Death in French Park

It was afternoon, and the four boys, all of them high school students, set out on a hike on the heights of Mt. Ebal overlooking Nablus. They climbed on the rocks in the direction of the "French Park," a small forest planted near the top of the mountain, the only green area of Nablus, which serves as the city's picnic site. No one can explain why the place is called the French Park. Just as it is not exactly clear what the boys were doing there. Perhaps it was a peaceful afternoon hike, as the boys claim, or perhaps it was a terror activity, as the Israel Defense Forces claim.

The boys say that they were armed with a family-sized bottle of water, their only baggage. The IDF claims the four boys were a terrorist band that was about to plant a roadside bomb. Shortly before they got to French Park, fire was opened on the boys: Mohammed Abu Salha, 15, was shot in the head and apparently died on the spot; Ala Shishtri, 15, was shot in the stomach and is lying injured at home; Ramzi Saka, 17, was shot in the leg; and Ahmed al-Fahuri, 17, emerged unhurt, after managing to flee.

The chronological report in the newspapers the next day was typical, routine, almost boring: "A group of soldiers from the Haruv infantry battalion, waiting in ambush, noticed a band of young men trying to plant a bomb on the road that is used for military vehicles. The soldiers opened fire and identified a hit to three Palestinians. One of them was evacuated in a Palestinian ambulance and died of his injuries, the others fled."

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We can assume that not many readers of this laconic news item, as it was published in Haaretz based on military sources, spent much time reading it. The same item also noted that a few hours earlier, a company commander in the Paratroops was slightly injured during an arrest operation in the nearby Balata refugee camp - a fact that may not be connected to the shooting. But in long-suffering, embattled Nablus, they do see the context: There they are saying that there was no terrorist band and no bomb, only the soldiers' quick and angry trigger fingers - perhaps as revenge for the bomb that had slightly injured the company commander that morning, perhaps as a cautionary measure on the part of the soldiers. The IDF has a different version.

Were the high school students Mohammed, Ala, Ramzi and Ahmed members of a dangerous terrorist band, or an innocent group of hikers? Did Mohammed deserve to die? And if they really were about to plant a roadside bomb, as the IDF claims, how is it that none of the survivors were arrested? After all, they have been at home since the incident, and we had no problems meeting them this week. Ala lay injured and bleeding on the slopes of the mountain when the soldiers approached him after shooting at him, and they didn't evacuate him to a hospital or arrest him, either.

On the foot of Mt. Ebal some disturbing questions arise. Why was Mohammed killed, and why was Ala injured, and why was Ahmed released, and why was his uncle Amjad arrested last Friday? What really happened?

Even on a cloudy day, Nablus can be seen from the heights of Mt. Ebal. Breathing heavily, we climbed on foot this week to the top of the mountain, to the place where piles of rocks block the road, on orders of the IDF, to the place where the young people of the city, the most imprisoned city in the territories, go to breathe some mountain air. The dozens of empty beer bottles piled up by the side of the road testify to the nighttime activity here. The bloodstains that have not yet been completely washed away tell of happened here on Tuesday, November 8.

At 4 P.M., a rumor spread in the city that soldiers had fired at a group of boys who were roaming around. Mohammed Ayash, who serves as a coordinator for the handful of international volunteers who are living in the city, immediately set out with his "internationals," about a dozen young people from all over the world, to comb the area. A native of Balata, he is a handsome and energetic young man who speaks fluent English, and is very experienced in rescue activities in his battered city. On Zablah Street, the last street on the mountainside, he heard that there was a missing person, Mohammed Abu Salah, a 15-year-old boy, whose father had sent him to take his place as a security guard in a building being constructed on the mountainside. Three other boys managed to flee from the shooting, he heard, two of them were wounded. One did not return.

Night began to fall, daylight was replaced by twilight, and Ayash and his colleagues on the rescue team searched for the missing boy, lighting the way with their cellular phones. After about 40 minutes, they found Abu Salah lying on a rock, his head pitched forward in the direction of the steep slope, with blood on his face and his chest. The boy was apparently dead when they reached him; his body was cold. On both sides of his head, there were bullet wounds. Ayash carried the boy's body down the slope, shouting for help. With him was the boy's uncle, Amjad Abu Salha, who had joined the search. The desperate parents were waiting near their home, also on the mountainside.

At first the uncle carried his nephew's body, but he tripped, and Ayash was the one who finally brought the body to the Palestinian ambulance waiting below, in front of the horrified parents. Dr. Samir Abu Zarur of Rafidia Hospital in the city pronounced the death: "A boy in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, with a digital watch on his wrist, and white socks," wrote the doctor. "We found blood on the head and the face, remnants of vomit in the mouth, the entry wound on the right side of the head, half a centimeter in diameter, and an exit wound of three centimeters, at a depth of eight centimeters, on his left side. The X-ray showed crushed bones and bleeding in the skull." Dr. Abu Zarur told Ayash and his friends that in light of the tiny entry wound and the relatively large exit wound, it looked to him as though the boy was shot at short range. He didn't write that in his report of the death.

There is a rockslide at the place where the boy's body was found. On the rock where he lay, an arrow and markings in Hebrew letters were painted in red long ago. From above, the ruins of an ancient mosque, the Imad al-Din mosque, overlook the place where the body was found. On the top of the bald mountain there is a forest in which the soldiers of the Duvdevan anti-guerrilla unit and the other IDF special units hide when they want to command a view of the city. Sometimes it is very dangerous to walk there. A few moments' walk away, down on the mountainside, is the home of the Abu Salha family.

