A PALESTINIAN journalist working for a British newspaper in Gaza has described in an article how the conflict became a personal tragedy when his father was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
A PALESTINIAN journalist working for a British newspaper in Gaza has described in an article how the conflict became a personal tragedy when his father was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
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Fares Akram wrote in the Independent today how his father Akrem al-Ghoul died on Saturday as Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza after a week of air strikes.
"The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday. A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time,'' Akram wrote.
He described the farmhouse north-west of Beit Lahiya as a "beloved place'' where his father had decided to stay to look after their dairy cows when the Israeli military operations began.
"But shortly before sunset on Saturday, as Israeli ground troops and tanks invaded Gaza in the name of shutting down Hamas rocket sites, the peace of that place was shattered and my father's life extinguished at the age of 48,'' he wrote.
"Warplanes and helicopters had swept in, bombing and firing to open up the space for the tanks and ground forces that would follow in the darkness. It was one of those F16 air strikes that killed my father.
"The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either. 'Just a pile of flesh,' my uncle, who found him in the rubble, said later with brutal honesty.''
Arriving at the farm after hearing the news, Akram's uncle and brother found "a smoking pile of rubble. Most of the cows lay dead; others had run off injured.''
"Mahmoud, a teenage relative, was with my father when the Israeli bomb smashed into the house. The force of the air strike threw him 300 metres. They found Mahmoud's body in a neighbour's field,'' he wrote.
Akram, whose wife is nine months pregnant with their first child, said he refused to believe there were Hamas militants near the farm, who would have been targeted by the Israeli military.
He said he had no desire for revenge, but admitted: "As a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza.
"What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket? I have no answers but, just as I am to become a father, I have lost my father.''
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