Returning to Nablus: Collateral damage--Alice Rothchild Writing from Nablus, Occupied West Bank

Tweet Portion below; whole thing here: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9429.shtml

In one apartment we were approached by Fedaa Bolos, an intense young woman holding her crying child and clearly wanting to talk. She asked us to describe the terrifying reality of her life to people "in America. They don't know what we are living here." She showed us her daughter's tiny white sweater, shot through with bullet holes and the child's bed, also riddled with bullets. Fedaa's husband, Nomair Isbaih, hovered nearby. Later, I met Fedaa sitting with her child at the Nablus Child Rehabilitation Center, run by the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, waiting to see the psychiatrist on our delegation.

An attractive woman with delicate features and a burning sense of indignation, Fedaa was trying to comfort her anxious two-and-a-half- year-old daughter Lara. Gradually we started to talk about trauma, recovery, and the recent events that radically changed her life. I learned that Fedaa is 28 years old and a graduate of An-Najah University in Nablus. Because she has been unable to find work, she stays at home to care for her daughter, reading and watching TV for distraction. "There is no place to go or to take my child to play." Nomair is now 30 years old and a production manager in his father's industrial engineering company.



Fedaa recounted that three days ago her husband woke her at 1:15 am and told her, "'There's Jewish in our area and I am afraid about Lara alone in her room. Go to her room.' I said, 'Nomair, I want to sleep.' He come back angry and said, 'Fedaa, wake up.' Suddenly they shoot at us. I get out and go quickly to Lara's room. They shoot us again in Lara's room. Nomair started shouting at them, 'Go! What do you want? Why do you shoot us? There is a baby here.' The soldier was standing in front of the window, maybe one meter from us. He said to Nomair, 'Go, I will shoot you now.' Then Nomair carries me and Lara to our room, seconds between Nomair and death. This is a miracle, I was shaking and I felt my soul go and Nomair hit me on my face and Lara is not crying, not speaking, just shaking."

The family ran from room to room as bullets, glass, and rocks rained into their apartment. They hid behind furniture for hours until they were found and removed by the soldiers. Fedaa described how the Israeli military occupied their apartment for a day-and-a-half and trashed their belongings.

Now, she waits in a crowded clinic with her child, unclear how to cope with her own incessant shaking, her inability to go to the bathroom at night alone, her husband's anger with his wife's paralysis in the face of danger and his own impotence in front of soldiers. Her daughter clings fearfully to her and has started to wet her bed at night. Fedaa struggles with feelings of aggression and anger and is having difficulties sleeping. She talks of the soldiers confronting Nomair, forcing him to strip to his underwear, and "tying his hands so bad, the blood cannot move in his fingers." She adamantly denies that anyone was involved in shooting at the Israeli soldiers. Weeks later we exchanged emails and she said, "We are still tired and still afraid to move in our home after 8 pm. I don't know how to explain my feeling, but I think we have a bad time now." She desperately wants to move to a safe place, "where there are no Jewish guns," but her permit to leave has been repeatedly denied. She has never met an Israeli who is not a soldier.