The Rest Was Up to God, Gideon Levy

Eight relatives were on their way home from work when a tank suddenly opened fire on the family car. One of the passengers, a father of eight, was killed. The army says it knows nothing about the incident.

Not a word has been written in Israel about the life and death of Nabil Jardat, who lived quietly and died quietly. No headlines, no reports, not even a mention of the killing of this clothing merchant and father of eight, who was on his way home to Silat al-Hartiya from his store in Jenin about two weeks ago, holding his young son on his lap, when a soldier apparently shot at him from a tank, without any warning or obvious reason - and killed him.

How did this killing occur? Was it an act of self-defense by a soldier in a tank against the group of merchants and their children in the vehicle? Defense of state security? Defensive Shield? Dispersal of rioters? Or maybe it was a one-time exception? The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office did not express any regret for this bit of terror on the road: The IDF claims it has not even heard of the incident. With only six investigative files opened against soldiers for killings in almost three years of intifada and over 2,000 Palestinian casualties, one can hardly expect someone to go to the bother of seriously investigating the killing of a small-time merchant from Silat al-Hartiya.

Not to mention the interminable trip to the hospital and the seven days in which he lay dying while most of his family members were not permitted to come visit, and then the macabre trip home, with the corpse in the back of the ambulance, traveling halfway round the West Bank to get around the checkpoints.

An odd silence reigns in the dusty alleyways of Silat al-Hartiya, a town of about 8,000 northwest of Jenin. No, the town is not under curfew. It's just the routine of unemployment, poverty and closure that leaves the residents with little reason to leave the house. The road to Israel is blocked and so is the road to the district capital, Jenin, where life is permitted to proceed only at the IDF's behest, and is always dangerous. Even when the road is open, there are tanks on the way that inspire fear and dread.

Marble steps lead up to the Jardat family's stone house. The Jardat brothers are merchants and they have three stores in Jenin selling haberdashery, house wares and lingerie, in addition to other wholesale businesses. They used to do a lot of trade with Israel and until recently still had permission to enter Israel, something that has become exceedingly rare. The family's Volkswagen van sits in the yard, its rear window shattered. A poster announcing the death of Nabil is affixed to the house's stone entrance gate. The picture shows him with his young children. The family is in deep mourning.

Every morning, the brother, Thamin, gets up early and calls Jenin to find out if it's possible to travel. Then he picks up his brother and nephew and together they drive the eight kilometers (by the main road) or the much longer route (which circumvents the checkpoint) to another day of work in hopes of mustering a meager income. Before the intifada, each store had a turnover of about NIS 5,000 a day. Now even NIS 50 would be considered an achievement.

So it was on Sunday, June 8. At 7:15 A.M, Thamin got into the van and made the usual rounds. His older brother Riad, 52, sat beside him and the others sat in the two back rows: Nabil, 48; his son Mohammed, 21; Thamin's son Mohammed, 13; Nabil's son Bilal, five, on his father's lap; Tariq, 25, son of Nabil and Thamin's brother Ziad; and his brother Mohammed, 21.

It was a quiet morning. The main road to Jenin, scarred and torn up, was open. A normal workday. They closed the stores at 3:10 P.M., a little earlier than usual because of the two small children who had come along this time. From there they went to the market to buy fruit and vegetables. Nabil also stopped to buy a toy for little Bilal. Meanwhile, Thamin phoned a friend who was a taxi driver to check how things were on the road. The road is open, the friend told him, but watch out - there's a tank at the entrance to Al-Yamoun, the next town.

As the van approached the tank, Thamin noticed that the cars in front of him were turning around. The drivers signaled that the tank was not allowing them to pass. Thamin also turned back. There were eight or nine cars in the line in front of him, making their way down into a field that leads to the Bedouin neighborhood of Al-Yamoun and from there, home - to circumvent the tank. They'd done this dozens of times before. The tank was parked on the main road, in front of the gas station.

After getting around the tank, the van returned to the main road, ready to drive the last two kilometers. The mood inside was good. After about 300 meters of slow progress, Thamin suddenly heard his nephew Tariq shouting from the back seat. No gunfire, no warning, just the screams of the wounded man. He glanced in the mirror and saw Tariq clutching his head as blood trickled down his cheeks. "Stop, stop! Bullets, bullets!" the nephew yelled.

Thamin looked behind him and saw his brother Nabil slumped on the floor. Thamin stopped immediately; Riad jumped out and pulled the terrified Bilal from the car. Then he took out Tariq, whose injury was not that serious, and tried to get Nabil out. He was already unconscious. Blood was pouring from his back. Thamin tried to staunch the bleeding. He says that in the distance he saw a soldier standing on the tank and looking in their direction. The tank was about 400 meters away when the shots were fired. What could the soldiers have seen from that distance that would justify opening fire?

Nabil was unconscious and his condition was deteriorating. Thamin parked the car across the road so someone would stop and help them. He was too shaken up to drive any more. The first car stopped and took them to the Red Crescent clinic in Al-Yamoun. A tortuous journey had just begun.

From the clinic in Al-Yamoun, they called an ambulance to come from Jenin. This time, when the ambulance passed the tank, the soldiers didn't shoot. A CT scan was done at the hospital in Jenin - which is more like a big clinic - and from there Nabil was put into another ambulance and taken to the more sophisticated Rafidiyeh Hospital in Nablus.

The road to Nablus is one of the most tightly controlled in the West Bank. Nabil's brother Riad rode with him in the ambulance; the IDF allows only one Palestinian family member to accompany a wounded person. Thamin began making his way to Nablus on his own, taking taxis and covering part of the distance on foot. It was evening by then. He walked five kilometers in the hills, worried about Nabil's condition, his shirt still stained with his brother's blood. Passersby warned to be careful about being seen by the soldiers with that bloody shirt on.

Meanwhile, the ambulance carrying his brother was held up at the Shavei Shomron checkpoint for about 40 minutes - also a matter of routine. Riad pleaded with the soldiers to see what condition his brother was in, but they brandished their weapons and shooed him back to the ambulance. They checked the ID cards of both Riad and the dying Nabil.

At the hospital, Nabil underwent surgery on his brain. The doctors were amazed that he was still alive. Thamin arrived three hours later. "I did what I could," the surgeon said. "The rest is up to God." He told them it would take 72 hours before they'd know if Nabil might make it. By that time, it was clear that Nabil was brain dead.

In the seven days that passed before Nabil drew his last breath, Thamin did not move from his bedside; he couldn't go home for fear that he wouldn't be able to get to Nablus again. Riad managed to get home a few days earlier only by paying NIS 300 to ride in an ambulance with false medical documents. There is currently no other way for a resident of Jenin to get back home from Nablus.

Nabil's wife and children were unable to get to him and to be with him in his final hours. Only one daughter who attends An-Najah University in Nablus was able to see him.

On June 15 at 10:30 A.M. Nabil died. For an hour and a half, Thamin tried to find a private ambulance that would bring the body home, but to no avail. The drivers are afraid to travel from Nablus to Jenin. Only after he made a few calls to the Palestinian liaison office was he able to arrange it.

As they exited Nablus, they came upon another tank. From the turret, a soldier signaled to the ambulance to turn around, that there was no passage. The ambulance driver got out and tried to talk to the soldier in Hebrew, but it didn't help. Those were his orders. They tried to go through a different checkpoint, at Hawara. After waiting there, they took a roundabout route - about 45 kilometers long - that took over three hours, just to get around the checkpoint with the dead body. At the Shavei Shomron checkpoint, they were detained again.

"What was the cause of death?" the soldier asked.

"It's from God," Thamin replied, not wanting to be delayed any more.