BEIT HANOUN (Gaza): The pockmarked house is deserted. Among the smashed furniture lie posters of women and children killed by Israeli shells two weeks ago.
The extended Al-Athamna family lived in the four-storey building as well as three other homes in this street in northern Gaza. Thirteen family members died in the shelling.
Ali Al-Athamna, 29, said the remaining family members had not returned to the neighbourhood because of “shock, sadness and fear”.
“The family was not just massacred, but also displaced,” said Al-Athamna.
The children who survived are now back at school. “But can you imagine how the children are doing? They are all in tragic psychological shape,” he said.
“We were promised psychological assistance by a mental health organisation but nothing has been done to support the poor children.”
Israel has blamed a targeting error for the artillery fire on Nov. 8 that killed 19 Palestinian civilians, some as they slept in their beds. It has expressed regret and said the shelling was aimed at curbing militant rocket attacks.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian government gave each household $1,000 to rent an apartment. The same amount was given to other residents in Beit Hanoun whose homes were wrecked in recent Israeli military operations.
Militants often use Beit Hanoun as a staging post to fire missiles at the Israeli town of Sderot on the border. Rockets killed two Israelis in Sderot in the past week.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate, this week urged gunmen to halt the rocket fire in return for an end to Israeli military raids and attacks in the strip.
Abbas calls the rockets “aimless and useless”. The armed wing of the ruling Hamas movement says “they create a balance in horror with Israel.”
Raed Al-Athamna, 38, one of several brothers who lived in the squat, grey four-storey building in Beit Hanoun, said it was hard for surviving family members to return.
“Everybody is afraid to come to the house to live again. Women and children are still afraid,” he said. The survivors who are not in hospital are living with other relatives.
Hayyat Al-Athamna, 56, lost three of her sons, her two grandchildren and her mother-in-law. She wears a black traditional dress as a sign of mourning.
“I lost them all. They either all died or are in hospital beds,” she said.
Of her two surviving sons, one is being treated in hospital in Egypt. The other, who is disabled, was unharmed.
Hayyat Al-Athamna met visiting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, at the shelled building on Monday.
She wept as she pointed out pictures of her dead. “The first dead son, the second dead son, the third,” she said.
Standing outside the building, Arbour said Gaza was suffering “massive” human rights violations and urged all sides to be bold in trying to end the violence.—Reuters
