Where should a person feel secure if not in a hospital bed? That is what Um Maher asked CPTers Bob Holmes and Jane Adas as she sat outside the intensive care unit in Alia Hospital where her 22-year-old daughter, Majdaleen Alrai, lay critically wounded.
Where should a person feel secure if not in a hospital bed? That is what Um Maher asked CPTers Bob Holmes and Jane Adas as she sat outside the intensive care unit in Alia Hospital where her 22-year-old daughter, Majdaleen Alrai, lay critically wounded.
Majdaleen, from Al Aroub refugee camp north of Hebron, had spent one week in the hospital for treatment of diabetes and was scheduled to return home Monday morning, 21 May. She was looking forward to her wedding with 25-year-old Mohammed Rageb Silmi, which was to have taken place the first week in June.
At 11:30 Sunday night, CPTers had been awakened by sporadic heavy gun and tank fire. We later learned that it came from the soldier camp guarding the 4 caravans that comprise the Israeli settlement of Tel Rumeida, and was directed towards a Palestinian neighborhood less than a kilometer away from the CPT apartment.
The patients in Alia Hospital were awakened as well. For the sixth time in the second intifada the hospital was hit by Israeli fire. A live bullet pierced the window over Majdaleen’s bed and lodged in her abdomen. Um Maher, sleeping on a mattress beside her daughter’s bed, described how Majdaleen cried out, struggled from her bed and collapsed in the corridor.
Majdaleen suffered extensive damage to her liver, kidney, and intestines. While doctors operated for three hours, Um Maher tried to call family members, but their cell phones were closed. In the early morning she was finally able to reach Mohammed, a laborer en route to work in Jerusalem. Mohammed returned to inform family members and bring them to the hospital in Hebron. That was when he learned that Um Maher’s family home in the Al Aroub camp had been completely damaged by Israeli tank fire at 12:30 am.
Mohammed urged Holmes and Adas to let the world know how Israeli military aggression has turned Palestinian lives upside down. Um Maher asked why Arab countries only talk while the Israeli military destroys Palestinian homes over their children’s heads. She asked why the United Nations enforces resolutions punishing Iraq but ignores similar resolutions critical of Israel. “Why does the world allow what is happening to us?” We have no answers to her questions.
