Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign: Ni'lin lays Ahmad Mousa to rest

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Ni'lin lays Ahmad Mousa to rest
Latest News, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, August 1st, 2008

As the martyrs’ body was taken out of the morgue on the first floor of the Ramallah Public Hospital, the eyes of his family and friends were full of tears and expressions of sadness, anger, and hate. They had come to take the martyr to be buried in the town he died protecting, his hometown of Ni’lin.

Before his townspeople took to his body to Ni’lin, they placed him in an ambulance (there are few hearses in the West Bank) and demonstrated around Ramallah, chanting national slogans against the Occupation and its Apartheid Wall, promising Ahmad that they would continue the struggle. Afterwards, the demonstrators filled up dozens of cars, pickup trucks, and busses and followed the ambulance that carried Ahmad’s body and his split, bandaged head to Ni’lin.

As the funeral reached the entrance of Ni’lin, dozens of Occupation soldiers with their military bullet-proof jeeps were already there, waiting on the main road. Some had taken up shooting positions under olive trees, in conspicuous locations, each and every one of them holding an M-16. A small confrontation occurred between the Palestinian youth and the Occupation soldiers at the edge of the town.

A massive funeral, made up of thousands of Palestinians and foreign solidarity activists, proceeded to the Ni’lin mosque. Ahmad was placed on a stretcher that was carried on the shoulders of his friends and family, covered by a Palestinian flag. The mourners sang songs and shouted slogans calling for Palestinian unity, criticizing Abbas and Hanniyeh, and condemning the criminal leaders of the Occupation.

From what was said by his family member, friends, and neighbours, Ahmad was a joyful boy. His hobbies include playing football and marbles with his friends at school and in the streets of his neighbourhood. He was good-natured and never caused any trouble.

Ahmad was then taken to be buried in the Mousa family cemetery, close to his family’s houses. When the funeral proceeded to the cemetery, it passed right next to Ahmad’s house. All of the women from his family, as well as their relatives, were watching from the rooftops and windows, wailing and crying over the brutal murder of an innocent child.

Eyewitnesses said that Ahmad was with them at the demonstration against the Apartheid Wall. He also joined the protestors to the main road of Ni’lin. After the confrontations had ceased, Ahmad was standing with a paramedic and three other youth under the shade of an olive tree when an Occupation border police jeep drove up and stopped. The driver of the jeep, along with another soldier who jumped from the back door, fired their M-16s simultaneously, with the driver shooting a live bullet and the other a rubber coated bullet. Ahmad fell to the ground. One of the youths with him tried to pick him up, only to discover that his hand was full of blood and that Ahmad’s brain fell out of his broken skull. The live bullet had entered through Ahmad’s head at the left temple and exited out of the right side of the back of his head.

During the funeral services, the mayor of Ni’lin, Ayman Nafe’ said, “the Occupation killed our boy in cold blood”, adding “the killing of Ahmad will not scare us of fighting the Wall, on the contrary, now we will fight more.”

Also during the funeral service, the Ni’lin Popular Committee stated, “the Occupation accuses small children with empty hands and bare chests of causing a threat to their forces and their security, but we know exactly why the Occupation is building this wall and that is to expel us from our lands. Ahmad set an example for all of us. We will all fight together in this popular struggle, the farmer, the worker, every Palestinian.”

One eyewitness of Ahmad’s brutal slaying commented, “they shot Ahmad to scare us but we are not scared. We will have nothing left after they finish building the apartheid wall. We are not scared because we will lose everything anyways.”