For Gazans with disabilities, Israel’s genocide shows no mercy
Palestinians participate in an activity with pets at the Basmat Amal camp for displaced people with disabilities, Deir al-Balah, central Gaza , 14 August 2024.
Ibtisam Mahdi reports in +972 on 27 September 2024:
On the afternoon of July 23, artillery shells suddenly started raining down from all directions in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis. The Al-Najjar family rushed out of their home in panic, desperately trying to flee the indiscriminate bombardment. But once they had escaped from the immediate line of fire, they realized someone was missing.
Iyad, 37, had long suffered from a cognitive impairment and limited mobility. As the family fled their home, his brother Mohammad recalled, “each of us thought someone else had taken Iyad with them. The situation was dire: [first there was] indiscriminate shelling, and then the tanks started to invade the area.” All this time, Iyad remained trapped inside the house.
Unable to return to their besieged home, Iyad’s family waited nearby for around an hour to see if he had somehow been able to follow them, despite being nearly immobile. “We still had hope he would show up,” Mohammad told +972. “But the shelling got closer, and we had to move to a safer place.”
After spending a week in a tent near Nasser Hospital, the family was finally able to return home when Israeli forces withdrew from the area. But when they arrived, they found Iyad’s decomposing body in the garden, riddled with bullet wounds.
Mohammad was shocked to find him there, given how difficult it would have been for Iyad to even leave the living room, where the family had last seen him. “[We were] convinced that he was dragged to the garden and executed there,” Mohammad said.
“Anyone who sees my brother Iyad would realize he had a disability; he posed no threat to anyone,” he added. “Yet he was executed inside his home. The soldiers could have left him alive — he would not have done anything to them.” The Israeli army declined to respond to +972’s enquiries regarding the circumstances of Iyad’s killing.