The Schoolgirl Who "Needed to Be Killed"

By Mohammed Omer

TO THIS DAY, the family and friends of 13-year-old Iman al-Hams are at a loss to explain how or why she wandered into the "closed military zone" in Tal al Sultan in Rafah on her way to school on the morning of Oct. 6, 2004. Early wire service reports speculated that she might have been late for school and was taking a shortcut. The actual geography, however, makes that unlikely.

But Iman never made it to school, because she was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers, who riddled her body with bullets. As often happens when the Israeli army kills or injures Palestinians, the IDF delayed the ambulance from al Najjar Hospital trying to reach her. But with five bullets in her head-of the "at least 15" the Dr. Ali Musa, the hospital's director, reported finding-Iman was dead long before she ever reached the hospital. Indeed, so much blood had soaked into her UNRWA school uniform and into the ground where she fell that her body was nearly bloodless when it finally reached the hospital.

Israeli army spokespersons quickly reported that the soldiers in the watchtower surveillance post thought the child was a courier for militants and concealing a bomb in her book bag-a claim most Palestinians found absurd. Not only is it virtually inconceivable that any militant group would allow a young girl to undertake a combat mission, there were many witnesses to the fact that Iman was never closer than 100 meters to any soldier in the fortified watchtower when the first shots were fired. And the IDF had to concede that a search of her book bag proved it contained only books.

Muddying the waters further were the next actions of "Captain R," the company commander, who approached Iman-wounded, according to Palestinian witnesses, but alive and lying on the ground helpless-and first fired two shots into her at close range to "confirm the kill." Then, according to IDF witnesses, he walked a short distance away, turned back, approached the child again and emptied the magazine of his automatic weapon into her body.

Although the IDF did admit fairly promptly that Iman's shooting had been "a mistake," "Captain R's" initial explanation was that as he approached the child, he came under fire from militants some 300 yards away, and fired into the ground to deter fire. His superiors at first accepted his version of events, despite some notable lapses of logic. (How does firing at the ground "deter fire"? And since when, many asked, had the IDF been hesitant about returning Palestinian fire? And if the soldiers feared that Iman's book bag held explosives, why risk detonation by spraying automatic fire near it?)

Still, as needless as Iman's death seemed, the case might have ended there-as has happened with the deaths of so many other Palestinian children-had not soldiers in the Givati brigade anonymously approached the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot with a very different version of the events. It was they who testified to "Captain R's" approaching the fallen child and "confirming the kill" with a hail of automatic fire. They expressed outrage that their own reputations as honorable soldiers had been "besmirched" by the commander's insistence on "confirming the kill" of an unarmed schoolgirl.

There are many unofficial stories of IDF soldiers "confirming a kill"-i.e., firing a lethal shot, usually to the head, into an apparently mortally wounded enemy. Frequently, it is alleged, this is a misnomer: the victim has been wounded and is immobilized, but obviously is alive, and death is not confirmed, but inflicted. In any event, Israeli army regulations never mention the practice.

Allegations that the soldiers who spoke out were disgruntled because "Captain R" was a strict disciplinarian received little credence, and "Captain R"-whose name has never been revealed-was removed from active duty as the army continued its investigation.

In November, the soldiers' veracity was confirmed when Israel's Channel Two television broadcast a military communications tape of a conversation among some of the soldiers involved.

Troops firing with light weapons and machine guns on a figure moving in the "no entry zone" quickly realized their target was a young girl. Someone in the operations room asked: "Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?" Replied a soldier in the surveillance watchtower, "It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastward, a girl of about 10. She's behind the embankment, scared to death."

Four minutes later, it was reported the girl had been hit and fallen. The surveillance tower reported, "Receive, I think that one of the positions took her out." Operations asked, "What, she fell?" and the soldier in the tower replied, "She's not moving right now."

The tape records the company commander as saying: "I and another soldier