back of their van. At the end of the day, they used the money they earned to do the family shopping, and then they turned homeward.
Late Sunday evening, Hussein and Ameed drove home along the road that runs between Nablus and Jericho, an area rife with Israeli settlements. As they neared the village of Doma, they were overtaken by a jeep with yellow Israeli plates. The jeep blocked the road in front of the van, forcing them to stop. Three armed settlers exited the jeep, approached the van and opened fire. The settlers shot Hussein with a dum-dum bullet, which exploded in his heart, killing him instantly. He was 48 years-old. His son Ameed was injured.
Chairman of the Doma Local Council, Abed al-Salam Dawamsha, told the Alternative Information Center (AIC), “At 10 pm, we heard shots fired on a nearby road, and a group of villagers decided to see what was going on. As we approached, we saw the jeep with Israeli plates flee the scene. Then we found the Palestinian van with two people inside and took them to Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus.”
The Israeli police have yet to conduct any investigation into the crime, but the Palestinian Authority is prevented from holding Israeli settlers legally accountable for crimes committed against Palestinian residents of the West Bank. Most likely, this crime, as with many similar crimes committed by settlers against Palestinians, will never be investigated by the Israeli authorities and arrests will never be made. The settlers will continue to live above the law, and crimes committed by them against Palestinians will continue to occur with the tacit approval of the Israeli government.
Events such as these occur on many roads throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations have extensively documented this escalating aggression. No one knows who will be the next victim, or where or when the next crime will occur, but one thing is certain: if the Israeli authorities refuse to intervene and put a stop to settler attacks against Palestinians, their frequency will increase and further feed the cycle of violence that the Israeli government uses to justify the Occupation.
The death of Hussein Ali Mirdawi is a testament to the growing fear within each Palestinian that one morning he will leave his home a breadwinner only to return in a body bag. The AIC will be following this story and will report more details of the crime as they become available.