No one bothered to keep the young Palestinian’s family informed — On his way to what was supposed to his final chemotherapy session, last November, he boarded the wrong shared taxi. Discovering his mistake, he got off and ran across the highway to catch a taxi going in the opposite direction. Israel Defense Forces soldiers who may have thought he was going to attack them, shot him, seriously wounding him. For the next three months, he was bedridden in Beilinson Hospital, in Petah Tikva, most of the time in the intensive care unit. Throughout that entire period, no one in the IDF thought of updating his parents and family about the condition of their loved one. His mother was the only one allowed who was supposed to be allowed to visit him, but even though she came a few times, on all but one occasion, she was not permitted to enter his room. Just as his condition seemed to be improving, he died, apparently last week. No one thought to inform the family about his death, or the circumstances surrounding it. Israel has not yet returned the body. In his native town of Tul Karm, in the northwestern part of the West Bank, no one believes that Mohammed-Aamar Jalad tried to attack soldiers on the way to his last chemo session. His father is the city’s legendary driving instructor – 45 years behind the wheel – and his grandfather was the first local resident to serve in the Israel Police. A photo of the grandfather in uniform hangs on a wall of Mohammed’s family’s house. This, then, was the life and death of the 25-year-old student, who dreamed of living in the United States, and who in 2010 won a U.S. green card through the lottery – but had fulfillment of his dream delayed by cancer, and terminated by Israeli soldiers…
Together with the mourning and grief, the family living in this sedate home in Tul Karm is reeling under a cloud of helplessness and lack of information. What did their loved one die of? Why was he arrested? What must they do to get possession of the body? Time and again they asked, and time and again their questions hung suspended in the air, unanswered.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.772183
