’We will all die. But why like that?’
It was a few minutes after 3 A.M. Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad was driving from the home of a friend on the western side of his village to his house, on the eastern side. A few hours earlier he had dropped off his wife at home after they’d gone shopping together and had coffee with friends. At around 10 P.M. he went to visit a friend. Since returning from the United States, 11 years ago, As’ad had been spending a lot of time with childhood friends from the village. They sipped coffee, played cards and talked late into the night, each time at someone else’s house. The night of January 12 was no different. At 3 A.M. he drove home.
On the dark, empty road, he suddenly noticed a few Israel Defense Forces soldiers at the street corner where Ali’s Grocery is located, in the center of town. Jiljilya, located in the Ramallah District and one of the most affluent locales in the West Bank, is replete with palaces. Some of its residents immigrated to the United States years ago, where they prospered and then built themselves mansions back home. A drive around affords quite a spectacle: Houses of marble that look like they’re made of marzipan, each more luxurious than the next, most of them empty, awaiting their owners’ family visits in the summer, or waiting for them to retire.
Omar and his wife Mahani also wanted to grow old together in their village, after they left it for America in 1970. For the first 11 years they lived in Chicago, then they moved to Milwaukee, where they owned a few supermarkets. Mahani is 78, Omar was 80, and they were married for 58 years. They built their home in Jiljilya 15 years ago – a relatively modest residence compared to most of the other neighboring villas. They lived there alone: Their five daughters, two sons and their grandchildren remained in America. Everyone in the family, including the grandparents, has U.S. citizenship.
It was very cold, that Wednesday night. The soldiers ordered As’ad to stop. The previous night, too, IDF jeeps had invaded Jiljilya, which is typically one of the quietest locales in the West Bank. Maybe that’s why the fighters from the army’s ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda (“Judah’s Eternity”) Battalion 97 raided it: It’s easy to train, to mete out abuse for no reason, to demonstrate control and power, or just enjoy a break from the routine and the boredom there. This ludicrously named battalion has a rich record of acts of abuse against Palestinians. This time it was the turn of the inhabitants of Jiljilya.
The forces decided to detain without prior warning anyone who dared drive in the street that night. The soldiers claimed afterward, in testimony they gave to the army, that this was the order they had received – from whom it isn’t clear. According to residents, dozens of troops descended on the village that night; five to seven of them manned a makeshift checkpoint they’d erected in town.
An eyewitness, Rada Bakri, 63, who lives above the site where the soldiers positioned themselves, was awake and had read in the social networks that the army had invaded again. He peeked out of the window of his second-floor apartment – according to an account he later gave to Iyad Hadad, the Ramallah District field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem – and saw a few soldiers leap into the middle of the road and stop As’ad’s car. Shouts quickly erupted between them and the elderly man who wanted only to get home.
After about five minutes a soldier opened the door of the vehicle and forcibly removed the driver, according to Bakri. The soldiers shackled his hands with black plastic handcuffs, later found at the place where he died, blindfolded him and stuffed pieces of flannelette into his mouth.
About 120 meters separate the spot where As’ad was initially detained and the place where the soldiers force-marched or dragged him. That occurred along the dirt path that leads to the new mansion of Mohammed As’ad, a relative of Omar’s, who also returned, in his case recently, from the United States and is living in Ramallah until his luxurious two-story home will be ready – very soon now. Soldiers had wandered about near the empty structure the night before; on this night they would haul five Palestinians into its marble-floored courtyard.
It was very dark, and eyewitness Bakri still can’t say whether As’ad walked on his own or was dragged by force. As’ad was a heavyset man with a plodding walk, his family related early this week when we visited. They found one of his shoes in his car – meaning that if he was walking, it was with one foot exposed to the wet, cold earth. They added that the soldiers had subjected him to a body search: He was left without a coat, wearing only a shirt and sweater; they stripped off his red keffiyeh, which was found later in a corner of the courtyard.
As’ad would have passed through the stone gate into the courtyard of the imposing new house, with its red-tiled roof and stone pillars in front. There, the soldiers threw him onto the ground, face-down, like one would toss a sack, next to the bags of sand being use in the construction, which are still there. Hadad believes that As’ad died within a short time, perhaps soon after he was hurled to the ground. An 80-year-old man on a frigid night, frightened, humiliated, probably panicked. “Why didn’t they at least allow him to sit, bring him a chair?” mourners asked this week, in the family’s house.
In the meantime, a van approached the soldiers’ checkpoint at the bottom of the road, carrying two Palestinian greengrocers who were on their way to the wholesale market in the town of Beita. It was about 3:30 A.M. Mamduh Abd A-Rachman, 52, from the nearby village of Arurah, was in the passenger’s seat. This week he accompanied us to the site where As’ad was taken that night – followed by him and his colleague – in order to reconstruct the elderly man’s last moments.
