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Victims’ Testimony and Expert Witnesses - War Crimes in Palestine
Najwa Jalamneh
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Assalamualaikum w.b.h. Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, commission members. I’m Najwa Jalamneh from Jenin camp. I’m 17 years old of age and of Islamic faith. I’m the youngest in a family of four boys and three girls. I live alone with my parents. I was schooled in several places beginning with Saudi Arabia in 1996 first grade, followed by Jordan for second and third grade, and finally moving back to Palestine from fourth grade onwards. But it was from fifth grade that I begin to see the suffering of my people and the tragedy of the Israel occupying force and its experience that I wish to put in record so that the world may know the inhumanity being inflicted on the Palestinians by one of the most powerful nation on earth. Simply daily routine like going to school are constantly front with unnecessary hardship and dangerous. Some of my friends who lived in village have to go through many Israeli checkpoints just to go to school daily in turn for our lessons. Even though I’m personally not subjected to checkpoint, the Israeli soldier who came into my area to intimidate the people there, and are constantly in fear. The soldier can refuse the children access to school without giving any reason whatsoever by turning us away. For those wishing to avoid such checkpoints, alternatives routes are taken which are of longer for walking and time no less dangerous. More Israeli soldiers have been known to shoot without any warning where retaliation is not uncommon as a result. Children travel in a group in daytime and almost never at night for our safety can never be granted and the boys that usually accompany us offer themselves as shield hoping that should anything were to happen, a girl like myself would be unharmed. That said, we live in constant fear of our lives, not knowing whether today will be our last, thus, rendering survival as perhaps the only thing that dominates our thoughts on a daily basis. If we often reached our school, this does not mean in any way that we have reached a temporary haven from intimidation as Israeli soldiers have in the past veered into the cover sheltering us.
I have had my classes conducted under tables especially when class between the occupying Israeli army and the Palestinian people take place. I have seen men, women, children killed mercilessly but who took no part in any form or violence. Many of us have lost family and close friends where such proved exercise form forced us to surrogate sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers in grievance. Not all inflicted by such object being remand, restrained as composed for there are now an obvious and alarming increase in the number of Palestinian children surviving from great depression and without proper medical care to provide professional help. Such survivors often do decline into the mental obliviation shattering not just their lives but lives of this child with their care. To add to our ordinary unimaginable suffering, the Israel occupying force have erect walls which do not only circle the Palestinian land but the places have absolutely belt them through this land, through by cutting off whole families and communicate as a result. Even in this state of inhuman occupation, I have seen kindness from my people offered to the oppressor when where in one such case, a Palestinian father offered his son’s organ to, regardless of the fact that his son death was in the hands of the Israel soldier. Our whole country is a war zone and we are persecuted people. Having said all that, we seek no more than what most ordinary children in the world desire. I hope in the future and not fear the uncertainty and the hopelessness, and we pray that the world hear our cries. |