Palestinian Martyr’s Day… Stories of mass death do not stop Policy


Nablus- The alley of Al-Far’a camp did not accommodate the bodies of the two martyred brothers, Hikmat and Muhammad Melhem, together. He had welcomed them, playing, having fun, and growing up, until the occupation killed them both, then brought them to their parents and family on the shoulders of their comrades, both of them alone. The narrow space and the crowds of mourners required that.

On “Martyr’s Day,” which falls on January 7 of each year, the Palestinians remember their martyrs, whose numbers exceeded all days and hours of the year as well, after rising during 2023 alone to 22,349 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, thousands were reported missing under the rubble of bombed homes and residential complexes throughout the Gaza Strip.

Every martyr has a story whose symbolism goes beyond the anniversary of the martyrdom of Ahmed Musa Salama, the perpetrator of the “Elayboun Tunnel” operation, as the first martyr in the contemporary Palestinian revolution, and whose “Martyr’s Day” was designated as the date of his martyrdom in 1965.

In Al-Far’a camp near the city of Tubas in the northern West Bank, the two brothers Hikmat (21 years old) and Muhammad (22 years old) were martyred together on December 18 last year after they were sniped by one of the occupation soldiers storming the camp, so their family lives a new chapter of “double death” or even The “mass death” that Palestine, especially the Gaza Strip, is experiencing daily.

Until the last moment

In the middle of the Al-Faraa camp, where the crowds were gathered and the mourners were screaming in anger for revenge and vengeance, Samir Melhem (Abu Iyad), his wife and his children turned around to bid farewell to the martyrs Hikmat and Muhammad, and they did not finish with one of them, until they embraced the other, not wanting to let them go in a situation that was most painful for the audience.

While Iyad’s mother continued to receive the mourners with her children at home, the footsteps of the father of the two martyrs, leaning on his relatives, followed to the large camp playground to pray for them, and then to the cemetery, to lie in two adjacent graves.

Abu Iyad (53 years old) told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “Hikmat was hit in the head and fell to the ground. When his brother Muhammad saw him, he panicked and tried to save him, but the soldier did not give him time, so he shot him with a similar bullet, in the same place. He fell next to his brother and they left together. They were also taken to the hospital, buried, and buried together.” .

The grieving father adds that his two martyred sons were “killed in cold blood” and were not wanted or pursued by the occupation forces, and that their departure together was sudden and tragic. But the scene of the “double death” that he once experienced, he says, is experienced by the Palestinians, especially the people of Gaza, many times and daily, as entire families are erased from the civil registry.

Abu Iyad gave his life to prevent his children from harming them, except for the bullets of the occupation that he could not stop, and they were also his support and crutch in life and work, to the exclusion of any other of his children. He said, “I took them as friends, not just children, and I drew for them a future in which they began by cooperating with each other to build their homes and marry later.”

He was like their mother. They no longer felt comfortable with anything after the loss, and they did not enter the room of the martyrs Hikmat and Muhammad. Abu Iyad refuses to put a picture of the two martyrs inside the house, contenting himself with what his memory is full of beautiful pictures and stories of them, and he is patient with the same situation that the Fara’a camp is experiencing, in which only 13 martyrs died in less than two weeks.

The funeral of one of the martyrs of Al-Faraa camp near Tubas in the West Bank (Al-Jazeera)

A mother’s heart cannot expand

During the past two years, the Jenin camp in the north has experienced “double death” in more than one case, and there are at least 10 families who lost at least two of their sons as martyrs.

The sun on “Martyr’s Day” had barely risen before the city of martyrs (Jenin) woke up on Sunday, in the village of “Triangle of Martyrs” south of the city, to an event that broke the heart of Umm Alaa Darwish and her four children (Alaa, Hazza, Rami, and Ahmed) due to an Israeli bombing that targeted 7 young men, including her sons.

Umm Alaa was roaming the halls of Jenin Governmental Hospital, looking for her children who had been reduced to pieces by the bombing. She said, as if some of her mind had gone, “No one is left with me,” then she added, “We are no better than the people of Gaza, and whoever wants a homeland must endure.” .

Loss is dear.. but resistance is dearer

Jamal Al-Zubaidi (Abu Antoun) lived in the same tragedy in Jenin camp, as the man lost his two sons, the martyred resistance fighters Naeem (33 years old) and Muhammad (27 years old) within less than a year, and 7 other of his relatives. He was arrested several times in the occupation prisons, and all his sons were also arrested. Most of them were injured by occupation bullets.

Abu Antoun told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the loss is very difficult for one martyr, so how about two, three and four, or the whole family as in Gaza, but it is more painful for a family that loses its only two children as martyrs like Ayser and Ayham Al-Amer, and he adds, “I have two sons and three daughters left, but everyone else has lost everything.” “.

The feeling of sadness is deep and indescribable, says Abu Antoun, but he feels proud that his children have become martyrs for a just cause, and that saving them and others for the resistance “is not in vain, but to chart the path of life for their people and the generations after them.”

Ironically, the martyr Naeem gave birth to his first child while he was in detention, while he had his second after his martyrdom. As for Muhammad, he refused to marry and volunteered himself for the resistance. Their father said, “Many Palestinian homes share the same loss, captivity, and injury, or combine all of them, because this is the life and fate of the Palestinian, and martyrdom is expected at any moment.”

The occupation increases the tragedy of the Al-Zubaidi family by continuing to detain the body of his martyred son, while Naeem lies in the camp cemetery next to his fellow martyrs. Perhaps this is what gives patience to the family that goes to the grave to visit him from time to time.

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