A Sniper Kills a Boy in Aida Refugee Camp

Contributed by: Athal

Date of Testimony: November 22, 2023

Read by Laura Mogannam

Sleeping in Palestine is one of the things not all people can do, especially during the nights. Sometimes, or we can say most of the time, during your sleep here in Palestine you will hear voices, knocking on the doors at 3:00 am, or on your neighbor’s door, or you will wake up hearing the sound-bombs, or smelling the tear gas. It does not happen every night, but twice a week you won’t be able to sleep or go back to sleep afterwards.

Since the 7th of October, no one is sleeping as the colonial apartheid army started the collective punishment policies against the Palestinians for asking for their legal right. Everyone is a target for them. No one is safe from being killed, arrested, or being beaten for no reason. Moreover, and as a coach in a gym, I usually see at least 40 people a day. Usually we talk about the day or the night, and about what is happening. Many people feel guilty if they sleep for two hours during the night. Always they feel that how we can sleep while our people in Gaza are unable to sleep due to the aircraft bombing, and with all of these pictures of the children, women and men being martyred for no reason.

The night is too heavy, too long, this is how we feel about it. For me, since Saturday, the 7th of October, I sleep maybe 2 hours during the night. Sometimes it is less, sometimes it might be 3 or 4 hours, but not continually. Usually, I wake up every hour or less. I never look at how much time I sleep, but I just know that I have 45 minutes every morning between 6:00 am - 6:45 to sleep before going to work.

I live in Aida refugee camp, and this camp is located next to military point. My home is not that far from the military, and Rachel’s tomb, where the colonizers usually come during the night to pray. And, as way to annoy the people in the camp, they pray with the speakers, so we always have to close the windows. Sometimes, if there is an event, even closing the windows does not work, so we have to stay awake until the morning.

Location: Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem

But, since the 7th of October, we are unable to sleep for a long time. The IDF are always in the city or in the camp. Many people have been arrested from Aida Camp, almost 50+ people in administrative detention orders, and with each time they enter – which is twice a week, sometimes more – no one can sleep. Everyone will be looking through the windows to see where they are, or check on their phones to see any updates from the others if they are able to see the IDF locations. Sometimes they shoot for no reason, and this happened here in Aida when a Palestinian youth, Mohammad, was on the roof of his home. He heard that there is IDF inside the camp, so he wanted to go down to his family home, and I think this is fair for a youth who is 17 years old, to be able to reach the stairs he turned his phone flash on, and he did not know that there was sniper on the watch tower that is located in the middle of the camp, and they shoot him. On that day everyone was just asking, “Where is this voice from?” We had no information about what was happening outside, and no one could go outside, until we started receiving news that they shot a youth who was at the rooftop of his home. Since my home is next to the way the IDF walks through to go back to the military, I sat by the window for hours listening the voice of the Palestinian youths who got arrested on that day, screaming while they were being handcuffed and beaten by the IDF, hearing the voices of the IDF stopping the ambulance and the car that Mohammad was in, and fighting with his father to get him out of the car. They got him out to the ground leaving him for 20 minutes bleeding until death. Everyone in the camp was awake at that time, and at 6:30 am, everyone was in front of Mohammad’s house and with his family when they heard the news of their child's death.

Mohammad's story is one of the stories of the daily attacks in Aida camp, and in Bethlehem and the whole West Bank.

For me, the 3 hours or less I do sleep, I feel guilty knowing there are more than 2 million Palestinians who are unable to sleep for even a few minutes, when there are aircraft bombs around them, the feelings of fear that your turn is going to be next. I feel guilty when I sleep while the IDF are in Jenin camp, and I am on the TV or on the phone all night trying to read all the news so I can do my role at this stage, and show the real picture of what is happening in the whole of Palestine: the ethnic cleansing, the genocidal war, the collective punishment, the ongoing nakba.