Palestine: Mohammed Asfour

Today I met David. David is a friendly chap who called out to a group of lost-looking ajnabiya (foreigners) in his village of Aboud and asked them “do you need help?” We were looking for a bathroom - with his Palestinian instinct for generosity, he instantly said “my house is your house, of course, please come in.”

We entered the house, asked constantly, do we want juice, water, tea, coffee, do we need anything else? David is smiling and laughing throughout. Then he asks us why we are in the village. For the funeral, we say.

“Oh. Yes.” David says, “Mohammed was my friend, we used to watch the football together.”

I didn’t know Mohammed, yet I still crumple inside at this reminder that until a very short time ago, Mohammed Asfour had been living and breathing. He was 23 years old.

The funeral procession snaking through Aboud

Until he was shot in the head with a rubber coated steel bullet in the head by an Israeli soldier two weeks ago, during a demonstration in solidarity with hunger striking Palestinian prisoners.

Until yesterday, he had been fighting for his life in an Israeli hospital. But he died.

Despite all of this, his friend David is being a most obliging host. He says that there will be clashes after the funeral. They won’t let the soldiers into the village, he says, but the shabab will most certainly go to meet them.

And we all know that the soldiers are there, looming over the funeral. How? Because we passed by them as we entered the village. The procession of Palestinian-flag adorned cars following Mohammed’s body from Ramallah had to avoid the jeeps on the road, as well as the heavily armed, ready-and-waiting soldiers, police and border police, staring at us as we went past. Adding insult to what was already a murderous injury.

Mohammed’s body was borne through the crowd, carried on the shoulders of his friends, who cried as they shouted and chanted…my heart, my blood, Mohammed, you are loved by God.

Before he is even in the ground, we hear tear gas being fired. The young men of the village move towards the entrance, towards the soldiers, towards the gas, towards the rubber-coated steel bullets that come streaming down the road at them continuously for the rest of the day. The gas is strong, people are choking and falling to the ground.

Bulldozers and skunk water truck loom over the village.

A bulldozer is driven into the village, destroying the roadblocks designed to stop the soldiers invading. It chomps through the burning tyres, the upturned skip, the many rocks. Then they send in the skunk truck, intending to spray us all with stinking water… the smell will linger for days outside people’s homes.

Eventually we leave, driving through the group of soldiers at the top of the hill – to go another way would take a lot longer, so we risk it. They continue shooting and we all duck down inside the car as we hear bangs around us. 

Driving past, escaping the funeral, I can see the faces of the soldiers. I can see soldiers eating snacks. These soldiers will go home and watch the football with their friends. Mohammed will not. I see the snipers lying on the ground, aiming their guns at young, angry men who are throwing stones at them, demanding that their occupiers get out of their village. 

Mohammed is the sixth Palestinian to be killed by Israeli army shooting this year alone.