Five years after war, Gaza’s little ‘Iron Man’ stands tall

AL- ZAWAIDA, Palestinian Territories: was the summer of 2014, when a deluge of steel fell on Gaza. His back burned, his body covered in bandages, Yamin screamed from his hospital bed.

The boy had just lost 19 members of his extended family in a bombing.

Bursts of shrapnel were trapped in his body and nurses spread ointment on his raw skin as he lay in the burns unit of Al-Shifa Hospital preparing for plastic surgery.

It was during yet another war between Gaza militants — led by Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the enclave, and Islamic Jihad — and the Israeli military.

Just after midnight on the Muslim celebration of Eid al- Fitr, an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on a building where Yamin’s family had gathered in the center of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military maintained it housed a Hamas command center with militants inside.

In an instant, 19 people were killed, including six children. Yamin, just three at the time, and his sister Geina, only several months old, survived. But they are orphans.

Five years later, Agence France Presse (AFP) found Yamin.

The door at a home in central Gaza opened, and behind it appeared a boy with sparkling eyes and brown hair.

His new parents appear. Yamin, with a mischievous smile, runs, plays, laughs and dances in the courtyard of the house with sand- colored walls.

Yamin’s uncle, Adnan, has become his father and his aunt, Yasmine Abu Jabbar, who was his mother’s best friend, became his new mum.

“All the neighbors witnessed it. Yamin cried night after night,” said Yasmine, her brown eyes peering from behind her niqab.

“For a year, Yamin asked me, ‘ Where is my mother? How to get to her?’ The concept of death is already difficult to understand for an adult. Imagine for a three- year- old boy.”

‘ Not alone’

It Yasmine teaches at a primary school in AlNuseirat, where children dressed in worn jerseys kick up dust at sunset playing football.

She said she tried everything possible to help Yamin find some form of normality.

“The first step was to tell him, ‘ Yamin, look around you. You are not alone. Many children have lost their parents and their families, but you still have a family. We are your family.’”

Yamin now lives surrounded by his new parents and his five brothers and sisters.

A man shouts slogans while holding up a sign showing a cartoon depicting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dressed in an Islamic State (IS) group uniform showing the group’s logo and holding up a knife next to a woman dressed in an orange jumpsuit reading 'Kurdistan' while US President Donald Trump stands by turning his back and Russian President Vladimir Putin washes his hand in a basin on one side and a man wearing a blue suit representing the EU buries his head in soil, during a demonstration outside the Turkish Cultural Center in the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah on Oct. 16, 2019, protesting against the “Peace Spring” Turkish military operation in northern Syria.

He attends the primary school where his said Yamin and his relatives had the right adopted mother teaches. to know what happened.

He likes Galaxy chocolate, Lionel Messi and “There was no reason whatsoever to PUBG, a combat video game rivalling Fortnite. legitimize any harm for this family, either He also likes school. But not too much. bombing them, killing them, or injuring

His back is scarred, his skin still burns sometimes, them,” he said. and his left forearm remains deformed, But “until this moment, we didn’t receive which has occasionally led to mockery. a single answer in the last five years.”

“When he began pre- school, the children Contacted by AFP, Israel’s army said a made fun of him,” Yasmine said. preliminary inquiry had been carried out,

“One day he came to the house crying ‘ I but “there was no reasonable suspicion of don’t want to wear t- shirts anymore.’ I ran committing a criminal offense.” to the pre- school and I asked the children: The strike targeted a Hamas “active command ‘ Which one of you has super powers?’ and control center,” and those killed

“No one said a word. Then I said: ‘ Yamin included “at least four military operatives has them. He has an iron arm. He can fight belonging to terror organizations,” it said. a rocket with his bare hands.’ After that, It said militants there were “involved in military Yamin began to believe that he was a activities that endangered” Israeli soldiers. superhero like Iron Man.” “It was assessed that civilians were likely to be present in the building, but that the extent of the collateral damage expected to result from the attack would not be excessive in relation to the significant military advantage that was anticipated,” the army said.

In the family home in Al-Zawaida, Yasmine wiped away tears when remembering.

“You sink back into a nightmare, but at the same time I’m proud of myself when I look at Yamin,” she said.

The little “Iron Man” of Gaza now says he actually prefers another superhero: Rajul al- Ankabut, or Spider- Man in Arabic.

“Because with his superpowers, he can climb all walls.”

‘Climb all walls’

The 2014 war left 2,251 dead on the Palestinian side, the majority civilians, and 74 on the Israeli side, most of them soldiers.

Five years later, broken asphalt and residential towers have been replaced in Gaza, but the story is not over for survivors.

In his glossy offices overlooking the Mediterranean, Raji Sourani and his army of lawyers keep records of around 1,000 Palestinians killed.

Sourani, founder of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights who has demanded Israel open a war crimes investigation,