The oldest victim of the attack on Gaza was Mohammed Mazen Faraj Daher, who died on July 31 aged 99 years old. Its astounding to think what he must have lived through. In 1915, Mohammed was born in the Ottoman empire, probably in a village in the south of what is currently Israel, or maybe in the port city of Yaffa—now part of the conurbation of Tel Aviv, which had been founded six years earlier as a small suburban development. When Mohammed was two years old, the British army invaded from Egypt, and carved up the region in a secret agreement with France into the borders were familiar with today, directly ruling Palestine with a mandate. Mohammed would have grown up surrounded by British soldiers. Maybe—although its not likely—he would have had a British Palestine passport that looked like this: [1] and he would definitely have used Palestine Pounds as currency. When Mohammed was aged 20, he probably heard about a leading resistance fighter named Izz ad-Din al-Qassam getting killed by the British in the north of Palestine; today this mans name is borne by the armed wing of Hamas. When Mohammed was 22 there was a big uprising against British rule; about 4,000 Palestinians were killed by the British. When Mohammed was aged 33, the British mandate expired, and 100,000 British soldiers left, clearing the ground for the well-armed Jewish paramilitary groups like the Haganah to take over the country. Mohammed, along with 85% of the Arab population, was ethnically cleansed, fleeing into refugee camps around the periphery, terrified of massacres like the one they heard of in Deir Yassin. Five weeks after Deir Yassin, Israel declared itself to exist. Mohammed was probably among 80,000 Palestinian refugees arriving in the Gaza strip, dwarfing the local population. At first he would have lived in a tent city, probably thinking at first that this would only be a temporary home. He wouldnt have been able to go back to his place of origin for any reason, the border being guarded by the new Israeli army, so he was absent for the Israeli census of November 8 1948 and therefore became a stateless person, exiled from the land of his birth. When Mohammed was 38, he would have been aware of intense alarm and unrest in the whole [Gaza] Strip which was caused by a training(!) raid into a refugee camp by Ariel Sharons Unit 101, in which commandos killed 20 civilians and seriously wounded 27 others—the first indiscriminate Israeli attack in Gaza Ive heard of. When Mohammed was 41, the Gaza Strip came under Israeli occupation for the first time. Israel had just invaded Egypt, as per an agreement with France and the UK. Israelis massacred hundreds of civilians in the town of Khan Yunis. The Israelis left after 9 months that time. When Mohammed was 52, the Israelis occupied the Gaza Strip for the second time, along with West Bank, the entire Sinai peninsula, and the Syrian Golan heights. This time it was for good. Mohammed would have been issued an Israeli ID card and put on an Israeli-controlled population registry, yet never given the chance to become a citizen, living for decades under the cruel rule of the Israeli military. When Mohammed was 72, the occupied Palestinians rose up in mass protests in the first intifada which started in the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli authorities responded with a brutal policy of breaking Palestinians bones, ending in the Oslo accords which led nowhere. When Mohammed was 85, the second intifada broke out, to which the Israelis again responded with brutal repression. When Mohammed was 90, Israel removed thousands of settlers from the Gaza strip, but this just allowed the people to be subjected to a whole new batch of tricks, like causing constant sonic booms (which sound like an explosion) overnight to terrify the population. One year later, Israel started launching its conventional wars against Gaza, with around 4000 Palestinians killed in operations called Summer Rains, Autumn Clouds, Hot Winter, Cast Lead, Pillar of Cloud and Solid Cliff. In the last one, a bomb fell on Mohammed, age 99. english.al-akhbar/content/victims-gaza-list-palestinians-killed-israels-ongoing-assault?page=1 [1] palestineremembered/Gaza/Barbara/Picture3399.jpg en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_pound en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izz_ad-Din_al-Qassam en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936%E2%80%9339_Arab_revolt_in_Palestine en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_exodus en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_refugees plands.org/articles/018.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Yunis_massacre en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt-Israel_Peace_Treaty en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada theguardian/world/2005/nov/03/israel en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 23:42:34 +0000
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