After Gaza, Israeli Soldiers Are Allowed to Do Anything. Even Hide in a Palestinian Ambulance - Opinion

The Israeli Army’s Goal? Arresting Suspects. The Outcome? Deaths of Innocent Civilians
In a raid on the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, IDF undercover troops killed an elderly woman on the street and a young man in his kitchen. He had been studying business management at Al-Quds Open University

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Not an easy image to look at: A young man is lying on the kitchen floor in his home, amid a puddle of thick, red blood. The colors are bold – the red of the fresh blood splashed on white tiles. The young man is well dressed, in fashionable jeans, a black T-shirt on which the word “Couture” is emblazoned and a puffer jacket. He’s barefoot. A checkered kitchen towel, drenched in blood, covers his forehead. Apparently someone tried, in vain, to halt the terrifying geyser of blood that burst from his head.

This is the last photo taken of Qusay Saruji, a 25-year-old barber from a family of barbers in the Balata refugee camp. He wasn’t the only senseless victim of the Israel Defense Forces’ operation in the camp, located in the city of Nablus, about two weeks ago. The army’s undercover force had come to eliminate or arrest armed and wanted people, of which there are plenty in the camp, but instead killed two innocent civilians and wounded six others, one of them seriously.

Balata is the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, with a population of over 25,000, and one of the most militant. On Monday this week, when we visited, it was pouring rain and water streamed through the narrow, crumbling alleys. The balcony adjoining the kitchen of Saruji’s third-floor apartment, in a building where most of his family also lives, provides something of a bird’s-eye view of the camp. The soldier who shot him had apparently stood in the window of the building opposite, which the troops had taken over beforehand.

Below, in the street, the routine of life continues, just as it did before Saruji was killed. People come and go in the alleyways, looking grim – a scene made even bleaker by the rain and the cold, and the cloudy skies. The overcrowding, the misery and the poverty are even more depressing when seen from above.
Suddenly we noticed a young man armed with a machine gun at the entrance to the building we had entered. Bearded, wearing a black anorak, a weapon slung over his shoulder. He was speaking to another young man, who was not armed, and both of them were smoking. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that we didn’t know how we would be able to leave the building safely.

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. Qusay Saruji, the university student and barber who was killed at home in the Balata refugee camp on December 19.
Like the Palestinians, to get to Balata we had to cross the whole of Nablus from west to east. The sprawling city, once the Palestinians’ economic hub, has been in a state of semi-siege since the war in Gaza started. It can only be accessed via the village of Deir Sharaf, on its western outskirts. The Hawara checkpoint, on the main road to Nablus, Route 60, has been closed since October 7.

Nablus is a battered and beaten city, where only the remnants of its riches still linger. Just before entering Balata, we saw a sign on a building in English and Arabic: Happiness Center for the Children of Nablus. Qusay’s barbershop is on Al-Quds Street (the Arabic name for Jerusalem), the thoroughfare that leads from the city into the camp. As was once the case in Israel, barbershops here (three are owned by the Sarujis) are closed on Mondays. When we got to their home after midday, the Saruji household was still sleeping, on the barbers’ day of rest. We waited for some time outside before the door opened.

Sitting in a crowded room on the first floor was the bereaved father, Hamed, 61, who had six children. His barbershop is in the camp’s marketplace. With him were Uncle Ali, Hamed’s 75-year-old brother, who also has a beauty parlor in the market, and one of Qusay’s brothers, Mahmoud, 29, who is married, and a graduate of the psychology department of Nablus’ An-Najah University. Mahmoud works in the Palestinian Authority’s social security unit, not having found employment in his profession.

From the kitchen an old, rusting spiral heater is brought in to try to dispel the cold in the room. The eldest brother, Mohammed, 30, was Qusay’s partner in the barbershop on Al-Quds Street. Their father taught them the secrets of the profession, and he says they are all good barbers. The price is uniform: 20 shekels (about $5.50) for a man’s haircut.
Before his death, Qusay was studying business management at Al-Quds Open University, in addition to his job. He’d been working with his brother for around four years. He would arrive at the barbershop at about noon, and remain there until late in the evening.

