Rama, eight years old, saw her mother’s murder before her eyes at the hands of Israeli settlers, experiencing the detail, horror, and even arrogance and terror of its Israeli perpetrators, those strangers who have been spreading havoc since they sat foot in Palestine 70 years ago.
Rama sat in the back seat of her father’s car as they were returning from a visit to their relatives in Hebron to the south of the West Bank. They passed dozens of Israeli military roadblocks on their way to the north where they live, but a group of Israeli settlers were plotting death for the Palestinian family after one of those barriers.
Death was waiting the Palestinian family near the Za'tara checkpoint, east of Salfit, not far from their town to the west of Salfit. Settlers hurled a large stone at their car, hitting the mother, Aisha al-Rabi.
“I was with my mother and father in the car, and as we reached the Za'tara checkpoint near Salfit, I heard a loud sound of rocks being hurled at the car. It was hurled by settlers. One of them hit my mother’s head who had no chance even to scream,” said Rama.
Rama screamed at the top of her voice, as horror filled the place, shutting down all other sounds except for death, whose smell scattered in the place. Settlers were committing another terrorist crime against Palestinian civilians.
The weeping eyes of relatives and sympathizers were focusing on Rama in the house of martyr Aisha, west of Salfit. She says, “My mother is no more,” making everyone around her cry along with her.
“My mother has gone, I want my mother,” repeated Rama, as a sound in the house was heard telling her: “Your mother has gone to heaven.”
In the incident, the martyr’s husband was injured, and the residents of the town of Badia were in a state of great anger and grief over the loss of martyr Aisha, who was buried following a massive funeral procession.
The husband says that they were surprised by the presence of Israeli settlers at the checkpoint. “I tried to avoid their stones in vain. The settlers screamed and stood ready at the Za'tara checkpoint and we didn’t know they were there”.
The details of the crime, not limited to the trauma that the 8-year-old Rama is suffering from, but her other daughter, Salam, was also traumatized. The mother left this world before her 23-year-old daughter Salam’s wedding was supposed to take place in two weeks’ time.
