The so-called legitimate state of Israel recently carved 300-meter “buffer zone” on Palestinian land in the occupied Gaza Stripe. The buffer zone appropriates 25% of the arable land in Gaza, something not lost on Israel which is starving the Palestinians in the territory.

The buffer zone has been turned to a no-go area where any Palestinian who accidental wonders in may be immediately shot. That is what happened to 18-year-old Ahmed Abu Hashish.

Two months ago, this son of a farmer disappeared. His family suspected that he was shot down in the “buffer zone”. They wanted, like all families, to find their son’s body but with reason that if they tired searching in the “buffer zone” they too would meet the same fate at the hands of Israeli occupation troops whom kill with impunity.

The family finally went searching for their son’s body with a delegation from the International Solidarity Movement. Israel’s occupation troops are a little restrained in front of a foreign delegation with cameras. A little that is. They still cannot help but be cruel.

As a father searches for his son, Israel’s occupation harassed the searches by firing bullets around them the entire time. “Orange Jenny” from the ISM writes on the inhumanity on Israel:

As we rushed to take Ahmed’s body away, the shooting only intensified. We were all heading away from the fence. We’d told the soldiers over the megaphone, that we’d found the body and that we were going. Ahmed’s father hurriedly and in anguish attempted to catch up with the bearers of his son’s corpse, wailing and lamenting his loss as he did so. Still the bullets whistled past our heads, or into the ground behind us.
It struck me, when we finally got out of range of the soldiers’ guns, that our presence in that area that day must not have come as any surprise to them. It was most likely them who had shot Ahmed in cold blood some 54 days previously. They would have known where his body lay. The Israeli military never informed anyone of this. They did not pass on news of Ahmed’s murder to his family. Instead, they waited for almost two months, knowing that at some point and despite the danger, a search party might come looking for the corpse.

Was it necessary to shoot at a group of civilians on a humanitarian mission? Was it necessary to continue shooting at us as they left? Was it necessary for their bullets to force a grieving father to face his own mortality at the very moment he was compelled to recognise [sic] that of his son?

This is the cruel nature that is at heart of Israeli society.