I take my flock out daily to look for food for them. I usually go to the landfill because there is lots of food there. It was quiet along the border that morning. While we were grazing our flocks, an Israeli army patrol passed by us on the Israeli side of the fence. The landfill is about 300 meters or so from the border, I don’t know exactly. We continued to graze the animals. The army is used to seeing us there.
About half an hour later, a jeep arrived opposite us, on the Israeli side of the border. It drove between the dirt mounds and stopped next to the woods. Kifah told me that three or four soldiers got out of the jeep and approached the fence. Then, without any warning, they opened fire at us. I started to run, with my back to them. They continued to shoot and killed eight of my sheep and two of Kifah’s. I tried to drive my flock away, but I couldn’t because the gunfire continued. I saw the sheep falling. When I realized I couldn’t gather them, I began to run away without them, with my back to the soldiers. There were breaks in the gunfire. The soldiers fired a single shot every few seconds. I think they were really aiming at the sheep and at me and Kifah, who was hiding behind the garbage. I ran in another direction.
I felt something hit my right thigh. I walked another 300 meters or so, until I saw a man with a donkey-drawn cart. He was collecting aluminum and copper. He and a few young men put me onto the cart. In the meantime, Kifah had come over to help me.
On the way, we ran into my neighbor and the men moved me from the cart to his car. He took me to the Bani Jum’a family, who live about 300 meters from my house. From there, they took me home. I changed my clothes, which were soaked with blood, and then they took me to hospital in Deir el-Balah, where I was X-rayed and the wound was bandaged. The bullet had entered and exited my right thigh without fracturing the bone. After three hours of observation at the hospital, I was released. It will take quite a long time for me to go back to work.
My only income is the flock. My two daughters-in-law and their children live with me: the wife of my son Khaled, who is in prison, and her daughter, as well as the wife of my son Mustafa, who was shot and killed by the Israeli army, and her five sons and two daughters. We are a large family and have a lot of expenses. There is no work in the Gaza Strip, and we don’t have farmland or property. The only thing we have is the flock that we have always raised.
Salma a-Sawarkah passed away in September 2015.
In Juhar a-Dik in the Gaza Strip, 9 August 2011
The testimony was given to Khaled al-‘Azayzeh on 10 August 2011
I am a widow and I have three sons and three daughters. We live in Juhar a-Dik in the center of the Gaza Strip. Yesterday morning, around 10:30, I was with Kifah Nasrallah al-Bahabseh, 14, grazing our flocks. I have 28 head of sheep and she has about 20. We were north of the landfill that is east of the village, near the border with Israel, in the center of the Gaza Strip.
At the time, many human rights organizations documented the case. We also filed a complaint through the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. We hoped the Israeli side would investigate and that the soldiers who shot my mother for no reason would be prosecuted. We also hoped that Israel would compensate my mother for the injury. But no one has contacted us to date.
The shooting caused my mother more mental harm than physical harm. After she was hit, she was afraid to go near the border. It hurt her a lot because until then, she had been used to going out every day with her flock to pasture. We live near the border and there is a lot of shooting in the area. Every time, my mom experienced the trauma again.
On 4 September 2015, my mother took the sheep to graze as usual. She was alone. At around 11:00 A.M., my nephew Raid called me and said that a ram from my mother’s herd had attacked her and that she was being taken to hospital in Deir al-Balah. I went there and saw my mother in the emergency room. She had a jaw fracture and also a chest injury that was causing her internal bleeding. She was taken to hospital in Gaza, but died there three hours later. We buried her in the Juhar a-Dik cemetery.
Jum’ah a-Sawarkah, Salma’s son, 48 and a father of two, spoke with B’Tselem field researcher Khaled al-‘Azayzeh this year and described how the incident affected his mother:
In 2011, my mother was injured near the border, east of Juhar a-Dik, while she was grazing sheep. A bullet fired by an Israeli soldier hit her in the top of her right thigh. A week later, she went back to grazing her flock. In the incident she lost several sheep. They were her only source of income.
The case was forwarded for supplementary investigation by the MPIU. We have not yet received the investigation material.
Letter to B’Tselem dated 30 March 2014 by Lieut. Col. Ronen Hirsch, Advocate for Operational Matters