Raheeq Birawi’s very brief married life in the U.S. was intolerable. Is that why she took a knife and traveled to an Israeli checkpoint three days before her planned return to America?
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac
Did she want to die? Was she tired of her short married life, which began with a kitschy honeymoon and continued as a hell in San Francisco? Was she afraid to return to her husband in America, who, according to her mother, used drugs and beat her? Was Raheeq Birawi – a pretty 19-year-old from the town of Asira al-Shamaliya, near Nablus, a young woman from a poor family whose parents are separated – tired of her new life in the American golden cage? Is that why she took a shared taxi to the Tapuah checkpoint in order to end her life? And, above all, is it even important whether or not she wanted to die?
When someone tries to commit suicide, everywhere else in the world, including security forces, try to save him or her. In the occupied territories, however, the situation is reversed: There’s nobody like the Israel Defense Forces or the Border Police when it comes to helping Palestinians – mainly, Palestinian women – carry out their death plans. In the case of Raheeq Birawi, they were especially happy to do so: Border policemen fired over 30 bullets at her, one after another, to make sure 30 times over that her death wish would come true. Her story is not unique: A large percentage of the knife-wielding women killed by Israel in recent months at checkpoints and bus stops in the territories had a similar background and motives.
Asira al-Shamaliya is a hilly town. The home of the bereaved mother is a rented, one-story stone structure, with damp walls and rooms that are empty of almost any furniture. Here single mother Zahra Birawi lives in poverty, and here Raheeq grew up together with her five sisters and a brother. Their father, Shajia, a construction worker in Israel, separated from Zahra years ago and is remarried. He also lives in Asira.
Several Palestinian flags are now taped to the porch; a death notice was issued by the town council. Unusually, no organization has taken responsibility for the fate of this unfortunate shaheeda (martyr). Israel Air Force planes circled in the sky and made a deafening noise while we sat on the porch with Zahra, whose tears kept flowing. The contrast between the sophisticated jets in the air and the miserable situation here was egregious.
Dressed in blue, her face tired and grief-stricken, the bereaved mother is 47. When she shows us pictures of herself at her daughter’s wedding in San Francisco, just last March, it’s hard to recognize her. “Sadness changes one’s face,” said B’Tselem investigator Abed el-Karim Saadi, who accompanied us.
About three years earlier, A.G., a U.S. native whose family has its roots in East Jerusalem, and who owns a cell phone store in San Francisco, came to Asira to ask for Raheeq’s hand after their families agreed to the match, and they got engaged.
Early this year, mother and daughter traveled to California. First they spent a month in Sacramento with the groom’s family, and then they went to San Francisco for the marriage ceremony. The wedding album reveals a colorful picture of a different reality: the couple in their wedding finery, the happy mother of the bride, dressed up and elegant, dancing in a hotel banquet hall, a fairy-tale event.
Zahra says that at first she actually liked her daughter’s groom. After the wedding, she returned to Asira, while the young couple spent their honeymoon in Hawaii. But the honeymoon was very short-lived.
After they returned to California, Raheeq told her mother that her husband had changed drastically. Raheeq, whose name means “nectar,” became a battered woman. Her life became a hell, according to her mother. Her husband took back the gold jewelry he had given her for their wedding, selling it so he could buy drugs. Once she was even hospitalized, because of pills her husband gave her, according to Zahra.
Raheeq wanted to become a modern woman, and asked to learn to drive, but her husband forbade it. He is 34 years old and only recently did Zahra learn that he was previously married, perhaps even more than once. For his part, his mother, Raheeq’s mother-in-law, suspected that she was flirting with his brother, her brother-in-law. Raheeq was alone in her distress.
On August 21, about five months after the wedding, Raheeq returned to Asira, for her brother’s nuptials. Her mother says that she noticed black and blue marks on her face. When she questioned her, the situation became clear: Raheeq was afraid to return to her husband. Zahra phoned his family in the United States, but they claimed that Raheeq was inventing everything and that her husband hadn’t harmed her.
Zahra didn’t want to interfere, and didn’t try to tell her daughter what to do. “I gave my children freedom, without forcing my opinion on them,” she says when asked whether she tried to pressure Raheeq not to return to America. Raheeq decided in the end to return to her husband, with whom she had spoken only a few times during her trip home. In one conversation, he promised her that he would allow her to learn to drive, if only she would come back.
