Mohamed al Hasuni looks at the hole left by the piece of projectile as it passed through the tin roof and landed on the house. He opens his hands about twenty centimeters to gauge the size, which coincides with that of the open hole in the roof. The impact of falling was enough to seriously injure his seven-year-old daughter Amina, who is torn between life and death in a hospital. “When we picked her up, there was blood on her head,” explains her 49-year-old father, while he feels the right side of his ear upward. The little girl is the only serious victim left by the attack that Iran launched with hundreds of drones and missiles in the early hours of Sunday against Israel. In that aggression, Israel claims that it intercepted, with the help of its allies, 99% of the rockets.
The Al Hasuni family lives in Alfurah, a Bedouin village in the Negev desert, in the southeast of Israel, with about 12,000 neighbors scattered in different settlements. Israel refuses to recognize them, considering them illegal and without the right to housing or infrastructure. There are, in total, 36 towns inhabited by some 150,000 people to whom the authorities, unlike the rest of the Israelis, do not provide shelters or an alarm system for attacks like the one last weekend. “Either we take refuge in houses or cars,” laments Mohamed.
The almost permanent threat of demolition that these families face coexists these days with the enormous concern for the injured girl. Mohamed shows the order to demolish the fence of his home and several precarious buildings that surround the house where his daughter was injured. It is a paper from last March 25, similar to the one received by many Bedouins who are pressured by the authorities to leave their villages. Mohamed affirms that, as the authorities have threatened him, if he does not obey this demolition order on his own initiative, they will also demolish the damaged house. This same Monday, despite the weekend attack, they have continued demolishing homes in the surrounding area.
In the middle of this work, an excavator hired by the authorities, escorted by several white SUVs, leaves the Gaboa family's plot after carrying out a demolition, a few kilometers from where the Al Hasunis live. Halil Gaboa, 63, says that they asked for an extra week's deadline, because the demolition order caught them with the holy month of Ramadan and Eid El Fitr, the holiday with which it concludes. On Sunday they themselves began to dismantle the construction considered illegal, but that did not prevent the arrival of the demolition team this Monday along with the police. Now it is the Gaboa family that has to face the cost of these works, explains Halil. The rule dictates that if the person receiving the order refuses to execute it, he must pay for the demolition carried out by the Israeli authorities.
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It was around 1:45 on Sunday when alarms began to sound throughout Israel. Mohamed says that in the solitude of the desert they heard the sirens of the city of Arad, several kilometers away. “We started to see fire in the sky and then something fell on the house,” a piece of projectile, he says, sitting on the dirt and stone floor of one of the sheds that serves as a living room. Next to him, Salah, his cousin, 31 years old and father of six children: “All the children panicked. They were crying, they didn't know where to hide as they ran towards the mountain."
Most of the residents remained away from the town for more than 12 hours, until Sunday afternoon, says Salah. “We don't have shelters or anything to shelter in,” adds Halil, 71, Mohamed's uncle. He believes that with better built houses, Amina would not have been hurt. Everyone demands more protection from the authorities, especially for minors and women. None of them are seen during the time the journalist visits the place. “This is a place that has always been at war. This year, and so will next year…”, deplores Halil to insist on the need for shelters.
A swarm of children gather at the door of the building damaged during the Iranian attack. The vertical light of midday penetrates the interior through the gap left by the rocket and is reflected on a white wall, giving luminosity to the room. On the floor, in the place where Amina slept, are the metallic remains of the projectile, which penetrated several centimeters, breaking one of the pieces of the flooring. The family does not know if the piece corresponds to one of the devices launched by Iran or to remains of Israeli anti-aircraft batteries to neutralize them. On a promontory in the surrounding area, one of these batteries points to the sky, guarded by several soldiers.
One of the five minors who was also in the house was Naser, nine years old and Amina's brother. When everyone left in terror, Naser fell and got a wound on his right side (the boy shows it). Camels, goats, sheep, donkeys and chickens roam outside the house, helping the family's economy.
Mohamed al Hasuni is the father of 10 sons and four daughters with his two wives. One of the boys was the one who immediately took Amina in a car to a health center. Along the way he ran into an ambulance, which took the girl to the Soroka hospital in the city of Beersheba, about 60 kilometers from Alfurah.
A while after the attack, he estimates that after 20 minutes or half an hour, police and soldiers arrived and took away the remains of the projectile. Mohamed assures that he has received many calls, but not a direct visit from the authorities. Nati Yeffet, a member of the RCUV, regrets that what happens to the Bedouins is not properly covered by the local media. In fact, this organization and others that work with them claim that they are treated like second-class citizens.
Since it was created as a State in 1948, Israel has tried to end much of the traditional life of these desert inhabitants, according to the RCUV. “This is a mining area that they consider strategic and want to exploit,” says Yeffet. Among the rubble of the recently destroyed house, several children recover objects that can be useful to them, such as a brush and a dustpan. The Gaboa, despite seeing their home demolished, do not plan to leave the desert in which their Bedouin ancestors already lived before Israel was born.
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