JENIN, May 1: An elderly Palestinian woman found her life’s savings worth over 5,500 dollars in the ruins of her home in Jenin refugee camp on Wednesday, a moment of joy amid the desolation of homelessness.

Aisha Qassam Abu Khalil, 68, had stashed cash earned from decades as a farm worker in Israel in a hole in the wall of her home. She did not retrieve it before fleeing in terror to a cousin’s house as an Israeli bulldozer roared up to her house.

The Israeli army stormed into Jenin last month and fought house by house in what it said was an operation to hunt down Palestinian militants it blamed for suicide bombings. The camp’s main square was razed by tanks and army bulldozers, leaving 4,000 people homeless.

Khalil and 30 other women and children cowered in the house for days as Israeli forces and Palestinians fought.

“Finally the shooting died down and a huge Israeli bulldozer appeared before the house.

We obeyed an order to come out, waving a white flag. I looked over at my house and saw it in ruins, with the walls caved in,” Khalil recalled.

“My soul exited from my body as I thought of the fruits of my life’s work in the fields lost forever. I was beside myself,” she told Reuters in the intact home of a friend overlooking the rubble mountains of the square.

“This morning, a U.N. bulldozer arrived to tear down and clear away the remains of my house so it would not collapse on anyone. I saw my last chance,” she said.

“I pleaded to (the driver of) the bulldozer to work carefully and slowly at first so maybe I would spot my savings. He made a few careful strokes with his shovel, and there it was!”

She held up a squashed tin can and a blue plastic bag stuffed with 4,170 Jordanian dinars ($5,881) it had contained — a small fortune in these impoverished parts.

The dinar remains legal tender in the West Bank, Jordanian territory until it fell to Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.

“When the bulldozer found my savings, I gazed up at the sky, threw my arms out and thanked Allah for allowing me this happiness in the midst of this fresh disaster for Palestinians,” said Khalil, wizened, toothless, but still spry as she clambered over the rubble to show where the money had resurfaced.

Khalil, who had lived alone in her house since her mother died in 1977, said: “I’m going to deposit my money in a bank.”—Reuters