Raheeq was scheduled to return to San Francisco on Sunday, October 23, together with her mother, who planned to stay with her there for about a month. The husband’s family in America sent the tickets.
On October 19, the last day of her life, Raheeq woke up in her father’s home. She went out to the drugstore, and returned to her mother’s house and told her she was going to Ramallah to do some shopping for the trip and to get some documents. Raheeq traveled by shared taxi from Asira to Nablus, where she boarded another minibus to Ramallah.
The mother’s face is full of tears. She sighs: “May God punish the wicked.”
At about 11 A.M., Zahra’s neighbor, who works in Palestinian intelligence, called and asked whether the Palestinian police had come to her house. When Zahra, perplexed, wondered why he was asking that, what the problem was – the neighbor quickly hung up. Minutes later Shajia, her estranged husband, called from his place of work in Taibeh and said his wife had told him that she heard that something bad had happened to Raheeq.
He said that his new wife had tried to call Raheeq, and an unfamiliar voice answered her. Shajia asked Zahra to contact the Israeli-Palestinian coordination headquarters to find out what happened to their daughter, but Zahra, helpless, didn’t know where to call.
Once again she mutters to herself and weeps silently. She goes on to say that meanwhile, her brother called and told her that there were rumors that Raheeq was killed at the Tapuah Junction. She says now that she started shouting and crying. People began to gather around the house and then she understood that the rumors were true. Since then Zahra hasn’t had a moment’s peace.
IDF soldiers arrived the next day at the home of Raheeq’s father, confiscated his Israeli work permit and warned the family that if there were demonstrations, they would demolish their house. Aqeed, Raheeq’s bereaved brother, the son of Zahra and Shajia, was detained this week by the Palestinian security forces, Israel’s security contractors and executors, after a post on Facebook by a young man from the town of Tamun mentioned that he was planning to avenge his sister’s killing. Aqeed has not yet been released.
Raheeq was shot at the Tapuah checkpoint by Border Police after she allegedly pulled out a knife and approached them. A video clip showed her lying on the road, with the echoes of repeated shots being fired in the background. The Border Police told Haaretz that the incident is under investigation, but nevertheless stated that, “from the moment that the terrorist was neutralized, the fighters stopped firing.”
An internal investigation by the IDF that was published last week noted four cases in recent weeks in which Palestinians were killed or wounded, during which soldiers and Border Police acted improperly. The investigation revealed that in all four instances, those forces could even have refrained from shooting altogether. One of the cases covered in the report was that of the killing of Raheeq Birawi. The report notes that the border policemen fired over 30 bullets at her after she pulled out the knife and walked toward them.
Zahra has not seen the video posted online in which the policemen are seen emptying their magazines on her daughter, even as Raheeq lies in the road. Zahra only saw the picture of her daughter’s body and her blurred face. The mother adds that in the picture there’s a knife in her daughter’s right hand, but notes that she was left-handed. Zahra finds it difficult to believe that her daughter pulled out a knife, and even less that she wanted either to kill herself or harm any soldiers. “Maybe they fired at her because she was the prettiest one in the taxi,” she says.
Israel has retained possession of her daughter’s body, in accordance with the despicable practice of preventing funerals that could escalate into riots. Zahra wants her daughter to have a proper burial, but has no idea how to go about asking for the body.
Is it possible that Raheeq wanted to die in order not to return to her husband in America? “No,” Zahra asserts. “She loved life. And she was a believer, even in America. She continued to pray to God. There’s no chance that she wanted to die.”
Just two weeks before she was killed, Raheeq celebrated her 19th birthday.
Her husband didn’t come to Asira after his wife was killed, and he and his family didn’t even speak to the bereaved mother by phone when she was mourning. And once again she mumbles: “God, punish the wicked, punish the wicked.”
“This is not the first time that the Civil Administration takes action in contravention of the law while ignoring judicial orders, in an effort to create a fait accompli in the field,” Mahagna told Haaretz. “These are solar panels that were erected to give a basic level of electricity to the only school in the village."
In response, the Civil Administration said that "On August 8, inspectors from the administration found unauthorized construction that included the solar panels. The next day, the panels and additional equipment that were placed at the site illegally were taken.