One of the martyrs of Al-Fara'a camp on the shoulders of his comrades precedes the body of his other martyr brother (Al-Jazeera)
Nablus - The alley of Al-Fara'a camp did not accommodate the bodies of the two martyr brothers Hikmat and Muhammad Melhem together, who welcomed them, playing and having fun and growing up, until the occupation killed them together, and then brought them to their parents and family over the shoulders of the comrades, each alone, as the narrowness of the space and the crowds of mourners require it.
On Martyr's Day, which falls on January 7 of each year, Palestinians remember their martyrs, who exceeded all the days and hours of the year as well, after rising in 2023 alone 22,349 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Thousands were reported missing under the rubble of bombed houses and residential complexes across the Gaza Strip.
Every martyr has a story that symbolically commemorates the martyrdom of Ahmed Musa Salameh, the perpetrator of the "Eilabon Tunnel" operation, as the first martyr in the contemporary Palestinian revolution, who designated "Martyr's Day" on the date of his martyrdom in 1965.
In al-Fara'a refugee camp near the city of Tubas, in the northern West Bank, the two brothers, Hikmat (21) and Mohammed (22) were martyred together on December 18 after being sniped by one of the Israeli soldiers who stormed the camp, so that their family lived a new chapter of the "double death" or even the "mass death" that Palestine, especially the Gaza Strip, is experiencing daily.
Until the last moment
In the middle of the Fara'a camp, where the crowd gathered and the cries of mourners in anger for revenge and revenge, Samir Melhem (Abu Iyad), his wife and children turned to bid farewell to the martyrs Hikmat and Muhammad, and did not empty one of them, until they embraced the other, not wanting to escape them in a situation that was more tragic in the audience.
While um Iyad continued to receive mourners with her children at home, the father of the two martyrs, leaning on his relatives, followed to the camp's large playground to pray for them, and then to the cemetery, to sit in two adjacent graves.
Says Abu Iyad (53 years) for Al Jazeera Net "hit the head ruled fell to the ground, and when he saw his brother Mohammed panic trying to save him, but the soldier did not give him a similar bullet, and in the same place, fell next to his brother and left together, as well as transferred to the hospital and Shia and buried together."
The grieving father adds that his two martyred sons were "killed in cold blood" and were not wanted or chased by the occupation forces, and that their departure together was sudden and tragic. But the "double death" he once experienced, he says, is experienced by Palestinians, especially Gazans, many times and every day, where entire families are erased from the civil registry.
Abu Iyad gave his life to prevent his children from harming them, except the bullets of the occupation could not repel him, and they were also his support and crutch in life and work without other children. "I used to take them as friends, not just sons, and I drew a future for them, which began to work together to build their homes and get married later," he said.
Like their mother, they could no longer do anything after the loss, and did not enter the room of the martyrs Hikmat and Muhammad. Abu Iyad refuses to put a picture of the two martyrs inside the house, content with the beautiful pictures and stories of them filled with his memory, and they are patient with the same situation in the Fara'a camp, where only 13 martyrs rose in less than two weeks.
Funeral of a martyr of Al-Fara'a refugee camp near Tubas in the West Bank (Al-Jazeera)
A mother's heart can't accommodate
Over the past two years, Jenin camp in the north has experienced "double death" in more than one case, and at least 10 families have lost at least two of their sons as martyrs.
No sooner had the sun risen than the city of martyrs (Jenin) woke up on Sunday, and in the village of "Triangle of Martyrs" south of the city on an event that saddened the heart of Alaa Darwish's mother with her four sons (Alaa, Hazza, Rami and Ahmed) with Israeli shelling targeting 7 young men, including her sons.
Um Alaa roamed the corridors of Jenin Governmental Hospital, looking for her sons who were turned into pieces by the bombing, and says as if some of her mind is gone, "there is no shadow (left) limit for me," and then adds, "We are no better than the people of Gaza, and whoever wants a homeland has to endure."
Loss is dear. But the resistance is dearest
Jamal al-Zubaidi (Abu Antoun) lived in Jenin refugee camp, where the man lost his two sons, the martyrs of the resistance, Naim (33 years old) and Muhammad (27 years old) in less than a year, and 7 other relatives, and was arrested several times in the occupation prisons, and all his sons were arrested, most of whom were wounded by Israeli bullets.
Abu Antoun says to Al Jazeera Net, that the loss is very difficult for one martyr how two, 3 and 4, or all the family as in Gaza, but it is more painful for a family lose and have two only martyrs as if left and Ayham Amer, and adds, "I remain two sons and 3 daughters, but others lost everything."
The feeling of grief is deep and indescribable, says Abu Antoun, but he feels proud that his children have become martyrs for a just cause, and that saving them and others for resistance "is not in vain, but to chart the way of life for their people and the generations after them."
Paradoxically, the martyr Naim gave birth to his first child while in detention, while he had a second after his martyrdom, while Muhammad refused to marry, and volunteered himself to resist. "Many Palestinian homes are similar in loss, captivity and wounding, or combine them all, because this is the life and destiny of the Palestinian, and martyrdom is expected at any moment," their father said.
The occupation increases the tragedy of the Zubaidi family by continuing to detain the body of his martyr son, while Naim lies in the camp cemetery next to his martyr comrades, and perhaps this is what the family who go to the grave is patient to visit from time to time.
Source : Al Jazeera