Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/357188
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 3 AUGUST 2014 13 stopping them, try to stop us? It's like my daughter always says: it's not fair. I hurt you a little, and in response, you come to my home and kill five [of my children]…." On the subject of civilian casualties: part of Israel's justification for the high death toll is that Hamas is using its own people as human shields… so that, according to this argument, the Israeli army has no option but to target civilian areas in order to hit military targets… She rejects this out of hand. "Is- rael can kill Hamas, as it was at the beginning of this war. They can kill whoever they like. But now they are killing indiscriminately to frighten people. Do they need to kill children playing in a garden…?" But does she believe that Israel is killing those children on purpose? She nods emphatically. "Yes, to frighten us. This is how it works now. It wasn't like this before. Civilians who died before, died because they were walking in that place at that time… [the Israelis] wanted to kill that man on a motorcycle, and whoever was near him…" She shrugs. "It was the same with houses. They target one particular house, and if civilians die it was because they were in the house next door. Not now, though. You see it on the news…." She refers to this week's shelling of UN-operated schools which served as temporary shelters. "Those were refugees. They [the Israelis] can't in- vent some story that someone from Hamas was in there with them. Even if it's true, you wait for that person to leave. Are you going to kill chil- dren because a man was in there with them? Let's say if, by mistake, a Hamas rocket landed on an Israeli school. Would the reaction be the same as when Israeli rockets hit a Palestinian school?" She reiterates that Israeli strikes on non-military targets cannot be regarded as accidents. "If it was a Palestinian rocket I'd believe it was an accident. Hamas has rockets… I don't know where they get them from: maybe Iran, but I don't under- stand politics. So they have rockets, but they don't have the technology to know where they're going… and this frightens us, too. They aim for Tel Aviv, but they don't know where those rockets will land. What if they hit a Palestinian village?" In a sense this also reflects the ar- gument – obviously made by Israelis – that it is in fact Hamas that rep- resents a threat to Palestinian lives. Does anyone in Gaza feel this way? How representative is Hamas of the ordinary man in the street? "Today, all of Gaza is behind Ha- mas. Not because they are Hamas, let me be clear. But we don't want to go backwards. If we go back, we will have lost. Like the previous war, and the one before, and before that again. We are tired of losing. In this war, it is a case of: either we exist, and we get something, or we are nothing, and we get nothing. After this, there will be no other wars. We will be fin- ished. This is our last war. Either we come away with something, or it's over. We are going down for sure. Our rockets are about to finish. But we don't want to go down empty- handed. And do you know what we are asking for? That the borders are opened. That people are saved. That our refugees are allowed to go back home…" Her sentence trails away, but the expression on her face does the rest of the talking: is this too much to ask? Interview Palestinian campaigner Sanaa Al Nahhal-Acis argues that the present conflict in Gaza represents a final 'do or die' push for the Palestinian cause don't exist anymore' PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAY ATTARD