Israel-Palestine Conflict: False Deaths, Mistaken Identities Leave People In Shock As Violence Escalates

Various tales of muddled identities and false deaths have resurfaced leaving families in shock as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank continues to escalate

With the violence surging in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the West Bank, various traumatic tales of muddled identities and false deaths have come to the fore. Consider the case of Palestinian mother Basma Aweidat, who came to know that her son was shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. Later she again received a call saying that while 28-year-old Thayer had indeed been shot, he was alive and being treated at a hospital in Israel, reported news agency AFP. "I couldn't believe what they were telling me," said Basma.

In Thayer Aweidat's case, the Israeli army launched a February 6 raid at the entrance to Aqabat Jabr refugee camp near the West Bank city of Jericho. The attack was launched to search for suspects accused of carrying out an attack against Israelis.

The army killed five "terrorists" and the military was holding the bodies of the dead Palestinians, the report added.

The Palestinian Authority claimed that it was informed by Israeli authorities that Thayer Aweidat, a member of the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was among the dead. His photograph was also plastered on the walls of the refugee camp along with other Palestinian "martyrs". Soon the messages pf condolences started flooding.

Later, Basma Aweidat got a call from a cousin, who is the mother of Alaa Aweidat, a young man reportedly wounded in the same raid and was taken to Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital. She visited the hospital to discover that the man wounded by gunfire was not her child but was Thayer Aweidat.  "I couldn't believe he was still alive," said Basma, who applied for an Israeli permit to visit. "I saw him, his head bandaged, and his body with several wounds. I tried to speak to him, but he did not answer", she said.

Back home in Aqabat Jabr, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, the same neighbours returned who earlier offered condolences. "The women in the camp started coming to congratulate me because my son is alive, a few days after coming to mourn," said Basma Aweidat.

In October, a similar incident surfaced in the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah, also in the West Bank. The Basbous family also mourned the death of their son Bassel for two days thinking he had been killed by the Israeli army near Ramallah while driving with two others, who also died. But he was not dead. "I was unconscious, and I woke up two days later in hospital with my legs and my hands shackled," Bassel Basbous told the agency.

The family later came to know from a friend, who had a relative working at the Israeli Shaare Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem.

"She called me to tell me... Bassel was still alive," said his mother, Ataf Basbous.