On December 19, a Thursday, Qusay and the rest of the family slept in. Around 10 o’clock, they were all sitting at the breakfast table in the spacious kitchen on the third floor of the family’s apartment building. As they were about to start eating, they heard shots from the street. It was an exchange of fire between the undercover force that had raided the camp – and had been spotted – and local armed men.

Backup forces soon arrived; the soldiers scattered on the upper floors and roofs of the neighboring buildings. The gunfire intensified. At least eight army vehicles invaded the camp, besides the large vehicle of the undercover unit. A few of the camp’s fighters live on the same street as the Saruji family.

First to be cut down was Halima Abu Lail. Salma a-Deb’i and Abd al-Karim Sa’adi, two field researchers for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, related that the 80-year-old woman had left a clinic run by UNRWA, the United Nations refugee agency, and was heading to the market to shop. A soldier shot her from a distance of a few meters, killing her. Maybe he thought she was armed, maybe he didn’t think anything. A few minutes later, the owner of a grocery store in the market, Hussein Abu Lail, 28 – a relative of Halima – was wounded. Shot in the stomach, he remains in serious condition. Five more passersby were also hit by the soldiers’ gunfire.

As noted, at that same time, Qusay was sitting with his father, Hamed, his mother, 60-year-old Jamila, his Aunt Karima, 59, and his sister-in-law, Shaymaa, 25, at the kitchen table. Hamed went to the bathroom and then suddenly heard horrific shouts from the kitchen. Rushing back, he saw his son lying in a pool of blood on the floor. Qusay had gone to out to the door of the kitchen balcony and was shot by a sniper hiding in the building opposite, a few dozen meters away. His mother, aunt and sister-in-law saw him collapsing to the floor, blood pouring from the left side of his head, close to the ear.

The women shouted that they had to call an ambulance, but Hamed said there was no need. From the large amount of blood that streamed from his son’s head, he knew he was already dead. Qusay’s sister-in-law tried to staunch the flow with a kitchen towel, but it was hopeless. An ambulance they had summoned managed to get there only two hours after the shooting, after the soldiers had finally left the camp. During that whole time, the family sat around the body of their loved one, which they covered with a blanket after a time, trying to take in the disaster.

This week they were unable to describe what they had gone through as they waited next to the body. Says Hamed: “Qusay didn’t do anything wrong. He wasn’t armed and he didn’t try to hurt anyone. We will all die in the end, but to die like this, with injustice, for no reason ?”

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit this week replied to Haaretz’s query: “On December 19, IDF fighters operated to arrest a suspect in terrorist activity, in Balata, Nablus. During the activity, terrorists opened fire and threw explosive devices at our forces, who responded with gunfire. Hits were reported. The claim that during the exchanges of fire between the terrorists and our forces, noncombatants who were present in the area were hit, is known. The subject is under investigation.”

Ah, the polished and deceptive language of the spokesperson: Hits were reported, the claim is known. Noncombatants. Presence in the area. The subject is under investigation.
Until this past Monday, Mohammed refused to reopen the barbershop he had run jointly with his brother. Last Friday, friends came to the shop, only to find he wasn’t working. Hamed, who reopened his own establishment a week after his son was killed, encouraged Mohammed to go back to work.

After talking to the family, we went out to the kitchen balcony. Its walls, like those of all the surrounding buildings, are pockmarked from the many bullets that have been fired here over the years. Not far off, on the roof of one of the neighboring buildings, an upside-down advertising poster for Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, is being used as a divider. From here the camp looks like an endless collection of homes stacked on top of one another. Below, in the street, at the entrance to the building, the armed man and his friend were still nonchalantly smoking cigarettes.