KAFR AL-LABAD: The visit came in the middle of the night, Mohammed Shula said. His daughter-in-law, eight months pregnant with her first baby, was whispering. There was stress in her tone.
” Aid, please”, Shula recalled her saying. ” You have to keep us”.
Minutes later, Sondos Shalabi was tragically shot.
As Israeli security forces stormed Nur Shams immigrant camp, a congested urban city in the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem, Shalabi and her husband, Yazan Shula, 26, as they fled their homes.
As part of a larger assault on Palestinian militants in the north occupied West Bank that has gotten worse since the peace between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was implemented last month, Israeli military vehicles have surrounded the tent. Israel Katz, the country’s defence minister, announced the army’s growth of procedures, claiming it was to prevent Hamas ‘ alliance Iran from establishing a new front in the occupied place.
Palestinians view the 23-year-old Shalabi’s murder as part of a worrying trend toward more deadly, heroic Jewish techniques in the West Bank. Following that, the Israeli military released a quick statement informing the military authorities that it had referred her shooting to them for a criminal investigation.
Even on Sunday, just a few streets aside, another young Arab woman, 21, was killed by the Israeli military. As she approached her back door, an explosive machine it had planted exploded.
The Israeli army responded by claiming that a wanted radical was inside her home, obstructing Jewish forces to knock down the door. Despite the men ‘ calls, the girl continued to stay in the room. The troops reacted to any injury that uninvolved civilians might cause.
Across the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, at least 905 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops since Hamas ‘ Oct 7, 2023, attack triggered the conflict in Gaza, according to the Israeli Health Ministry. Some allegedly were insurgents killed in gunbattles during Jewish incursions. But rock-throwing protesters and unconcerned civilians- including a 2-year-old woman, a 10-year-old son and 73-year-old guy- have also been killed in subsequent weeks.
” The basic principles of fighting, of confronting the Palestinians, is unique now”, said Maher Kanan, a member of the emergency response team in the nearby town of Anabta, describing what he sees as the military’s new perspective and techniques. ” The displacement, the number of civilians killed, they are doing here what they did in Gaza”.
Mohammed Shula, 58, claimed that his son and daughter-in-law started plotting their flight from Nur Shams last week as Israeli drones flew overhead, Palestinian militants boobytrapped the roads, and their baby’s due date was approaching.
His son “was worried about ( Shalabi ) all the time. He knew that she wouldn’t be able to deliver the baby if the siege got worse”, he said.
Yazan Shula, a construction worker in Israel who lost his job after the Israeli government banned nearly 2, 00, 000 Palestinian workers from entering its territory, couldn’t wait to be a father, his own father said.
Shalabi, quiet and kind, was like a daughter to him- moving into their house in Nur Shams 18 month sago, after marrying his son. ” This baby is what they were living for”, he said.
Early Sunday, the young couple packed up some clothes and belongings. The plan was simple- they would drive to the home of Shalabi’s parents outside the camp, some miles away in Tulkarem where soldiers weren’t operating. It was safer there and close to the hospital where Shalabi intended to give birth. Yazan Shula’s younger brother, 19-year-old Bilal, also wanted to get out and jumped in the backseat.
There was a burst of gunfire shortly after the three of them left. Mohammed Shula’s phone rang.
His daughter-in-law’s breaths came in gasps, he said. An Israeli sniper had shot her husband, she told her father-in-law, and blood was flowing from the back of his head. She was unscathed, but had no idea what to do.
She was encouraged to remain calm by him. He instructed her to knock on any home’s door to ask for assistance. Her phone on speaker, he could hear her knocking and shrieking, he said. No one was answering.
She told him she could see soldiers approaching. The line went dead, said Mohammed Shula, who then called the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service.
” We couldn’t go outside because we were afraid we’d be shot”, said Suleiman Zuheiri, 65, a neighbor of the Shula family who was helping the medics reach their bodies. ” We tried and tried. All in vain. ( The medics ) kept getting turned back, and the girl kept bleeding”.
Bilal Shula wasn’t hurt. He was taken to a police station and held for several hours before being arrested.
The Israeli military has granted permission for the International Committee of the Red Cross to allow medical personnel inside the camp, according to the Red Crescent. But the paramedics were detained twice, for a half-hour each time, as they made their way toward the battered car, it said.
When questioned why soldiers slowed ambulances, the Israeli military repeatedly stated that it had opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Shalabi’s murder.
The young couple was finally reached by medics who had been rushing the husband out of the camp to the hospital until about 8 a.m., according to the Red Crescent. They were detained a third time while being rushed to the hospital.
Yazan Shula was unconscious and in critical condition, and, as of Tuesday, remains on life support at a hospital. Shalabi was found dead. Her fetus also did not survive the shooting.
Mohammed Shula keeps thinking about how soldiers handcuffed his other son and marched him into their vehicle after witnessing Shalabi’s body bleeding on the ground and doing nothing to help.
” Why did they shoot them? They had no fault doing anything. They could have stopped them, asked a question, but no, they just shot”, he said, his fingers busily rubbing a strand of prayer beads.
Several hours later, Israeli security forces invaded the camp. Explosions resounded through the alleyways. Armed bulldozers scurried down the streets, destroying the pavement and rupturing underground water pipes. The power failed. Then the water dried up.
Before Mohammed Shula could process what was happening, he said, Israeli troops banged on his front door and ordered everyone- his daughter, son and several grandchildren, one of them a year old, another 2 months old- to leave their home.
The Israeli military said it was facilitating the departure of civilians who wanted to leave the combat zone of their own accord, and that it was conducting forcible evacuations in the West Bank. It did not respond to inquiries about why more than a dozen Palestinians interviewed in the Nur Shams camp made similar allegations about their forced displacement.
In the corner of his friend’s living room, Mohammed Shula pointed to a bag of baby diapers. That’s all he had time to bring with him, he said, not even photographs, or clothes.
