Jameela waits for her son’s body, taken by Israel, so she can bury him

Jameela Sanaqra’s three sons, who were occupying the West Bank refugee camp, are no longer with us. She knows for certain that Israel killed two of them.

On February 27, a week before his 26th birthday, Israeli commandos shot her third son, Mahmoud, in his bedroom.

Camp for refugees being attacked

Balata, east of Nablus, is the most populated refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, established in 1950.

At least 33,000 people are crammed into its sparse streets, which is less than a quarter of a square kilometre and roughly the size of 35 football fields.

More than 45 Palestinians’ faces are emblazoned on windows and walls like shrines, according to locals, who claim Israel has killed them since October 7.

Palestinian resistance groups operating under the cover of the camp’s labyrinthine network of alleyways and favela-like dwellings have long been a thorn in the side of the Israeli military.

A Greek Orthodox Church known as Jacob’s Well towers over the camp. In Judaism, a funerary monument known as Joseph’s Tomb, which is thought to be the patriarch’s final resting place, is located further up the road.

The site is significant to Palestinians because it is believed to be the resting place of Sheikh Yousef Dweikat, a renowned religious scholar, who was buried in the 18th century.

The ultranationalists in Netanyahu’s coalition want it under Israeli control because of Joseph Tomb’s significance to Judaism and relevance to the Zionist tradition.

Mahmoud, who was shot by Israeli soldiers inside their family home, is likely dead, according to Jameela Sanaqra, who is still waiting for her son. Israel withholds closure from families as a weapon of war, rights groups say. [Al Jazeera] In the Balata refugee camp in February.

Inciting clashes and violence, armed settlers escorted by soldiers storm the site to enrage Palestinian neighbors, chant, and perform religious rituals there.

Balata has been under siege since Israel stepped up its onslaught on the West Bank following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks.

The Israeli army repeatedly bombs the camp’s streets and numerous structures as it raids them.

According to the UNRWA, the camp has one of the highest rates of poverty, food insecurity, and unemployment in the West Bank, making it comparable to a ghetto. More than 60 per cent of the camp’s population is under the age of 18.

snatching bodies from deceased

Mahmoud will receive the remains of his older brothers, Ahmad and Ibrahim, in an empty plot in Balata’s cemetery.

The family is waiting for Mahmoud’s body or confirmation of his death. But they are aware that neither are likely to occur.

According to the JLAC, Israel still has bodies that date back to the 1967 War.

“The occupation authorities impose their control over the deepest feelings of loss, often forcing families to wait endlessly to retrieve the bodies of their children,” a report for the JLAC’s National Campaign to Retrieve War Victims states.

Two of her seven grandchildren, Amira and Bara’a, and two of her four daughters, Bara’a and Amira, sat in Jameela’s living room. By the door, her husband, who was mournful and solemn, sat quietly.

She is sure that Mahmoud’s body not being returned is part of the collective punishment her family suffers because her eldest son, Ahmad, fought for Palestinian armed groups before he was killed in 2008, aged 20.

Jameela called it a desecration.

For the families, especially the mothers, it is torture. Closure is impossible; I can pray for him, speak to him, and pass the time peacefully there. ”

Al Jazeera reached out to the Israeli military for comment on Mahmoud’s case, but received no response.

resilience and punishment

Mahmoud’s short life was predominated by bereavement and trauma.

In an era-defining photo of the second Intifada, five-year-old Mahmoud’s arm covers his tears as he looks over the rubble of his home in 2004, destroyed by soldiers to punish the family for his brother Ahmad’s resistance activities.

A poster on a wall depicting men killed by Israel — Palestinian fighters were killed by Israel in their camp, according to residents of the Balata refugee camp.

When a soldier shot the 16-year-old in the leg, hitting a major artery, killing the wound, Mahmoud’s middle brother Ibrahim, who was not a member of the resistance, during an Israeli army raid on Balata in November 2006, the soldier was searching for him.

Then, in 2008, Mahmoud was pictured weeping over Ahmad’s body after he was assassinated, in an image that went viral. In the same house as his younger brother, Muhammad, who enlisted in the resistance in his early teens, he was shot dead.

Years later, Mahmoud would face the military. In 2022, a video of soldiers beating him mercilessly in front of Jameela in the family home gained international attention.

Mahmoud was wanted over accusations of arms trafficking, planting explosives, and other crimes after his death, according to Israeli media. According to the family, they announced that the military had killed “Balata’s most wanted”.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group affiliated with the political party Fatah, paid tribute to Mahmoud’s contribution to resistance in the camp on Telegram.

Although his mother refutes his claim that he fought, other camp members claim to have known him as a member of the resistance.

Jameela might have been unaware of his activities.

Jameela told the story of Mahmoud’s shooting beneath a picture of her slain sons – the frame shattered by the soldiers who invaded her home the day they attacked Mahmoud.

She said, “My mind is scattered, and there is a fire in me that only can be extinguished when I buried Mahmoud next to his brothers.”

During the February attack, Israeli soldiers left a trail of destruction in the Sanaqra family, much of which the family is unable to repair.

Jameela recalls how two soldiers burst through the door early in the morning and violently confined the entire family to one room, apart from Mahmoud, who remained locked in his bedroom.

As I lay on the ground, they struck me, knocked me over, and stomped on my leg and chest,” Jameela continued.

Bara’a was attacked by a dog; he chased her and bit her leg … One of the soldiers told me I was the reason my sons were ‘terrorists’ – and the reason they were killed,” Jameela said.

I started crying as a mother as an additional soldier inquired how many martyrs my family had, and he replied, “I now have three,” and I started crying. My son and I couldn’t help but be. ”

A narrow street surrounded by dilapidated houses — Since October 7, 2023, the Balata refugee camp has been effectively under Israeli control.

As soldiers held them at gunpoint and demanded that they disclose where weapons were being kept, the Sanaqra family frantically screamed Mahmoud’s name as shots rang out upstairs.

Jameela remembered the short, loud and terrible cry of agony – interrupted by gunshots – that she believes to be her son’s final utterance in this life. She claims that it still haunts her family home today.

Both the soldiers and the family were extricated once Mahmoud’s body was discovered.

Jameela produced Mahmoud’s blood-stained clothes – a T-shirt and trousers ridden with bullet holes, suggesting almost no part of his body was left unscathed. He was stripped and dragged down the stairs by the soldiers, leaving “a trail of blood” behind.

Since the attack, Mahmoud’s mattress, clothes, and carpet haven’t been left unharmed. Bullet holes have peppered the walls and the window frames.

Nesreen Bsharat, a psychologist based in Nablus, runs a mother support group in Balata and offers online therapy to children in Gaza.

According to her, “Palestinian mothers have the same maternal instinct as every other mother in the world,” she told Al Jazeera. “They don’t want their children to die. ”

The difference is that the mother finds herself having to accept it when it is the child’s choice, Bsharat continued.

Since October 7, the residents of Balata say there has been no rest from military raids, which happen almost every day.

Many families who can afford it are leaving, while those who can are forced to endure or resist, and are subject to displacement regardless.

More than 40,000 people from the nearby cities of Tulkarem and Jenin, which are both at the center of the West Bank’s resistance axis, have already been relocated, and Balata residents fear they will follow.

Israel is making life unbearable for those in the camps.

Who is the person who is most close to you and causes you the most pain, Jameela said. I only want to spend time with my sons right now. ”

The Palestinian mother prefers to raise her children according to their religion and values. She wants her children to be teachers, doctors, and engineers, Jameela said.

“She wants her child to be the best version of himself … But Israel won’t allow this.