A tiny house, with two small rooms. The sofa in the narrow hallway served as Mohammed's childhood room, a pathetic flowerpot on the windowsill for decoration. The father, Hamdi, and the mother, Rana, are very restrained for parents who lost their eldest son only a few days ago. They welcome us with a friendly smile, impossible to understand. Only the cuckoo clock emits a strange sound, like weeping, on the hour. There were six well-groomed children until a few days ago; now five remain. The grandmother, Jihad, also proud and restrained, and the little brother, Mahmoud, join the conversation of the bereaved.

Mohammed was in 10th grade, and dreamed of becoming a doctor. They say that he wanted to make his father happy. His father has worked all his life as an ordinary laborer and as a night watchman. In the meantime, Mohammed saved his pocket money for a cellular phone with a camera, G2 or G3. The father got work at the building site a few months ago: He used to spend his nights there. This week Hamdi resigned from the job; he couldn't sit there anymore, in the place near where his son met his death.

From time to time, Hamdi used to call his son Mohammed at home, and ask him to replace him at the construction site until nightfall. That's what happened on the last day of Mohammed's life. Mohammed returned home from school at 1 P.M. that day.

"What did you cook? I'm hungry," he asked his mother, who apologized that she hadn't had time to make lunch yet, because she was at the doctor with his sister. He went to do his homework, recalls his mother, a very attractive woman wearing a headscarf, until she finished preparing the mujadra, a dish of lentils and rice, for him.

At about 3 P.M., his father called from the city and asked his son to go out to the construction site until he came to replace him. In contrast to his usual behavior, Mohammed left the house without asking permission from his mother, who was busy with the laundry. He only asked his brother to tell her he had left. A short time later, when Rana sent her young son to the construction site to tell Mohammed not to come home late, Mohammed asked to apologize to his mother for his hasty departure. Thus, in detail, without tears, the mother recalls her son's last hours. "He took a bottle of water with him," adds his grandmother, Jihad.

At about 4 P.M., someone called the house and said that there was shooting from above, and that Mohammed was in danger: Maybe he was arrested, maybe he was wounded, maybe he was killed.

Three boys set out. Ahmed al-Fahuri, a 17-year-old boy who is big for his age, now says that he set out with his two friends, Ala Shishtri and Ramzi Saka, in the direction of French Park. On the way they met Mohammed, sitting at the entrance to the construction site, and they suggested that he join them. Mohammed brought a bottle of water with him. When they approached French Park, they were suddenly fired on, as Fahuri recalls. Fahuri lives near the Abu Salha family; the other two boys were his friends. The four scattered in panic in all directions when they heard the shooting. Two of them, Ramzi and Ahmed, ran down the slope in the direction of the first row of houses, and found a hiding place among the rocks; Ala and Mohammed fled eastward, in the direction of the Imad al-Din mosque. Fahuri says the soldiers fired and threw grenades at them.

In his home in the city, the injured Ala Shishtri lies convalescing from his injury. Smiling, with a long scar along the length of his stomach, a red kaffiyeh covering the wound. He also says that they were fired on suddenly, when they approached French Park. He and Mohammed fled eastward, and he heard the soldiers calling to them on the megaphone in Hebrew, which he doesn't understand. The soldiers who hit him and Mohammed shot at them, he says, from a distance of about 20 meters. Ala says that he fell from the bullet that hit his stomach, and then he noticed the soldier who approached him, checked whether he was carrying a weapon, and left without a word. Afterward, Ala managed to get up and run wounded to the first house. Mohammed remained behind, bleeding.

The IDF spokesperson said this week: "On Tuesday, November 8, an IDF lookout spotted four Palestinians apparently engaged in placing a bomb on the road going up the mountain, in order to harm the military vehicles on it. Relying on intelligence information, and since the four had been engaged in a similar activity the day before, the force opened the `suspect detention procedure' in order to detain them. In the course of events fire was opened toward the lower part of the body and a hit on three of them was observed. The four, among them the Palestinian who was apparently not hurt, were seen fleeing in the direction of the city of Nablus. Therefore, the possibility of detaining them or giving them medical care was denied."

Last Friday night, at about 2 A.M., soldiers knocked on the door of the bereaved family. The father, Hamdi, sounded more upset when he recalls the events of that night, than when he recalls the events of the day his son was killed. The soldiers knocked on the door, threatened with weapons, searched the house before the frightened eyes of the children, and didn't bother to explain why they had come. They only asked, "Is that your son?" when they saw the memorial poster for Mohammed, issued by Hamas, who adopted Mohammed after his death.

Every casualty has an adoptive organization, but Hamdi says his son had no connection with Hamas. But the green flags of the organization are now fluttering in the wind above the home of the Abu Salha family. Afterward, the soldiers went to the apartment on the ground floor of the house, where Hamdi's brother Amjad, a 32-year-old bachelor, lives. This is the uncle who found Mohammed's body, together with the foreign volunteers. At the conclusion of the search, which apparently didn't turn up anything, the soldiers arrested Amjad. At home, they haven't heard from him since.

Why was Amjad arrested?

The IDF Spokesperson's Office did not answer the question.

From his sickbed, Ala Shishtri swore that he will never, never again climb the accursed mountain, Mt. Ebal, to visit French Park at the summit.

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