The soldiers stopped the van and ordered the driver to proceed to the mansion, where the two occupants were told to get out and hand over the keys and their ID cards. They were forced to sit in the courtyard; Abd A-Rachman showed us how he sat on his leg, because the marble was unbearably cold. The two newly snared captives were ordered to sit a few meters apart. They weren’t handcuffed, but a soldier trained his weapon on them. They were told to keep their eyes on the ground. They couldn’t see anything. On the way from the van, Abd A-Rachman said he tried to tell the soldiers that he was ill, but that of course was of no interest to them; they forced his head down and ordered him to shut up.
A large number of soldiers had meanwhile gathered in the courtyard, which had become a temporary detention facility. A few minutes later, two more Palestinians were brought in, also greengrocers on their way to Beita. They too were made to sit on the ground and keep their eyes down. The detainees were seated a few meters apart, apparently to prevent them from mounting an uprising. One of the soldiers now drove As’ad’s car, which had remained at the checkpoint, to the mansion.
And thus they sat, on the cold floor – four living detainees with eyes downcast and one who was most likely dead by that time. They were drowsy and freezing; Abd A-Rachman fell asleep. The four didn’t know that someone had been brought there before them. Abd A-Rachman recalled that at one point he felt that he was touching something, but never imagined it was a dead body, thinking it was one of the bags of sand scattered about. A short time later, two soldiers sat down near Abd A-Rachman. Afterward it would emerge that they had come to remove As’ad’s handcuffs: Apparently they realized he was dead and wanted to get out as fast as possible, while eliminating any evidence.
An autopsy performed this week by three Palestinian physicians, under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, revealed that As’ad, who had pre-existing health problems, died as a result of a heart attack. The examiners noted that he had received blows to the head and arms and that the blindfold he wore was so tight it caused bleeding. They determined that the reason for death was “a sudden cessation of myocardial activity due to psychological tension brought on by the external violence to which he had been exposed.” Another source added that the initial autopsy findings suggested that As’ad was “severely beaten” and suffered from “rough and violent treatment” – as evidenced by numerous bruises.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit issued the usual statement this week: A Military Police investigation is now underway. A spokesperson for Military Defense, which is representing the soldiers, stated: “They [the soldiers] were engaged in operational activity with the aim of preventing terrorism. The Palestinian in question was detained lawfully during the activity in accordance with procedures, in light of his behavior, which endangered the soldiers and the force, and he was released at the conclusion of the activity in sound condition and with no need for medical intervention. The circumstances of his death are not related to the conduct of the military forces.”
While retreating from the courtyard, the soldiers aimed their rifles at the detainees. Abd A-Rachman says he got up to ensure that they were indeed gone, and then noticed something covered up next to him. He was aghast to discover it was a human body. As’ad’s face was covered with some sort of cloth, perhaps the coat he had been stripped of. Abd A-Rachman remembers that he shouted that there was a body, but the others replied that it was probably a sack of cement. “No, it’s a person!” he screamed.
A check of the man’s pulse and breathing revealed that he was lifeless. Within a few minutes the village doctor, who lives several dozen meters from the site, arrived and tried to resuscitate As’ad, but in vain. The group then carried him on a stretcher to the physician’s clinic and administered electric shocks, but to no avail. As’ad was dead. It was 4:09 A.M. The soldiers left the ID cards and car keys they had confiscated on the roof of As’ad’s car, it was later discovered.
In her home in Milwaukee, As’ad’s daughter, Hiba, 32, read on social media that someone from her parents’ village had died. She called the house immediately. Mahani, her mother, awoke in a fright. This week the widow told us tearfully that she was sure her daughter was calling because she had quarreled with her husband. But Hiba asked where her father was. The devastating answer came soon enough. Now Mahani is sitting in her living room in a traditional black dress and weeping. The family has already hired a caregiver for her, as she remains alone in the house.
Two days before As’ad’s death, his younger brother Amer, a 59-year-old gardener with an American accent who lives in Racine, Wisconsin, had arrived in Jiljilya. He hadn’t seen his brother since As’ad left the United States over a decade beforehand and now he had come to visit. Unlike him, As’ad’s children didn’t manage to get to the funeral; since they don’t have Palestinian ID cards, they had to request Israeli visas, which are extremely hard for Palestinians to get.
Since their return, Mahani and Omar had been unable to leave the village: Their old ID cards had been confiscated due to their prolonged absence; even if they had somehow traveled abroad with their U.S. passports, they would not have been allowed to return. Shortly before we arrived this week, the new ID cards they had waited for all these years arrived – but Omar was no longer alive. Amer had only managed to see him briefly before he died.
Mother and brother are sobbing now. “We will all die,” the brother says. “But why like that?”
