Islam Dwidar’s classmates were still taking in her shocking death — the teacher weeping outside before facing the girls, her closest friend recounting how they walked to school together each day — when the news arrived about Tahreer Abu el Jidyan.
The two 15-year-old pupils at Jabaliya’s school were both shot in the head by Israeli soldiers inside their homes just a few blocks and several hours apart. Dwidar died almost immediately after the bullet smashed through her forehead as she baked bread with her mother in their yard last Sunday.
Abu el Jidyan is still on life support at a Gaza hospital after an operation to remove shards of shattered skull from her brain.
She lies motionless, with little to suggest she is alive other than gentle breathing. Doctors do not expect her to survive. Her mother, Intisar, was at her bedside.
There were two bullets. The first struck Abu el Jidyan in the head. As she fell, the second hit the wall behind her. ”I’ve no doubt a sniper shot her deliberately. There was no fighting in the area. There were no other shots, only the ones that hit Tahreer,” said Intisar Abu el Jidyan.
With her stood Abu el Jidyan’s 14- year-old brother, Naser, who was wounded by shrapnel last week. Israeli forces killed their father 11 years ago during the first intifada.
Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups say that about half of the nearly 80 people killed by the army over the past week of ”Operation Days of Penitence” are civilians. The military says it has carefully targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters with missile strikes.
But while the numbers are in dispute — in part because it is often hard to say whether youths in their mid to late teens are bystanders or part of the Palestinian resistance — there is no doubt that a growing number of children have been felled by Israeli snipers.
At Dwidar and Abu el Jidyan’s school in Jabaliya this week, the headmistress, Rukaya Kamal al Budani, fielded calls from parents wanting to know if it was safe to send their girls. ”If they can get here, it’s safe,” was her stock reply. But of 1 150 pupils, fewer than 200 turned up.
Until June the two young women had been classmates, but then Abu el Jidyan failed and was held back for a year. Asmaa Abu Samaan walked to school with her each morning.
”I met her in front of my house each morning to walk to school. I did my homework with her. I keep thinking that if she is brain-dead and not killed perhaps she is still suffering. I can’t stand it,” she said.
Abu Samaan walked to school on Tuesday morning without her friend. ”I walked against the wall hoping the soldiers can’t see me. I want to go to school because I know the Jews do not want us to study because we need to be educated to build our country,” she said.
But the killing went on as the conflict claimed the life of another teenage girl in the Gaza strip on Tuesday. Palestinian medics said Israeli soldiers fired about 20 bullets into 13-year-old Iman al-Hams, including five into her head.
The military said she had entered a forbidden zone in Rafah refugee camp, and that she dropped a bag that soldiers feared was a bomb.
The Palestinians said al-Hams was walking to school when troops entered the camp and that she dropped her bag as she ran away in fear. — Â