DEATH IN COLD BLOOD:

WHO'S NEXT?

By Muna Hamzeh-Muhaisen

Bethlehem -- Jimmy Kanawati, 36, lived only half a kilometer away from Ali Jawariesh, 7, but the two never met. Kanawati was a Salvadoran Palestinian Christian from an affluent family which owns one of the largest tourist gift shops in Bethlehem. According to his mother, he was an apolitical person who often traveled abroad, and he had just sold his car and was getting ready to leave for Salvador. Jawariesh, on the other hand, was a poor Jerusalemite Muslim who was temporarily residing in `Aida Refugee Camp while his family home in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa was being renovated. Kanawati and Jawariesh lived in two dramatically different worlds, and it was highly unlikely that their paths would ever cross. Yet the Israeli army recently brought the man and the young boy together, proving once again that all Palestinians, rich or poor, Muslim or Christian, are equal in the face of Israeli brutality. Kanawati and Jawariesh were shot dead by Israeli soldiers within twelve days of each other. Young Jawariesh was shot in the head by an Israeli army sniper near Rachel's Tomb on November 11 while standing with a group of stone-throwing children. Kanawati was shot in the head by an Israeli border police unit at the Bethlehem checkpoint as he drove back from dinner in Jerusalem on November 22. Jawariesh was buried Sunday November 16 and Kanawati the following Sunday, November 23.

"Tell the world that they left my boy on the ground to die like a dog," screamed Suad Kanawati, Jimmy's mother, as she waited for the Israelis to return her son's body after the completion of an autopsy. Some people are saying that after he was shot, Kanawati was left at the scene for over three hours and his body was kicked by the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint before finally being taken away in an Israeli ambulance. According to Jimmy A'ma, a Honduran Palestinian who was with Kanawati, it was shortly after 2 a.m. when the two drove back to Bethlehem after having a late dinner in Jerusalem. "We approached the Bethlehem checkpoint, slowed down and crossed," said a visibly shaken A'ma. "Ten meters later, I heard shooting and Jimmy lost control of the car. He was injured and bleeding. I jumped out of the car and shouted at the soldiers not to shoot, that there was an injured person. Six soldiers ran toward me and started beating me. Then they tied my hands and took me to the Russian Compound police station were I was interrogated and released." According to A'ma, an Israeli police car and an ambulance arrived at the scene 15 minutes after the shooting started. "I was taken away and I don't know what happened to Jimmy."

Several Palestinians who work in Jerusalem and go through the checkpoint every morning told Palestine Report that Kanawati was still on the ground as they crossed the checkpoint around 7 a.m. "I was driving my children to their school in Jerusalem. We saw the body lying on the ground near the car, and the soldiers were kicking it with their boots," claimed one. Meanwhile, Western news agencies reported November 22 that Kanawati's car was being chased by an Israeli police car all the way from Jerusalem and that the border patrol at the checkpoint fired at the vehicle after the driver refused orders to stop and tried to crash the checkpoint. The news agencies further reported that, according to a preliminary police investigation, both Kanawati and A'ma were drunk.

But according to a Jerusalem man who says he was driving behind Kanawati's car and witnessed the shooting, there was no police chase and Kanawati did not try to crash through the checkpoint. He relates this story: "Kanawati was driving behind me in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot. We were the only two cars on the road. Kanawati then passed me at high speed and I could hear extremely loud music coming out of the car. When I crossed the Gilo intersection [right before the checkpoint], a police car suddenly appeared behind me. Kanawati was in front of me and he had already slowed down in order to cross the plastic barriers at the checkpoint [erected in an S shape to force drivers to come to a near stop as they cross].

"When I reached the barriers, I heard the soldiers shouting at him to stop but it was obvious that he did not hear them. The soldiers then started shooting and I was terrified. I thought they had just randomly opened fire so I turned on the lights inside my car in order to make myself visible to them, backed up and got out of there."

"If the music was actually turned up loud in the car, it is very likely that the two men did not hear the soldiers shout at them," observed Palestinian Legislative Council member Salah Ta'mari. "It was dawn and the weather was cold, so it was unlikely that the car windows were open, making it even more impossible to hear the soldiers' shouts." Meanwhile, news that Kanawati and A'ma may have been drunk traveled fast in Bethlehem. Most people aren't pleased about it, others deny it and others are indifferent. In the end, however, the general consensus is that even if both men were drunk, this does not justify the soldiers' cold-blooded shooting. And, they argue, the border police could have fired at the tires to force the car to stop, if their intent was to actually stop the car rather than kill the passengers.

The Israelis turned over the car, which belongs to A'ma, to the Palestinians the day after the shooting. There were no dent marks on it, proof that the men were not speeding. "There was about five meters between where the car was fired on and where it came to a stop," says one of Kanawati's relatives. "If the car had approached the checkpoint at high speed, it would have crashed into the trees or stone wall nearby."

"The border police at the Bethlehem checkpoint are indifferent to the lives of the Palestinian people," says Ta'mari. "They've become professionals at humiliating Palestinians." Indeed, Kanawait is not the first Palestinian to be shot dead at an Israeli army checkpoint. Several Palestinians have been shot, injured or killed under the pretext that they ignored soldiers' instructions, with Israeli soldiers continuously disregarding regulations governing the use of firearms at military checkpoints.

Several Jerusalem Palestinians who usually cross the Bethlehem checkpoint late at night say that horrific things take place at the checkpoint. "One week ago, I was crossing the checkpoint at 1 a.m. when I saw the border police beating a Palestinian man," says one man. "The man had been stripped naked, his hands and feet were tied to a metal pole, and the border policemen were having fun with him, beating him with a stick on his sides and his buttocks."

"Israel is not a nation of peace. Israel is a nation of criminals," shouted an 80-year-old woman who had come to pay her condolences to the Kanawati family. "Peace ought to be here in Palestine first. Instead, they've made peace with Egypt and Jordan while the Palestinians here are being devastated each day."

At Jimmy's funeral procession, relatives held his mother as she walked behind her son's coffin. Overcome with grief, Suad Kanawati let out a sudden scream and made a dash for the funeral car. "Jimmy," she yelled at the top of her lungs, before slouching in the arms of her family. The only reply she heard was the somber beat of the drums from a group of young drummer boys leading the funeral procession through Manger Street. This will be the same road that the Latin patriarch will take on Christmas Day, December 25.

But for the Kanawati family and their friends, there will be no Christmas without Jimmy.