No justice under occupation: Family of Palestinian woman killed by settlers searches for answers


Investigation or Charade?

Aisha and Yacoub al-Rabi

Yumna Patel writes in Ynet:

It all happened within seconds. Aisha al-Rabi, 48, was sitting in the car with her husband Yaqoub, 51, laughing and jesting with their youngest daughter, 8-year-old Rama.

The parents of eight children were on the way home to their village of Bidya, in the northwestern occupied West Bank, after visiting one of their daughters in Hebron on October 12.

Yaqoub and Aisha were  excitedly discussing plans for the engagement of one of their daughters in two weeks. The next moment, Aisha was unconscious, blood spilling from her head.

A group of Israeli settlers, the al-Rabi family says, were hiding out on the right shoulder of the road around 9:30 pm. They waited until the family slowed down ahead of a permanent Israeli military checkpoint in the area. As the family approached the checkpoint, the settlers began hurling large rocks at the car.

“My wife was in the passenger seat and she had her head turned and was talking to me when the settlers attacked the car,” Yaqoub told Mondoweiss on the patio of his family’s home. “So when the huge rock broke through the windshield, it hit the right side of her face, directly on her ear.”

“I didn’t know what was going on, it all happened so fast. There was blood everywhere, her brain was spilling out of her head, and she had slumped over onto me,” he said. “Rama was screaming and crying in the back asking me ‘what’s wrong with mom?’.”

By the time Yaqoub arrived at the hospital in Nablus city, a 20 minute drive away, his wife of 31 years was dead.

Now, a month later, on the eve of what was supposed to be his daughter’s engagement, rather than preparing for a weekend of family festivities, Yaqoub is still receiving visitors offering their condolences for his deceased wife.

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