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THE ARCHIVES
ABIR ARAMIN, WHO DIED TRAGICALLY ON
18th January 2007
If anyone symbolises the importance of peace and the protection of children - both
Israeli and Palestinian - and the sheer futility of this endless Middle East tragedy
- it is the pointless death of a beautiful little girl, much loved by her family
- who simply went out to buy sweets and never came home.
Her father, Bassam Aramin is dedicated to peace building between Arabs and Jews.
His organisation - al-Quds for Democracy and Dialogue is one of our Palestinian Partners.
Here is his moving and inspirational statement...
"I fought with my daughter on the day she was shot.
On her way out the door to school, Abir announced, in that way children have of doing,
that she would be playing with a friend that afternoon rather than coming straight
home to study for an exam scheduled for the next day. She was 10 years old, smart,
dedicated to her schoolwork and still a little girl.
She wanted to play. I told her to not even think about it.
If I could tell her anything now, it would be: Go. Do whatever you want. Play.
Because now, she never will. She will never laugh again, never hear her friends calling
her name, never feel the love of her family wrapped around her at night like a warm
blanket.
Abir, the third of my six children, was shot in the head as she left school January
16, caught in an altercation between Israel Border Guard troops and older kids who
may or may not have been throwing rocks. She died two days later.
I know what the Israeli army has said about the incident, and I know what Abir’s
older sister Arin saw with her own two eyes: Abir was running away from the troops
when she suddenly stopped and fell, and blood splattered onto the ground. An independent
autopsy confirms the most likely cause of death: a rubber bullet, through the back
of Abir’s head. I have that bullet in my house, because poor Arin, watching her sister
get shot, picked up the bullet and brought it home. I was not surprised when the
Israeli army tried to blame Abir for her own death. First we were told that she was
among the rock throwers; then we were told that “something"blew up in her hands —
though her hands remained miraculously in tact— before she could toss it at the Border
Guard jeep.
I was not surprised, but the anguish that such fabrications cause my wife and me
is hard to express. Our baby was killed — must her name and innocence be desecrated,
as well?
It would be easy, so easy, to hate. To seek revenge, find my own rifle, and kill
three or four soldiers, in my daughter’s name. That’s the way Israelis and Palestinians
have run things for a long time. Every dead child — and everyone is someone’s child
— is another reason to keep killing.
I know. I used to be part of the cycle. I once spent seven years in an Israeli jail
for helping to plan an armed attack against Israeli soldiers. At the time, I was
disappointed that none of the soldiers was hurt.
But as I served out my sentence, I talked with many of my guards. I learned about
the Jewish people’s history. I learned about the Holocaust.
And eventually I came to understand: On both sides, we have been made instruments
of war. On both sides, there is pain, and grieving, and endless loss.
And the only way to make it stop is to stop it ourselves.
Many people came to support and comfort us as Abir lay dying, her small face chalk
white, her eyes forever closed. Among those who never left my side were a number
of men I have recently come to love as brothers, men who know my past, and who share
it. Men who, like me, were trained to hate and to kill, but who now also believe
that we must find a way to live with our former enemies.
Israeli men. Every one of them, a former combat soldier.
These men and I are members of Combatants for Peace. Each of us, 300 Palestinians
and Israelis, was once on the front lines of the conflict. We shot, bombed, tortured
and killed. We believed it was the only way to serve our people.
Now we know this not to be true. We know that to serve our people, we must fight
not each other but the hatred between us. We must find a way to share this land each
people holds in the depths of its soul, to build two states side by side. Only then
will the mourning end.
I will not rest until the soldier responsible for my daughter’s death is put on trial,
and made to face what he has done. I will see to it that the world does not forget
my daughter, my lovely Abir.
But I will not seek vengeance. No, I will continue the work I have undertaken with
my Israeli brothers. I will fight with all I have within me to see that Abir’s name,
Abir’s blood, becomes the bridge that finally closes the gap between us, the bridge
that allows Israelis and Palestinians to finally, inshallah, live in peace.
If I could tell my daughter anything, I would make her that promise. And I would
tell her that I love her very, very much."
