Khalifa's parents experienced the pain of loss through the martyrdom of their children and their continued suffering during the raids (Al Jazeera)

Tulkarm

- The Khalifa family in Nour Shams camp for Palestinian refugees in the city of Tulkarm is experiencing complex and recurring loss and suffering in various forms. The most recent of which was the martyrdom of two of her sons in the West Bank and Gaza, after she experienced the pain of asylum, exile, captivity, and injury over and over again.

With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (the Second Intifada) in 2000, the series of persecution of the sons of Hajj Mahmoud Khalifa began. Firas, Faisal, Farsan, and Faris. The occupation arrested them all, and they spent long years in its prisons and were subjected to various types of torture. It deported one of them to the Gaza Strip and kept him on its list of targets. He continued to pursue the others and disturb their lives through the incursions, to the point where they began to flee with their families from their homes with every incursion to escape the attacks. Occupation.

The year 2003 was a turning point in the lives of the four brothers, as they were imprisoned many times and at different times, and they had a share in fighting the occupation despite the diversity of their intellectual views and party affiliations.

Repeated destruction inflicts on the Tulkarm camp in the West Bank during every incursion by the Israeli occupation forces (Al Jazeera)

Family feud

The eldest of them, Firas (47 years old), spent 6 months in detention, while Farasan (43 years old) was sentenced to 24 years in prison, on charges of being active within the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and planning military operations against the occupation. Then the occupation released him and deported him in 2011. Within the loyalty deal of the freedmen (Shalit) to Gaza.

On charges of belonging to the Islamic Jihad movement, Faisal (44 years old) was arrested for more than 10 years in the occupation prisons, while the younger brother Fares (35 years old) spent about 16 years at different intervals for his work and activity as a leader in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the National Liberation Movement (Fatah).

And not only was the arrest the suffering of the Khalifa family became evident. Rather, this was accompanied for more than two decades by raids, persecution, and terror whose episodes have not ended yet. Even these days, the family has not been spared from the occupation army’s raids on their home and incitement against them, even for those among them who became martyrs.

For more than two decades, the occupation continued to be hostile to the family, and did not stop at arresting, deporting, or even killing any of its sons. Rather, it made it a target for every new intelligence officer who took over the area, until Hajj Mahmoud Khalifa (Abu Firas), the father of the four brothers, began documenting their arrests and the occupation’s violations against them for a long time. And a place.

Removing resistor

But the loss was more painful for the family, especially the parents who suffered the heartbreak of two of their children, as Knights was martyred in exile in the Gaza Strip while confronting the occupation in the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood late last November, while Knights was targeted with a premeditated murder committed by soldiers. The occupation after they arrested him at the Enab checkpoint between the cities of Tulkarm and Nablus, where they beat him, “breaking his bones and teeth, before shooting him” last January.

With the loss of the “spoiled boy,” as the family called its martyr, Fares, and his resisting brother, Fares; Sadness accumulated over her, but the occupation's handing over of Fares' body strengthened her and reduced the extent of the pain somewhat, which prompted his parents to go out for his funeral and carry his body together on their shoulders.

Regarding this, the bereaved father, Abu Firas (70 years old), says while squeezing in pain: “Fares is a piece of my heart, and he and his brothers are the same and the joy of my soul and my life. Just as I was honored to carry his body, I was honored by the martyrdom of my son Farsan, coming forward and not retreating into the ranks of the resistance, and I am proud of that.”

Abu Firas adds: "We lived through suffering in all its forms, the cruelty of asylum, captivity, wounding, storming, demolishing parts of the house, burning it, shooting inside it, killing my children, and all that terror and terror."

With steadfastness and composure, Abu Firas and his wife, Houriya, have endured the struggle against the occupation and are still doing so. He says that their situation resembles a painful reality experienced by the people of the camp, and this is what eases the pain of loss for them. He adds: “Some of us comfort others and turn away our grief from them. By God, we do not know when our tears will fall, so how? We can be patient with the loss of two young men within 45 days, and if we were mountains, we would be demolished.”

The Khalifa family’s origins go back to the displaced village of Al-Kafrin in the Haifa district, and it consists of 10 members (4 males and 6 females) and the parents. It was known for its struggle and the resistance of its children in the camp.

Entrance to Nour Shams camp before its destruction (Al Jazeera)

Inside and outside prison

Despite their arrest together, the occupation refused to bring the brothers together inside its prisons, and the same was true outside the prison. The brothers and their families had not met together since the year 2000. Even the dream of a meeting that would bring them together one day woke them up after the occupation killed two of them.

During their captivity, the family was not spared from harassment and collective punishment of its members. The occupation issued a military order preventing them from visiting prisons and preventing them from traveling abroad. Even the family name was pursued by the occupation and hindered their movement.

What deepens the family's wound and increases its pain most is the martyrdom of their son Faris, or the "spoiled boy" as his older brother describes him, who says that they expected Faris to be martyred at any moment, given his military position in the Al-Qassam Brigades, the occupation's pursuit of him and the threat to assassinate him, the publication of his pictures and the monitoring of his movements everywhere. .

Firas adds to Al Jazeera Net: "Faris was martyred far away from us and his body has not yet been buried. With the martyrdom of Fares, we suffered double grief, but what lessened our suffering was that we embraced Fares and buried him among us in the camp cemetery."

In an attempt to avoid some suffering, Firas and his family, especially the young grandchildren, began leaving the house with every intrusion to avoid the oppression of the occupation, which began to target them with every military operation in Nour Shams camp.

Source: Al Jazeera