Global News Journal

Gaza damage more than even the ‘fixer’ can fix

I first met Raed al-Athamna when he was driving a journalist friend of mine around Gaza in his yellow, stretch-Mercedes taxi during the tense and violent days after Gaza militants captured Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier, in the summer of 2006.

Raed seemed to be a good ‘fixer’ – attentive, sensible and with far-from-perfect but perfectly understandable English.

A few months later, I interviewed him in the rubble of Beit Hanoun – after Israeli tank shells slammed in to a relative’s home killing 18 members of his extended family early one morning as most were still sleeping.

Israel said a technical mishap caused the shells to stray from their intended targets and in to the residential neighbourhood where the Athamnas lived.