Father-Son Image Shocks, Sickens Both Sides

It was the kind of searing image that often defines the senselessness of hateful conflict.

A young boy is caught on camera, cowering under a storm of bullets, his father desperately attempting to shield him. The boy screams in panic. Then he lies still, dead, his hand curled around his face. His father slumps above him, head rolling, wounded.

The images, captured by a Palestinian television cameraman for a foreign news agency, were broadcast repeatedly on Palestinian and Israeli TV and transmitted the world over. Here, Palestinians and Israelis alike were shocked and sickened.

In the blink of a camera frame, the death of Rami Durra, a 12-year-old from a Gaza Strip refugee camp, became part of the battle for world opinion, even as the battle in the streets of the West Bank and Gaza raged for a fourth day Sunday and claimed more lives.

In addition to Rami and his father, an ambulance driver who attempted to save them was also shot dead. Palestinians blamed the Israelis for what they saw as excessive, brutal force; some Israelis blamed the Palestinians for the “cynical” use of children in violent demonstrations to begin with.

An Israeli military commander said the shooting was under investigation and that it was not yet clear whose bullets felled the boy, who was buried early Sunday without an autopsy, in the Palestinian tradition.

“First of all, I am very, very sorry from the depth of my heart,” Maj. Gen. Yom-tov Samia, head of military forces in the southern region that includes Gaza, told Israeli radio. But, he added, he was sure Rami and his father, Jamal, “were there not just by accident.”

He said the pair were part of a crowd throwing rocks and firebombs and, as such, were at risk. The Israeli army post had come under gunfire from four or five Palestinian positions for two hours, Samia said. One position, he said, was about 20 yards from where the father and son huddled against a wall.

From a hospital bed in Gaza City where he lay critically wounded with eight bullet holes in his body, Jamal Durra gave a different account.

He said he and his boy stumbled into the firefight on their way home from a used-car lot and had nowhere else to go. They were pinned down for 45 minutes, he said, during which time he could clearly see the man--an Israeli soldier--firing directly at them.

“I tried to hide myself, I tried to hide my son, but the shooting was everywhere,” Durra said, sobbing. “I could not save my son.”

In an effort at damage control, numerous officials of the Israeli government were assigned to telephone foreign journalists and explain Israel’s position--that its soldiers fire only when fired upon--and to heap blame on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Palestinian officials accused Israel of committing war crimes against their people and began broadcasting radio messages in Hebrew, directed at Israelis.

“Soldiers, stop and think,” the spots on Voice of Palestine radio say. “What can you say to your children, when you are killing children their age?”

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Times special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.